New Era in TV Sports

A document from the CQ Researcher archives:

Report Outline
Expanding Sports Menu
College Football Changes
Baseball and Pay Tv
Special Focus

Expanding Sports Menu

Multiple Outlets Serving Armchair Fans

Games enlist skill and intelligence, the utmost concentration of purpose, on behalf of activities utterly useless, which make no contribution to the struggle of man against nature, to the wealth or comfort of the community, or to its physical survival. —Christopher Lasch

Chances are, most sports fans would agree with Lasch's observation about the wider implications of sports in society. Yet games of sport are immensely popular throughout the world—even if they have nothing to do with the physical survival of the species. The United States is as sports-crazy as any other nation. Witness the idolatrous treatment of the nation's athletes in the Summer Olympics; they were hailed as heroes by everyone from the president to flag-waving citizens on the street. Or the fervor with which people in Pennsylvania, Texas and Ohio towns follow the fortunes of their high school football teams. Or the fact that normal activity comes to a virtual standstill in places such as Indiana and North Carolina when the state university plays for the national collegiate basketball championship. Or the wild public parades for Super Bowl-winning football teams.

Every year tens of millions of Americans show up in person to cheer the home teams. Yet their number is dwarfed by those who stay home and follow sports on television. There is a wider menu of sports events on TV today than ever before. Network television, cable TV stations, regional pay cable networks and local independent stations are giving over unprecedented amounts of air time to sports. Take college football, for just one example. A recent Supreme Court ruling “deregulated” the televising of games, which had been controlled by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. As a result, the number of college football games on TV this season will at least double 1983's 89 telecasts.

Major-league baseball and college football were very popular before the television era. But television thrust other sports, especially professional football, basketball and hockey, into the national spotlight. The first televised sporting events—a University of Pennsylvania football game and a Columbia-Princeton baseball game—were broadcast on an experimental basis in 1938 and 1939. By the early 1950s games and the medium forged an alliance, and since then both have enjoyed unprecedented popularity. “Television,” Christopher Lasch said, “did for these games what mass-journalism had done [in the 1920s] for baseball, elevating them to new heights of popularity and at the same time reducing them to entertainment.”1 At the same time, sports gave television an immeasurable boost. “Sports made television commercially successful,” wrote educator-author Michael Novak. “No other motive is so frequently cited …for shelling out money for a set….”2

The large and growing appetite for sports on the part of the American public has translated into big business for television—and for the sports teams, professional leagues and college conferences that sell broadcast rights. For example, during ABC's unprecedented 180-hour coverage of the Olympic Games July 28–Aug. 12, the average 30-second commercial in prime time sold for $260,000. Analysts say that ABC, which spent more than $325 million for broadcast rights and in production costs, still profited handsomely from the Olympics. Under the current $2 billion contract between the three major over-the-air networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) and the National Football League (NFL), commercials sell for $345,000 a minute. Broadcast rights—including radio, television and pay cable television—for major-league baseball have increased sixfold in the last decade to nearly $268 million in 1984, according to Broadcasting magazine.

Television is in large measure responsible for the birth and limited success of the United States Football League (USFL), a professional rival to the NFL. In May 1982, months before the league had signed its first player, it sold network broadcast rights to ABC for two years for $18 million and cable rights to the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN) for two years for $11 million. “Thus assured that the nation's premier sports network and a leading cable network would carry their pro football league, the [USFL owners] then set about assembling the league's remaining necessities—players, coaches, host cities, stadiums,” wrote television analyst Ron Powers. “This was the cathode genesis of the United States Football League.”3 In June 1984 ESPN paid $71 million to the USFL for exclusive cable TV rights for three years beginning in 1985, according to industry observers. Under an option in its contract, ABC has offered the league some $15 million for non-cable broadcast rights for the 1985 season. The USFL is far from sound financially—observers say that only one team, the Tampa Bay Bandits, made a profit in 1984. But league attendance rose by an average of 9 percent last year. Television exposure is at least partially responsible for the attendance jump and TV revenues are almost totally responsible for the fact that the league is still in business.

