This Sports Broadcast Lacked True Star Appeal

With the exception of “Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman,” stupid shows usually get bad TV ratings. And forgetting “Family Matters” for a moment, shows with bad actors quite often suffer in the Nielsens, too.

That could explain the poor performance of the All-Star game on ABC. It was boring and full of bad actors.

With a 14.7 overnight rating, down a full point from last year’s game on NBC and off nearly six points from the last time ABC did it in 1988, major-league baseball flunked its first post-strike test of national TV interest.

It’s hard to have an All-Star game without all-stars, and that’s basically the position in which baseball finds itself. Casual fans, who make the difference between ho-hum and high-ho TV ratings for games such as this, don’t even know who plays for whom anymore.

There hadn’t been a major-league game on national TV for more than 10 months, and let’s face it, who were those guys, anyway? When did Mickey Morandini become an All-Star, for example? And Denny Neagle? Give me a break!

These guys actually played.

Warren Spahn didn’t even get into the 1959 All-Star Game. Bob Lemon and Ted Williams made the 1953 squad, but they rode the pine all day, too. Bill Dickey was an unused reserve on the 1943 American League team, and Hank Greenberg and Wes Farrell sat on the A.L. bench for the entire 1937 game.

Heard of any of them?

The point is not that these new all-stars don’t deserve recognition. The point is, they don’t get any, and it’s baseball’s fault. When you have a shortened season following no World Series after a half season, it’s easy to lose track.

Notes

Speaking of bad actors, the highlight of the All-Star introductions was the chorus of boos that greeted Barry Bonds. And speaking of singing, when it came time for the national anthem, Lyle Lovett made me yearn for Kathie Lee Gifford, and that’s scary….

Don Mattingly had the best line of the broadcast on a Nike commercial when he said: “I believe if Shoeless Joe Jackson was still playing today, he’d have a shoe contract.”… The Ballpark in Arlington is more photogenic than Randy Johnson, bless his wild soul. … The biggest disappointment of the game was that demonstrative Carlos Perez didn’t strike out a batter. What a sight that would have been. …

Brent Musburger will be joined by Lewis Johnson, Mark Jones, Carol Lewis, Craig Masback and Dwight Stones as commentators for the ABC and ESPN coverage fo the World Track and Field Championships Aug. 5-13. ESPN and ESPN2 will have weekday coverage and ABC will do the two weekends. Coverage will be tape delayed on a same-day basis….

Neal Pilson, who presided over the rise and fall of CBS Sports, believes the network is “not far from a turnaround.”

“In prime time, all it’ll take is one or two big hits,” said Pilson, who was released by CBS last year and now operates his own television consulting business in New York. “It’s a very volatile business, subject to rapid change. Losing the NFL, while unfortunate, is a separate issue from their prime time problems, and they can solve that without the NFL.”

Pilson, president of CBS Sports during the network’s four-year baseball experiment and its chief officer when it lost football to Fox, said affiliate problems in the wake of the football fiasco meant little in terms of ratings.

“One or two tenths of a point nationwide,” he said. “Television remains a business of hits, and if ‘Chicago Hope’ and ‘E.R.’ had been reversed, CBS would be in reasonably good shape.”

Will CBS get football back?

“If a network wants a property,” Pilson said, “it can get it.”