John Caponera, the rubber-faced Chicago comedian who had the best NBC series (“The Good Life”) never seen last season, is back on television, albeit cable. As host of “Jocks,” which premieres at 8:30 p.m. Friday on Comedy Central, Caponera kind of returns to his TV roots.
“Comedy Central knew me from `Olympiacs’ ” he says of the network’s offbeat look at the ill-fated ’92 Summer Olympics Triplecast. “When they approached me (about `Jocks’), they said they were looking to cover sports and I could use my comic buddies.”
Which Caponera did, calling on fellow comedians Dennis Wolfberg, Jeff Altman, Hugh Fink, Mike Schwartz, Chuck Booms, David Cross and Bob Perlow, among others, as the show’s roving reporters.
“They said I could go to any sporting event I like on location and have fun with it,” says Caponera. Among the segments already taped are ones on speed golf, the World Cup, the overequipped bicyclist. And the all-female America’s Cup yachting team.
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“The show is for the serious sports fan who can just kick back and laugh,” says Caponera. “What’s going to make this different from other shows is that it’s not a highlights or blooper show, a sketch or a parody show. We’re actually going to these events and covering them on location, using real people. There’s no actors.”
If “Jocks” is successful in its original four-week run, says Caponera, Comedy Central plans on renewing the weekly half-hour show. Which is a better deal than he got from NBC on “The Good Life,” which was canceled after only half a season.
More show biz: Another way of mixing sports and entertainment is through an awards show, which is why ABC will present its third Jim Thorpe Pro Sports Award Show at 8 p.m. Monday. Among the honorees are Henry Aaron, Wayne Gretzky, Don Shula, Dan Jansen, Oksana Baiul and Chris Webber. Mark Curry hosts the brainchild of Ken Wolfe, executive producer on ABC’s “Monday Night Football.”
Says Wolfe: “Sports awards shows had been done in the past, but not overly well. I decided I’ve got to start one that’s real quality and really credible. I wondered how I could get the sports community and the Hollywood community to realize that this is credible. So we formed the Jim Thorpe Academy. It may be the best collection of a voting panel ever assembled.”
Unlike ESPN’s ESPY Awards, where viewers cast votes, Wolfe gathered three legends and two writers to vote in each sport. “Suddenly, you had some real meaning to who was selecting these people,” says Wolfe, who points to another difference between the Thorpes and the ESPYs.
“One is network and one is cable,” he says. “ESPN has its own goals and desires. I have a different agenda. This is a network show. They’re different animals. When you’re on network, you have to make your show more entertainment-oriented.”
Numbers game: While final national numbers won’t be known until Friday, ABC officials were glowing over the overnight Nielsen ratings for Monday’s U.S.-Brazil World Cup match. The telecast averaged a 10.5 rating and a 27 share among the 30 markets measured. If the number holds, it would break the previous record for a soccer telecast-6.8 for the U.S.-Romania match June 26. While WLS-Ch. 7 in Chicago did only a 8.0/23 for the telecast, San Francisco had a 16.6/39, Los Angeles 13.9/33 and New York 9.7/28. ABC estimated 32 million people watched the game. “That’s a real nice number,” said an ABC spokesman, looking forward to this weekend’s three quarterfinal telecasts. “In reality, we’re doing better than we thought we would.”
ESPN is averaging a 2.0 Nielsen cable rating-about what it did for the Stanley Cup playoffs-for its first 25 live telecasts. And Univision-with Andres “Gooooooooal” Cantor leading the way-set a ratings record with a 22.7 average (or approximately 1,480,000 Hispanic households) for Tuesday’s Mexico-Bulgaria match, giving the network a 12.6 World Cup ratings average and 821,520 Hispanic households.
Baseball stuff: The Baseball Network, in association with ABC, has announced its first two regional “Baseball Night in America” telecasts for WLS-Ch. 7. And it’s a split decision: Indians at White Sox at 7 p.m. July 16, and Cubs at Rockies at 7 p.m. July 18. Announcers Ken Harrelson and Lary Sorensen will work the first contest, while Steve Physioc and Dave Campbell the latter. Which means the Cubs-Reds game July 16 (which reunites dad Marty and son Thom Brennaman in the broadcast booth) will be blacked out here as well as the Sox-Tigers contest July 18. “There will be frequent updates in dual markets of the other team’s game,” said a TBN spokesman. John Saunders will anchor ABC’s studio show from ESPN’s headquarters in Bristol, Conn. . . . ABC also airs “Baseball’s Brightest Stars,” which reunites broadcasters Al Michaels, Tim McCarver and Jim Palmer, at 1:30 p.m. Saturday on WLS-Ch. 7.
Other stuff: Terry Armour, the other guy on this page, hosts CLTV’s “Sports Page” at 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday. . . . Wimbledon champ Pete Sampras gets to prove he does have a personality when he guests on “Late Show with David Letterman” at 10:35 p.m. Friday on WBBM-Ch. 2.