Decline in Ratings; Fear of Overexposure

More sporting events than ever before are available on television. And more people than ever before are watching sports on television. Yet, ratings for some network and cable sporting events—including college basketball and college and professional football—have fallen in recent years. There are many reasons for the ratings decreases, but industry analysts say that a primary cause has been an “oversaturation” of sporting events on the airwaves. The over-the-air networks alone run about 1,500 hours of sports programming a year. Independent stations air thousands of local and regional professional and collegiate sporting events in towns and cities across the nation. And then there is the growing sports coverage provided on cable television. According to the National Cable Television Association, sports coverage is cable TV's “fastest growing program category.”

At last count, 11 cable networks were broadcasting sporting events on a regular basis, including ESPN, the only 24-hour television network devoted primarily to sports. There also are 22 regional pay sports networks, most of which began operating in the last three years. The cable subscriber must pay an additional monthly fee to tune in to these regional networks. They typically broadcast home games of local professional baseball, basketball and hockey teams. “There is no question that there is an ever present danger of over-exposure,” said Alan Cole-Ford, an analyst with Paul Kagan Associates, a cable TV consulting firm. More sports on TV, Cole-Ford said, “has to begin to take a toll. Likely that toll is going to be taken on the number of games on [shown by] local, commercial independents. Something's got to give somewhere to some degree. It is going to depend a lot on each market.”4

“We're mindful of the fact that, on the one hand, television is probably the best marketing tool ever invented, so it's important to be seen and be seen consistently,” said Ed Desser, director of broadcasting for the National Basketball Association (NBA). “Yet, the more people see on TV, the less inclined they are going to be perhaps to go to as many games, or at least to watch every game.…We think that moderation in the amount of exposure is of some benefit.” The league's new contract with WTBS, the Atlanta-based cable network, about halves the number of NBA cable telecasts to be shown this season. The contract gives WTBS exclusive cable rights to NBA games. In the past, NBA games also had been shown on cable on ESPN and the USA Network. WTBS, which had aired virtually all of the Atlanta Hawks' 82 regular-season games in the past, this year will show a mixed menu of about 75 NBA contests.5

Even though cable broadcasts are being cut back, many other NBA games will be available elsewhere on television. About 34 games (both regular season and playoff contests) will be shown on CBS. The NBA also permits its 23 teams to negotiate their own local broadcast arrangements with local independent stations and with regional pay cable networks. Next season 15 NBA teams6 will be shown by the regional pay networks.

Cable Sport Strategies: USA and ESPN

At least one cable network is cutting back on the amount of sports programming it carries. The USA Network went on the air in September 1980 as an all-sports cable offshoot of the Madison Square Garden Network, a regional pay cable service in New York City. USA broadcast professional hockey and basketball games from Madison Square Garden, added other sports events and beamed 24 hours of programming nationwide via cable. “On prime time just about every night of the week we ran some sort of a sports event,” said Jim Zrake, USA's executive producer for sports. “We probably hit our peak, where we were doing something like 450–500 events a year around 1981. Ever since then we've tried to scale down.” Only about 20 percent of the programming on USA, which is seen by some 24.3 million subscribers on about 4,000 cable systems nationwide, now consists of sports. Still, sports remain an important segment of USA's programming. “It's still a very high-profile item,” Zrake said. “We're going to go after what we consider the top ticket items that we feel that people still want to watch.”

ESPN, the cable network that shows the most sports by far, has no plans to cut back its sports coverage. ESPN, which began programming in September 1979, now has more than 30 million subscribers and is available on nearly 8,000 cable systems. “Our ratings are good. Our goal is a 2.07 in prime time and we have been maintaining that, or close to that,” said Rosa Gatti, an ESPN vice president. That rating, she said, “sounds small, but that's good in cable. It's the other factors that we look at: the college-educated, high-income audience that we attract.…We're pleased with our growth.…We believe that we can maintain the all sports programming format….”

ESPN has been losing money since its inception five years ago. But analysts say the network will break even by the fourth quarter of 1984 and turn a profit for the first time in 1985. Advertising revenues are projected to increase by nearly 50 percent this year to $60 million. And on Jan. 1, ESPN increased from 10 to 13 cents per subscriber the fee it charges its cable systems. In its first year ESPN charged only 4 cents and at one time even was forced to pay cable operators a small fee to entice them to carry the network. But with the increased fees and ad revenues, ESPN's economic future appears rosy. Furthermore, ABC acquired ESPN this year—for some $230 million, according to industry analysts. ABC's ownership will bring no major changes in ESPN's programming, Gatti said, but it will have an impact. “ABC will go to a site, maybe with the intent of taking up 15 minutes for ‘Wide World [of Sports]’.” she said. “We may be able to take an extended version of that. And ABC certainly has an extensive library of programs.”

