TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/032690/0326250.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 17KB | 336 lines

                                                                                VIDEO, Page 66

The Great TV Takeover


Billion-dollar fees and ever expanding coverage are reshaping
American sports

By RICHARD ZOGLIN -- Reported by William Tynan and James
Willwerth/New York


    Let's take a sports quiz. When do kickoffs happen in
football? Answer: when the two-minute TV commercial break is
over. Why are World Series games played on frigid October
nights and on the West Coast in late-afternoon twilight? So
viewers at home can watch in prime time. Why do basketball
play-offs now include 16 of the N.B.A.'s 27 teams and last well
into June, when the heat in old arenas like the Boston Garden
can be stifling? Right again: so TV can have more potentially
high-rated games. And if television didn't exactly create
showboating antics like slam dunks in basketball and end-zone
dances in football -- well, what better way to make the
evening's sports-highlight reel?

    So it goes in the high-stakes marriage between television
and sports. It did not take long for these two great American
institutions to meet and tie the knot. But only recently did
they fully realize how much they mean to each other. For the
networks, sports programming is a surefire audience getter in
an era of fractionalizing viewership. For sports, TV is the
irresistible avenue to mass-audience popularity -- and almost
unimaginable riches.

    But the marriage entails a kind of Faustian bargain. Any
league that wants to pry big bucks from TV's big spenders must,
to one degree or another, adapt to the needs of the tube. That
can mean anything from inserting commercial time-outs to
overhauling the season schedule. As the money keeps growing,
so does TV's determination to get the most from its investment
by orchestrating the show for maximum viewer appeal. The medium
that once simply covered America's favorite sports has
virtually taken them over.

    And boy, have the bucks grown. The National Football
League's new pact, approved a week ago, is a stunner even by
the rapidly inflating standards of the medium: $3.6 billion,
divvied up among five broadcast and cable networks, to bring
every touchdown pass and holding penalty into American homes
for the next four years. It is the biggest TV sports deal ever
negotiated.

    To justify those billions, the made-for-TV show will get
bigger as well. Starting next season, pro football will add two
more teams to the play-offs and, by the fall of 1992, two more
weeks to the season. That will probably push the Super Bowl
into February, which just happens to be a ratings "sweeps"
period. And for fans who had too much Bud Bowl and not enough
Super Bowl last January, relief is nowhere in sight. To help
defray the immense cost of football's telecast rights, the
networks will add three more 30-second commercial spots to each
game next season, and another two in the fall of 1992.

    Few would deny that TV has, on the whole, been a boon for
the average fan. At nearly any time of the day or night, on
national network or local cable outlet, one can find some sort
of athletic competition in progress, from tennis and golf
tournaments to stock-car races and beach volleyball. TV has
boosted interest in some sports, virtually created it in
others. NCAA basketball once got almost no national TV
coverage; this season some 325 college games were telecast on
national TV. Nor has cable, as some feared might happen,
drained sports away from broadcast TV. Instead, it has merely
added to the bounty. In 1988, 723 sporting events were shown
on cable, according to an ESPN study, up from 158 in 1979.
During that same period, network offerings rose from 341 to
453. "The appetite for sports in television is bottomless,"
says Seth Abraham, HBO's director of sports. "Programming
tastes come and go, but sports is always a constant. More is
never enough."

    It is almost impossible to imagine sports without TV.
Baseball used to mean a seat in the upper deck at Yankee
Stadium or Forbes Field, or the radio voice of Harry Caray or
Mel Allen accompanied by a disembodied crack of the bat. Now
it is the centerfield camera showing the trajectory of a curve
ball, close-ups of the pitcher shaking off a sign and replays
of that disputed pick-off play at first base. No wonder fans in
the stadium spend much of their time craning their necks at the
Diamond Vision screen or gazing into their miniature TV sets.
Why watch the game when you can enjoy the sunshine and hot dogs
and still follow the action on TV?

    The lure of TV dollars has caused new leagues to be created
and old ones to be expanded. The World League of American
Football will come into being next year, mainly to satisfy a
TV demand for gridiron games in the spring. (ABC and cable's
USA Network will share the honors.) In some cases, TV has
tampered with the very rules of the game. The National Hockey
League, struggling to make itself attractive to national TV,
some years ago expanded the pauses in play following certain
penalties to more than 30 seconds to allow time for a
commercial. In preparation for the 1994 World Cup soccer
matches, the first to be played in the U.S., the president of
the sport's international federation has proposed switching
from two 45-min. halves to four 25-min. quarters. The reason
-- What else? -- is to make the game more appealing to American
TV.

