There’s always room for more sports on television, says ABC Sports programming Vice President David Downs. And just because sports such as hockey and soccer don’t bring huge ratings doesn’t mean they should be ignored.
More Top Picks Playstation Vr
“After what we’ve seen recently, there’s room for soccer on the TV menu,” says Downs, a former college soccer player. “With all these cable outlets and new networks springing up, there’ll always be a tremendous demand for product.”
The World Cup ratings, while not exactly blowing the Super Bowl off the map, have been astounding some cynics. Why, even the non-U.S. contests are drawing ratings larger than your average golf and tennis tournament telecast.
“One of my pet peeves is the suggestion that because a sport doesn’t have NFL- or NBA-like ratings on a major network, the sport isn’t good,” says Downs. “Just because the NHL had a 1.7 rating on ABC doesn’t mean it’s a failure. And as long as you approach the future of soccer in the United States with the understanding you’re not trying to get an NFL rating in the first year, there’s plenty of room for it.
“The single most important thing (the new Major League Soccer) can do is provide a place where our college stars can play professionally. Do I think it’ll ultimately be better (in TV ratings) than the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball? No, not even close.”
But Downs couldn’t be happier with the U.S.-Brazil match on the ABC docket for the 4th of July. “I’m confident (U.S.-Brazil) will outperform U.S.-Romania,” which set a soccer ratings record June 26, says Downs. “The World Cup has had sort of a soap-opera quality to it. There’s been startling upsets and surprisingly high-scoring games. The American sports fan has sort of woken up to the fact you can watch a game for 90 minutes and one goal in the 85th minute can mean the difference between advancing and being eliminated. It’s been great. Just what it takes to build this sort of drama.”
The sort of drama that the Univision telecasting team has been pouring on regularly for its Hispanic fans. Was there any thought of teaming them on an ABC telecast?
“We honestly believed it was important to put people with essentially American accents on our broadcasts to demonstrate this wasn’t the property of foreign people,” says Downs, perhaps fearful of a xenophobic audience. “ESPN has hired a lot of British announcers who are using a lot of Britishisms. We clearly went in another direction and we clearly lost something by that. It was important to make our telecasts as American as possible. It was a conscious decision to go that way.”
Random thoughts: Don’t you think WGN-Ch. 9 officials are just a little bit twitchy about trying to get in the Cubs-Rockies twinbill before the Sox-Brewers scheduled start of 6:05 p.m.? . . . If NBC loses Wimbledon to another network next year, the network went out in grand style Sunday, with fine features by host Dick Enberg on the state of men’s tennis and the farewell of Martina Navratilova making up for the all-too-brief men’s singles final. . . . Kudos to WMVP-AM host Brian Davis for talking Saturday afternoon about Andres Escobar’s assassination while other sports-talk stations dwelled on the same old Jerry Krause- or White Sox attendance-bashing.
Programming notes: ESPN2 begins its 21-game Canadian Football League schedule (which will include the Grey Cup title contest) at 6 p.m. Thursday with live coverage of the Baltimore CFL Colts’ first regular-season game. . . . USA Network will rebroadcast the Roberto Duran-Vinny Pazienza fight held June 25 at 8 p.m. July 26.
New stuff: Primestar, a direct broadcast satellite service, has joined with Liberty Satellite Sports, a distributor of satellite sports programming, to offer 14 regional sports channels on Primestar’s new small satellite dish. . . . ESPN’s business subsidiary, ESPN Enterprises, has helped launch ESPN Chilton Sports Poll, which will continuously track fans’ attitudes on a number of issues, and has joined Prodigy Services Company to develop ESPNET, a multimedia sports network.
And finally: NBC’s Bob Costas ended The Baseball Network’s first telecast-Sunday’s All-Star Selection Show-with updates of the day’s action. While showing a clip of Astro Ken Caminiti’s inside-the-park homer against the Cubs, Costas quipped: “The director must get paid by the cut . . . Get out the Dramamine.” Surprising criticism, considering The Baseball Network-outside of a few NBC- and ABC-produced telecasts-is going to have to rely on such local TV crews as did Sunday’s Astros-Cubs game for most of its telecasts.