Effect of New Competition on Networks

How have declining ratings in some sports, the oversaturation of sports coverage and competition from cable affected network sports coverage? Not as drastically as one may think, said Neal Pilson, president of CBS Sports. Cable and regional pay cable sports programming do not compete directly with the networks, Pilson said. “Cable has been a supplementary business,” he explained. Cable picks “up additional games, events, and packages …after the networks have made the initial choice. Economically, that's the way it needs to be.” Pilson said that cable television still does not reach enough homes8 to compete against the networks for the most attractive sporting events, such as the Olympics, major-league baseball and National Football League games. He predicted, moreover, that neither ESPN nor WTBS nor any other cable systems “now or in the future will have a sufficiently strong viewer base to really challenge the networks on a daily basis….”

Still, Pilson said, cable has had an impact on the over-the-air networks' sports programming. Occasionally sports events on cable compete directly with network sports broadcasts, and the large number of sporting events on the dial has led to what Pilson termed an “overall dilution factor.” This has resulted, he said, in a “softening of network ratings.” But the networks believe this situation is temporary. “This is not in any way going to destroy us.…All it does is require us to manage our business in a sane fashion and to watch our costs.” Pilson predicted that one way the networks will try to keep sports programming costs down is to pay less for broadcast rights.

Go to top

College Football Changes

Court's ‘Deregulation’ of Broadcast Rights

A SIGNIFICANT lowering of rights fees came this summer when the over-the-air and cable networks and syndicators signed new contracts for college football broadcast rights. From 1952 until this year, college football telecasting had been controlled by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the governing body of collegiate sports for some 850 colleges and universities. And until this year, the fees television paid for the right to broadcast college football games had been growing rapidly—from $16 million in 1975, for example, to $74.3 million in 1983. These costs “were growing faster than the TV package was improving,” said Chuck Howard, ABC's producer of college football. “The ratings would stay flat—good, but flat—from year to year, but the cost of [obtaining] rights would shoot up 100 percent, 180 percent [in the 1960s and early 1970s].…The reason we could afford to pay those incredible rights costs was that we could pass the burden along to the advertisers.”9

The fees CBS and ABC paid for college football games this season dropped to $22 million, down from $64 million last season. The reason for the drastic decrease was a ruling by the Supreme Court on June 27 that ended the NCAA's control of televised collegiate football. The court ruled 7-2 that the NCAA's broadcast contracts with ABC, CBS and its 1983 cable contract with WTBS constituted an illegal restraint on competition, violating federal antitrust laws.10 The ruling invalidated 1984–85 NCAA contracts with CBS, ABC and ESPN worth more than $145 million. Individual colleges, collegiate conferences and other groups of colleges (aside from the NCAA) were free to make their own deals with network, cable and local television, and with regional and national syndicators.

In July and August various groups and individual NCAA schools signed new national contracts for the 1984 season with ABC (for $12 million), CBS ($10 million), ESPN ($9.2 million) and WTBS ($8 million). Other contracts were signed with the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and five syndicators. Those contracts call for the televising of 166–196 games this year. Last season only 89 were aired on ABC, CBS and WTBS. The new lineup consists of:

Removing NCAA Control of TV Football

The NCAA has regulated many aspects of amateur collegiate sports since its founding in 1905. In 1951 the organization decided to regulate the televising of college games after it determined their attendance would not drop. The NCAA signed its first network contract in 1952 with NBC, and 12 games were broadcast nationally that year. For the next 25 years the NCAA signed one- and two-year exclusive contracts with the television networks, allowing the designated network to show specified games either nationally or regionally. The NCAA in 1977 signed its first four-year contract, with ABC, which had broadcast college football for the previous 11 years. From 1978 through 1981 ABC paid the NCAA an average of $30 million a year for exclusive broadcast rights to regular-season games. Then, in a break with tradition, the NCAA in May 1981 signed four-year contracts with ABC and CBS for network television and a two-year cable deal with WTBS. Meanwhile, pressure had been building to break the NCAA's monopoly on the television rights of college football—the organization did not regulate the televising of regular-season games of the other sports under its jurisdication, nor did it regulate post-season bowl games.