    Pro football has been manhandled in less egregious but still
annoying ways. The game trudges along more slowly than ever,
thanks partly to the profusion of TV time outs; the average
game length is now 3 hr. 11 min., up from 2 hr. 57 min. in
1978. (The N.F.L. club owners last week instituted some rule
changes in an effort to tighten up the action.) Since 1986, the
league has allowed controversial calls to be overturned after
scrutiny of the videotape replay. Despite widespread criticism,
the league last week voted to continue such video appeals,
though with a new proviso: the replay officials can no longer
listen to the TV commentators. (Hey, who's refereeing this game
anyway?)

    The huge amount of money pouring in from TV is the major
reason for the escalation of player salaries -- and, by
extension, labor problems like the current baseball lockout.
The flow of TV dollars has increased the already tremendous
pressure on college coaches and athletes to compile winning
records and reach postseason play. Meanwhile, as drug scandals
and other sports controversies proliferate, TV commentators
face the difficult task of reporting on events that, in many
cases, their employers have a financial interest in. Though
less boosterish than they once were, sports journalists have
traditionally gone easier on events telecast by their own
network. "Too frequently the networks divided sports into
`their' events and `our' events," notes Dave  Marash, a former
newscaster who will join ESPN's baseball team this year.
"Incidents of probing and candor have been infinitely higher
for `their' events."

    The scramble to get more events onto the "our" side of the
ledger has reached a frenzied peak. As the networks try to
conserve a dwindling share of the TV audience, they are
depending more and more on the drawing power of sports. "Sports
is the one thing that comes to TV somewhat presold," says Larry
Gerbrandt, senior analyst for Paul Kagan Associates. "If you're
going to break in a new sitcom, you've got to launch a campaign
of awareness. When you add a sports package, people already
know what they are getting." The biggest events, moreover, can
galvanize the nation around the TV set as few entertainment
shows do. This year's Super Bowl, a lopsided contest, drew
lower than usual ratings; still, its audience of nearly 74
million was the highest for any show this season.

    Cable is increasingly becoming a player as well. ESPN, the
all-sports channel launched in late 1979, began by shoveling
hours of fringe sports at hard-core fans, everything from dart
throwing to Australian-rules football. Now, with an audience
of more than 55 million homes, it is aggressively bidding for
major sports like pro football and baseball. So is Ted Turner's
TNT. HBO, meanwhile, has become the dominant network in boxing;
it currently holds the exclusive rights for Mike Tyson's
heavyweight fights.

   The latest round of escalating league TV deals started in
December 1988, when CBS won the rights to four years of
major-league baseball for an unprecedented $1.08 billion. That
was roughly the same amount that NBC and ABC had paid for the
previous six years -- and CBS's package includes only 16
regular-season games, in addition to the All-Star Game,
play-offs and World Series. (ESPN, which signed its own $400
million deal, will offer another 161 regular-season contests.)

    NBC, which was shocked to lose its longtime baseball
coverage, struck back by winning the rights to N.B.A.
basketball, formerly held by CBS. The cost: $600 million, more
than triple the size of the last contract. Colossal amounts
were also shelled out for the 1992 and '94 Winter Olympics
(CBS), the 1992 Summer Games (NBC) and NCAA basketball  (CBS).

    Can the networks really make money on these expensive
packages? Many industry observers are skeptical that
advertising revenue will be high enough to meet the costs.
"These numbers are very hard to justify on any kind of rational
basis, given the current state of television," says Christopher
Dixon, media analyst for Kidder, Peabody & Co. Many network
executives are not happy about the spending spree. Kenneth D.
Schanzer, executive vice president of NBC Sports, blames most
of the spiral on CBS, which he claims overbid by nearly $400
million on the major-league baseball package, escalating all
the subsequent negotiations. "The simple fact is that CBS
probably cost the industry a billion and a half dollars,"
Schanzer says. "That's very sad and unnecessary."

    "We're comfortable with the deals we've made," insists Neal
Pilson, president of CBS Sports. "It's really irrelevant
whether or not a given event makes money. The issue is whether
our strategy works in the long term." That strategy is to help
rejuvenate CBS's sinking prime-time ratings by purchasing
high-visibility sports packages, especially those that air at
advantageous times of the year for promoting the rest of the
network's schedule.

    To help squeeze out more revenue, all of the networks will
probably increase the number of commercials they air during
games. "Televised sports is one place where dollars can be
created out of smoke," says Ron Kaatz, a former ad executive
who now teaches at Northwestern University's Medill School of
Journalism. "You can add a minute of commercial time and create
$200,000 or $400,000 or more worth of  added revenue where
nothing existed before." The networks could also seek other
sources of income, such as a share of the revenue from
team-related merchandise like T-shirts and mugs or postseason
videocassettes.

