Fox Sports producer Ed Goren said Thursday a combination of circumstances–from slipping local ratings to a Canadian opponent–left the Blackhawks’ Stanley Cup opener Sunday night blacked out in the Chicago area.
Instead, Fox affiliate WFLD-Ch. 32 will show the Stars-Red Wings matchup at 2 p.m. Sunday. The Hawks’ game will be telecast nationally by ESPN, but viewers here will see the Sharks-Flames game on ESPN2.
“There was a pecking order with the and with other broadcasters,” Goren said. “It actually was a very complicated equation when you are involved with obligations from `Hockey Night in Canada,’ ESPN and ESPN2. We tried to max out what would be the best national numbers for us.”
Goren blamed the start of the baseball season and the NBA playoffs for WFLD’s decline from a 3.9 rating on April 2 to a 2.8 last Sunday. The 3.2 average, however, still was a 52 percent improvement over the 2.1 rating WLS-Ch. 7 averaged last year.
Disputing any undue influence from Hawks owner Bill Wirtz to keep the game off home TV, Goren said: “The owners had no say in any of these selections. It was a ratings issue and an issue of a matchup that did not have two American markets.”
More Stanley: With Fox out of the picture for at least the first round, SportsChannel will have exclusive coverage of the Hawks games in Toronto at 6:30 p.m. on May 11, May 13 and, if necessary, May 17. . . . ESPN begins its Stanley Cup coverage with the Rangers-Nordiques series at 6:30 p.m. Saturday and the Caps-Penguins opener at 6:30 p.m. Saturday on ESPN2.
Go figure: The Bulls, any network’s best friends these days, are involved in two of NBC’s seven possible scenarios for Sunday’s triple-header telecasts–most likely as the Magic’s opponent in the first game of the NBA playoffs’ second round. If the Bulls are playing, their game likely would fall into either the 2 p.m. or 4:30 p.m. start slot.
With the Bulls-Hornets leading the way, the playoffs received their highest ratings in a decade last weekend on NBC. Last Sunday’s game at Charlotte had a 9.8 national Nielsen rating with a 20 share, making it the most-watched first-round game in history. According to NBC, the Bulls-Hornets game was watched by 32 million people, 5 million more than watched the final gme of the 1993 Lakers-Suns series.
And on cable, Tuesday night’s Hornets-Bulls telecast set a SportsChannel record with a 17.5 rating and a 26 share, topping the 17.2/24 the regional cable station had for a May 5, 1992 Bulls playoff game against the Knicks. Also, TNT (despite being blacked out in the Chicago area) had its highest-rated game of the season at 4.6, which translates to nearly 3 million homes, Tuesday night. But the highest-rated national cable program last week was–ta-dah–ESPN’s telecast of the NASCAR Winston Select 500 Sunday afternoon (5.2).
Here they come: Instead of just adding more technical gimmicks or more off-track features, producer Curt Gowdy Jr. is doing something different for Saturday’s ABC telecast of the Kentucky Derby–he’s adding another race. Besides the 121st Run for the Roses, the network will telecast the first Churchill Downs Turf Classic this year.
“This will be the first time we’ll have two live races on Derby Day,” Gowdy said. “The turf race has attracted some top turf competitors, such as Sky Classic and Lure.”
The additional race also means ABC’s coverage will be “predominantly live,” Gowdy said. “People are always asking how we fill 60 minutes before the race when we only have two minutes of action. This year, we’ll have a race before the Kentucky Derby, which cuts down the setup time for us by 20 to 25 minutes.”
Programming notes: The weekly “Bill O’Connor’s Prep Report” returns to the air at 5 p.m. Sunday on WKTA-AM. . . . Pernell Whitaker and Roy Jones Jr. join TVKO’s broadcasting crew of Jim Lampley, Larry Merchant, James Brown and Harold Lederman for the “La Batalla” pay-per-view telecast, featuring the Oscar De La Hoya-Rafael Ruelas fight and three other bouts, at 8 p.m. Saturday.