Warner-Amex Cable Communications filed an unsuccessful suit against ABC and the NCAA in 1980 in federal court in Columbus, Ohio, to try to televise Ohio State University football games. In a challenge to the NCAA's jurisdiction, the College Football Association (CFA), a group of 63 major football schools formed in 1977, signed a four-year, $180 million contract with NBC in July 1981. “When the NCAA learned the CFA was considering this offer, it threatened severe sanctions—including probation and exclusion from all NCAA meets and tournaments—for any CFA member participating in the NBC plan,” said Charles M. Neinas, CFA's executive director. “Facing that threat, a majority of CFA members declined the NBC offer.”11 Due to the NCAA pressure, the NBC pact was dissolved in December 1981. But the NCAA's reaction directly led to the lawsuit that resulted in the Supreme Court ruling.

The suit was filed Sept. 8, 1981, in the U.S. District Court in Oklahoma City by two of the nation's most successful collegiate football schools, the universities of Oklahoma and Georgia. A year later Judge Juan G. Burciaga ruled that the NCAA's control of college football television rights violated the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, which outlawed many monopolistic trade practices. Judge Burciaga concluded that the NCAA was acting as a “classic cartel” in the way it handled college football TV rights, with “an almost absolute control over the supply of college football which is made available to the networks, to television advertisers and ultimately to the viewing public….” The NCAA appealed the decision in May 1983, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver, agreed with Judge Burciaga's ruling and the Supreme Court affirmed it.12

Reactions to the Supreme Court Ruling

Reaction to the Supreme Court ruling has varied greatly among the parties affected. The NCAA, as expected, condemned the decision, saying that the increased number of televised games will hurt college football attendance and provide significantly less revenue to colleges, especially smaller schools that received funds from the television contracts but whose teams rarely appear on TV. Furthermore, NCAA officials said, the competition for television dollars will influence colleges to deal with their football programs as economic entities, rather than as extracurricular activities for student-athletes. Critics argue that the big college football programs, with their multi-million-dollar scholarships and six-figure coaches' salaries, already are little more than semiprofessional operations. Ron Powers wrote in Supertube that on some college teams student-athletes have “as much to do with ordinary campus life as an army of occupation has to do with the life of a conquered city.”

NCAA President John L. Toner told a congressional hearing that he sees a greater effort among some major institutions to “operate football as a business …with possibly less than necessary regard for the educational capacity and welfare of those athletes.” Charles E. Young, chancellor of the University of California at Los Angeles, agreed with that assessment. “This thrusts these programs and these institutions into the competitive forces of the American marketplace as if they are Fortune 500 companies.…This is a new, and I submit, dangerous state of affairs for intercollegiate athletics.”13

Network and cable officials generally were pleased with the Supreme Court decision, which for the 1984 season, at least, will enable them to show more games than ever before at considerably lower cost. Rosa Gatti of ESPN, for example, characterized that network's fall college schedule as “the most attractive live college football package ever on the cable.” The lower rights fees this year came about because of “multiple sellers in the marketplace,” said Neal Pilson of CBS. “The price was reduced to reflect a plethora of opportunity. When supply goes up and demand is constant, price goes down.”

Pilson went on to say, however, that the drop in television revenue for the colleges this year is “an abberation” because the Supreme Court decision was made about two months before the season opened. “It didn't give time for everybody to get things sorted out for the rights to be negotiated and the sales to be made.” In the long run, the decision will benefit colleges, Pilson said, “because many more of them will get television opportunities.” He compared college football's future to college basketball's experience with television. “The total money being paid for college basketball, the total number of games being played on television, the total viewing audience [are all] the greatest in history,” Pilson said.

Role of the College Football Association

While the networks have been generally pleased with the turn of events, independent local stations and some cable networks have been critical of the College Football Association. The ruling enabled the CFA to sign rights agreements. Within a month of the decision, ABC and ESPN purchased packages of games from the CFA, whose membership is made up of most of the major football powers. CFA has imposed some restrictions on the televising of these games, including limiting the number of times one team may appear on national or regional television.