    In the long term, however, TV will probably have to
reconsider its free-spending ways. "The rapid ramp-up of sports
bidding has to stop," says Terence McGuirk, president of
Turner's sports division. "The economic base isn't there to pay
for it." Dennis Swanson, president of ABC Sports, concedes that
his network will lose money on its new football package, which
includes Monday night games and a few play-off contests. "At
some point in the next decade," he warns, "somebody is going
to realistically ask themselves, Should we stay in the network
sports business? Investing in something that has no return is
not a good way to do business." Many observers predict that
major events will soon go to pay-per-view channels, where
viewers who want to see them must pay a one-time fee. NBC, in
what could be a harbinger, will supplement its coverage of the
1992 Summer Olympics with 600 additional hours on as many as
three pay-per-view channels.

    Prudent or not, the huge amounts being ponied up by TV are
changing the economics of pro sports. Major-league baseball's
billion-dollar TV pact is an unspoken issue looming behind the
current baseball lockout. "The television revenue isn't being
produced by the owners," says Donald Fehr, head of the players'
union. "It's being produced by the players. The lion's share
of the television money ought to go to the players." With the
N.F.L.'s just completed TV deal, clubs will be making money
even before they sell a single admission ticket. "The rights
fees fueled a salary explosion in baseball," says agent Leigh
Steinberg. "Now things will explode in the N.F.L. If the teams
have money, they'll spend it."

    For college sports, TV revenue poses other, more troubling
problems. The 64 members of the College Football Association,
for example, negotiated a lucrative five-year TV pact with ABC
for $210 million in January. Three weeks later, Notre Dame
bolted from the group and signed its own TV deal with NBC for
more than $30 million. The move brought cries of foul from
other colleges. The increased money and TV exposure, they
complained, will give Notre Dame even more of an advantage in
national recruiting and will encourage other strong teams to
pursue a go-it-alone policy, to the detriment of all college
sports.

    TV is a double-edged sword for colleges. Media exposure
brings national attention and dollars into the coffers. But it
also stretches out seasons, wreaks havoc with schedules and
helps boost the importance of sports at the expense of
academics. Indiana University was forced to play three
basketball games this season at 9:30 p.m. to suit ESPN's
Monday-night schedule. Coach Bobby Knight complained, noting
that his players did not get home from away games until 3 a.m.
"To hell with damned ESPN," he told a campus newspaper. "This
is absolutely ridiculous to put a college student through."
Other Big Ten coaches are more sanguine about the trade-off.
"When you talk about the dollars and the exposure," says
Michigan State coach Jud Heathcoate, "I think we have to make
some sacrifices in our schedule."

    The lure of lucrative TV contracts also contributes to a
win-at-all-costs mentality that can lead to recruitment
scandals and other abuses. "The more pressure you put on, the
greater the chances are for coaches to take shortcuts," says
Bob Frederick, athletic director at the University of Kansas.
Harry Edwards, sports sociologist at the University of
California, Berkeley, sees TV as a major culprit in the
corruption of sports. "The eyes of the athlete have shifted
from what you can do to challenge yourself," he says, "to how
much money you can make."

    To be sure, the dollar signs are hard to miss in TV sports
these days. One can see them in everything from Bo Jackson
commercials for Nike footwear to the corporate logos attached
to a growing number of major events (among the newest
additions: the Mobil Cotton Bowl and the Federal Express Orange
Bowl). "It used to be that sport was sport, and business was
business," says Norman Chad, who writes about media for the
sports daily the National. "Now sports is business. Something
that was once sweet and in some ways idyllic now is in the mud
with everything else."

    And yet it is also, on occasion, terrifically entertaining.
Sports can still provide moments of great drama, poignancy and
inspiration. And TV has helped bring them to an unprecedented
audience, including tens of millions of people who have never
bought a ticket. The old days may have been better, simpler,
less sullied. But how many would know? Only the fans in the
stadium were there to see.


____________________________________________________________ TV
TAKES OVER SPORT


    N.F.L. CONTRACT: $3.6 BILLION (Increase from 1987: 92%)

    What viewers get: A longer season and an extra play-off
contest; a cable game every Sunday night; and, of course,
Monday Night Football.


    N.B.A. CONTRACT: $875 MILLION (Increase from 1986: 250%)

    What viewers get: Regular-season games on both NBC and TNT.
And the slam dunks will last well into June, thanks to TV's
most drawn-out play-off schedule.


    BASEBALL CONTRACT: $1.48 BILLION (Increase from 1984: 102%)

    What viewers get: The play-offs and World Series -- but only
16 regular-season games -- on a new network, CBS; ESPN will
help fill the summertime lulls with another 161 games on cable.


    THE OLYMPICS:

    The '92 Games will bring lavish coverage from CBS in the
winter and NBC in the summer, as well as a possible harbinger
of things to come: pay-per-view.