The CFA contract with ABC gives that network exclusive rights to all CFA games on Saturdays from 3:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. The ESPN contract provides for exclusive CFA games from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. The 61 CFA member schools may not sell their games to other networks during those time periods. In addition, the question of which network, if any, has the right to televise games involving a CFA team and a non-CFA team has not been ironed out.14 “In our opinion, all that the CFA has done is just replace the NCAA,” said Robert Wussler of WTBS. “It is still highly restrictive, in some instances even more restrictive” than was the NCAA.

“CFA essentially is replicating largely the behavior of the NCAA, which was found to be illegal by the Supreme Court,” said Jim Hedlund, vice president for government relations for the Association of Independent Television Stations. Under previous NCAA network contracts local independents (and network affiliates) were not permitted to broadcast NCAA-member college football games. Independents believed that the Supreme Court ruling would give them opportunities to sign up games of local and regional interest. What has happened is that restrictions in CFA and several conference TV contracts severely limit the choices given to independents.

Go to top

Baseball and Pay Tv

Evolution of Network Baseball Telecasts

RED BARBER, the Brooklyn Dodgers radio announcer, made broadcasting history on Aug. 26, 1939, during the first game of a Dodgers-Cincinnati Reds doubleheader in Brooklyn. Sitting in the stands in the second deck at old Ebbets Field, Barber provided the play-by-play for the first televised major-league baseball game. A handful of TV receivers picked up the signal in the New York area over the NBC network. Not long after that the initial experimental TV broadcast, the development of television was interrupted for nearly a decade by World War II. It wasn't until the 1947 New York Yankees-Brooklyn Dodgers World Series that baseball returned to the screen. CBS, NBC and the DuMont networks broadcast those games to an audience of only about three million. The figure was low mainly because the networks televised games only in the cities of New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Schenectady.15 But within a few years, television spread across the nation and began attracting a huge viewing audiences.

ABC began the first regularly scheduled national series of baseball telecasts on June 6, 1953. On that day Dizzy Dean, the folksy former St. Louis Cardinals pitcher, began announcing the weekly Saturday afternoon “Game of the Week.” Even though major-league baseball did not permit the weekly game to be broadcast in cities with big-league teams, the show soon became very popular. By the end of the 1953 season, Ron Powers wrote, the “Game of the Week” had “an impressive 11.4 national rating—and an even more astonishing 51 percent share of sets in use on Saturday afternoons.”16 The “Game of the Week” went to CBS in 1955, and stayed on the air until 1964.

Two decades ago organized baseball had no concerted television policy.17 Each team was permitted to sell local or regional telecasting rights. In 1964, TV revenues ranged from the New York Yankees' $1.2 million to the estimated $300,000 taken in by the Kansas City Athletics. After the demise of the “Game of the Week” that year, the three networks provided various types of nationally televised baseball packages. NBC had begun a weekend telecast of its own in 1963, paying teams about $100,000 each for the right to broadcast the games nationally. In 1965 ABC signed a $12.2 million deal with 18 big-league clubs to broadcast games on 25 Saturdays and two holidays. Only the cities of the home and visiting teams were blacked out. The Yankees had a separate national TV deal that year with CBS, which owned 80 percent of the team. NBC retained control over World Series, All-Star and playoff game telecasts until 1976 when ABC signed a $94 million, four-year contract with the major leagues. The contract gave ABC rights to broadcast Monday night games, and (in alternate years) the World Series, All-Star Games and division playoffs.

Today, the 26 major-league ball clubs are still free to deal with local stations and regional pay television networks. The teams picked up some $105 million in local broadcasting rights for the 1984 season, according to Broadcasting magazine. As was the case 20 years ago, the Yankees led in local TV revenue ($11.7 million). The Seattle Mariners received the lowest amount ($1.4 million). The current network contract is a six-year, $1.2 billion deal signed last year with ABC and NBC. “That pact, covering the six years from 1984 through 1989, will triple network broadcast rights payments [to some $268 million] this year,” Broadcasting noted.18 NBC will pay some $575 million and ABC about $625 million.

This year NBC will have telecast 32 regular-season games (mostly on Saturday afternoons) as well as the World Series. The average 30-second commercial sells for about $35,000 on NBC's regular-season games and for $250,000 for the World Series. For its part, ABC will have carried 11 regular-season prime-time weeknight games, as well as the All-Star Game and the two best-of-five league playoff series. Thirty-second commercials on ABC weeknight games cost between $60,000 and $70,000; the top price for playoff commercials will be about $130,000 for 30 seconds.

The new contract forbids teams from airing games on local stations at the same times the nationally televised Saturday games are broadcast. “If we have an NBC game on a Saturday afternoon, none of our clubs are allowed to televise locally prior to 4 p.m., Eastern time,” said Bryan Burns, director of broadcasting for major-league baseball. When NBC televises a doubleheader, which it does about four times a year, local stations are not permitted to broadcast games until after 7 p.m., Burns said. That policy has done “enormous damage to the independent stations” that carry local teams, said Jim Hedlund of the Association of Independent Television Stations.

Major-league baseball officials have voiced concerns about the large number of games broadcast by so-called “Superstations”—WTBS in Atlanta, WGN in Chicago and WOR in New York. These are local stations whose programs are carried nationwide by cable. WTBS will show 150 of the 162 Braves games this year; WGN will carry 149 Cubs games; WOR will broadcast 90 Mets contests. “It's hard for me to imagine that the Superstations exporting a game …around the country helps anybody's attendance,” Burns said.

Robert Wussler, president of WTBS, denied that cable baseball broadcasts have hurt baseball attendance or network ratings. “Major- and minor-league baseball19 attendance have been on a steady rise,” he said. Wussler added that televising nearly all of the Braves games nationally gets more people interested in the team and in baseball generally. Attendance in Atlanta has tripled since 1981, he said. Wussler credits at least part of that attendance rise to the fact that the Braves have been successful on the field. “If you put bad quality on the field and you televise it, you're not going to do your gate any good. But if you put a good team on the field and you televise it, I think you can help your team.”

Big Change Wrought by Regional Pay Networks

The biggest change in baseball broadcasting in recent years has been the widespread introduction of regional pay cable networks. These sports networks featuring live coverage of big-league games are offered regionally on a limited number of cable systems. This coverage is provided the viewer for a monthly fee of $8 to $12. These networks also generally broadcast professional basketball, hockey and other sports events. Five regional pay networks began operations this year, bringing to 19 the number of baseball teams that can be seen on pay cable.20 Although the industry still is in its early stages, analysts believe regional pay networks eventually will gain an important, if limited, share of the televised sports market. Industry sources say that to make money, regional pay networks need to sign up between 25 and 30 percent of all cable subscribers. “It's a segmented service …that is in many cases built on two-pay or three-pay homes, meaning that [subscribers] generally will have a movie service as a foundation and sports becomes their second or third choice,” said cable TV analyst Alan Cole-Ford. Those who subscribe to regional pay networks, Cole-Ford said, are in “the middle and upper reaches of the discretionary income audience, and there's a finite limit as to how well you can penetrate that [market].”

The concept of regional sports pay TV originated in 1969 when the Madison Square Garden Sports Network began operations in the New York metropolitan area. The network, which now reaches some 1.6 million households, features professional hockey, basketball and soccer, as well as some non-sports shows. Another New York area regional network, SportsChannel, went on the air in 1979, offering New York Yankees and Mets baseball games, as well as professional hockey and basketball. PRISM, one of three regional pay services that shows a nearly equal mix of sports and movies, has been in operation in the Philadelphia area since 1976. PRISM carries games of the Philadelphia professional baseball, basketball and hockey teams to some 375,000 cable viewers.

Home Team Sports (HTS), owned by Group W. Satellite Communications, is one of the regional pay networks that began operating this year. HTS, which has signed long-term contracts with the Baltimore Orioles baseball club, the Washington Bullets basketball team and the Washington Capitals hockey team, is being offered to 1.9 million cable subscribers in Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, most of North Carolina and portions of West Virginia and Pennsylvania. This year HTS will show 55 home and 25 road games of the Orioles. It also plans to broadcast college football and college basketball and other sports-related programming, including call-in shows. The remainder of its 24-hour broadcast day consists of Home Team Sports Wire, a videotex service that gives scheduling information and regional sports news. HTS and other regional pay networks also pick up each others' games to fill out their schedules.

The Future: Dividing Up the TV Spectrum

What effect has the competition from pay regional networks had on the sports coverage of cable stations, local independents and the over-the-air networks? Industry insiders concede that the new outlets represent competition for the networks. But it appears as if each of the various types of sports broadcasting is carving out its own segment of the audience. “I don't expect the regional pay networks to compete directly with the national networks,” said Neal Pilson of CBS. “We have a different audience. Regional pay guys are dependent upon local fan interest.…That's a different concept than what we put on on Saturday or Sunday afternoon. We're not putting on local teams; we're putting on for the most part games with national interest.” Robert Wussler of WTBS had a similar assessment. “Sure, it's competition,” he said. “But …we really do two different things. We broadcast games nationally.”

Rosa Gatti of ESPN said the pay regionals “are going after a different [type of] event. With pay TV, you have to be willing to pay for those pay television rights. We don't even get involved in the bidding for those rights because we think is is not suitable for basic cable.” Another factor, Gatti said, is the fact that cable subscribers do not have to pay extra monthly fees to receive ESPN. “They may not want to pay that extra $10 or $20,” she said. “And they may say, ‘Well, I want to watch sports, but I'm not going to pay for it.’ They'll turn to ESPN.” Local independents are more concerned with competition from the networks than with the impact of regional pay networks.

In sum, sports broadcasting is experiencing what Alan Cole-Ford termed an “evolution in the distribution sequence.” This evolution, he said, can be compared to what has happened with movies in the last decade with the rapidly growing popularity of pay TV and videocassette recorders. “Sequential distribution shuffles itself to accommodate all those outlets,” Cole-Ford said. In the case of sports broadcasting, it is predicted that the biggest professional sports contests will continue on the over-the-air networks, that the regional pay networks will show college and professional events of interest to local audiences, and that the cable networks and local independents will fill in with prime-time and weekend events the networks do not choose to televise. “Sports will continue to be an important part of television,” Jim Zrake of the USA Network predicted. “It's live television; it's exciting; it's escapism. It's all the things that people enjoy.”

Go to top

Bibliography

Books

Barber, Red, The Broadcasters, Dial Press, 1970.

Barnouw, Eric, Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television, Oxford University Press, 1975.

Durso, Joseph, The All-American Dollar: The Big Business of Sports, Houghton Mifflin, 1971.

Lasch, Christopher, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, Norton, 1978.

Novak, Michael, The Joy of Sports: End Zones, Bases, Baskets, Balls, and the Consecration of the American Spirit, Basic Books, 1976.

Patton, Phil, Razzle-Dazzle: The Curious Marriage of Television and Professional Football, Dial, 1984.

Powers, Ron, Supertube: The Rise of Television Sports, Coward-McGann, 1984

Wicklein, John, Electronic Nightmare, Viking, 1981.

Articles

Broadcasting, selected issues.

Cable Television Business, selected issues.

Cable Vision, selected issues.

Frank, Allan Dodds, “The USFL Meets the Sophomore Jinx,” Forbes, Feb. 13, 1984.

Gerlach, Larry, “Telecommunications and Sports,” Vital Speeches of the Day, March 15, 1984.

Pay TV Sports (published by Paul Kagan Associates), selected issues.

Taaffe, William, “The Dawn of a New Era,” Sports Illustrated, April 2, 1984.

“The NCAA's Goal-Line Stand on TV Rights,” Business Week, April 9, 1984.

Vance, N. Scott, “NCAA Weighs Plan to Divvy Up Money from a TV-Rich Basketball Tournament,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb. 29, 1984.

Reports and Studies

Editorial Research Reports: “Cable TV's Future,” 1982 Vol. II, p. 717; “Television in the Eighties,” 1980 Vol. I, p. 325; “Sports on Television,” 1964 Vol. II, p. 763.

National Cable Television Association, “Cable Television Developments,” June 1984; “Satellite Services Report,” May 1984.

Go to top

Footnotes

[1] Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism (1978), p. 121.

[2] Michael Novak, The Joy of Sports (1976), p. 25.

[3] Ron Powers, Supertube (1984), p. 273.

[4] Cole-Ford and others quoted in this report were interviewed by the author, unless otherwise indicated.

[5] Ted Turner, the owner of WTBS, owns the Hawks and also the Atlanta Braves of major-league baseball.

[6] The Boston Celtics, Chicago Bulls, Dallas Mavericks. Denver Nuggets, Detroit Pistons, Houston Rockets, Los Angeles Lakers, Milwaukee Bucks, New Jersey Nets. New York Knicks. Philadelphia 76ers. Phoenix Suns, San Antonio Spurs, Seattle Supersonics, Washington Bullets.

[7] A 2.0 rating indicates that 2 percent of the nation's 83.8 million television households tuned in to a particular event.

[8] According to Paul Kagan Associates, 31.75 million U.S. television households 138 percent) subscribe to cable television.

[9] Quoted by Ron Powers, op. cit., p. 222.

[10] Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority: “By restraining the quantity of television rights available for sale, the challenged practices create a limitation on output; our cases have held that such limitations are unreasonable restraints of trade.”

[11] Congressional testimony, July 31, 1984, before the House Energy and Commerce Cummittee's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. The subcommittee was investigating the impact of the Supreme Court's decision.

[12] Two similar lawsuits, filed in September 1981 by the University of Texas at Austin and the CFA in U.S. District Court in Austin, and in August 1982 by Cox Broadcasting. ABC and NBC in Superior Court in Fulton County, Ga., were unsuccessful.

[13] Toner and Young testified July 31, 1984, before the House Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

[14] The issue is now before the courts. The Pacific-10 and the Big 10 conferences have filed suit in federal court against the CFA, ABC, ESPN and the universities of Notre Dame and Nebraska over CFA's refusal to allow the UCLA-Nebraska and Southern California-Notre Dame games to be televised. Notre Dame and Nebraska are CFA members; UCLA and USC are in the Pac-10. CBS has a contract with the Big 10 and Pac-10; games involving Nebraska of the Big 8 Conference and independent Notre Dame come under the CFA's contract with ABC and ESPN.

[15] See Powers, op. cit., pp. 52–64.

[16] Ibid., p. 74.

[17] See “Sports on Television,” E.R.R., 1964 Vol. II, pp. 761–189.

[18] “New TV Contracts Push Baseball Rights to $268 Million.” Broadcasting, Feb. 27, 1984, p. 45.

[19] There is no doubt that television has had an enormously negative impact on minor-league baseball. In 1949 there were 59 minor leagues with teams in more than 400 cities in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Attendance averaged about 42 million in the late 1940s. With the advent of television, the number of leagues fell to 50 in 1959, to 28 in 1969 and to 17 today. Although it has made gains in the last several years, minor-league attendance today is a shadow of what it was four decades ago. In 1983 the minors attracted 18.6 million paying customers, nearly a million more than the year before. Today 164 minor-league teams remain.

[20] The teams without pay TV contracts are: the Seattle Mariners, Cleveland Indians, Atlanta Braves, Chicago Cubs, San Francisco Giants, Oakland A's and Montreal Expos.

Go to top

Special Focus

Abc's Olympic Ratings

According to ABC, more than 180 million Americans, representing 90 percent of the nation's households, tuned in sometime during the 16 days of coverage of the Los Angeles Olympic Games, July 28–Aug. 12. This was the most U.S. viewers ever to watch any event on television. During that time ABC drew a larger audience than NBC and CBS combined, according to estimates by A. C. Nielsen Co. Nielsen ratings showed that an average of 45 percent of all television households tuned in to the Olympics during ABC's prime-time coverage. ABC announced that 97 million Americans watched the Aug. 12 closing ceremonies, the highest-rated event of the 16 days of Olympic coverage.

Sports on Cable

On a day chosen at random, Tuesday, Aug. 14, the following sporting events were broadcast nationwide on cable television:

Baseball's Broadcast Bonanza

Regional Pay Cable Sports Networks

Controlling the Game

It's no secret that television has an important voice in the scheduling of games it broadcasts, especially the big events such as the Super Bowl and World Series. The idea is to show these popular contests in prime time or on weekends to get the largest audience possible.

The performance of the Chicago Cubs this year has challenged the networks' power of scheduling. The Cubs, currently on top in the National League East, play in Wrigley Field, the only big-league park without lights. Since baseball's TV contract provides for night games in the divisional playoffs, some of the 26 owners (who share in the TV money) wanted to install temporary lights at Wrigley or move the games to a lighted stadium.

But Commissioner Bowie Kuhn ruled Aug. 30 that if the Cubs win the NL East, the first two games will be played—not at night as now scheduled—but during the day at Wrigley Field. The World Series, if the Cubs get in, will open at night in the American League city. Games 3, 4 and 5 will be held at Wrigley Field. “For once, profits and Nielsen ratings lost,” Washington Post columnist Thomas Boswell wrote of Kuhn's decision. “Baseball won.”

Go to top