Bowling Video--Chris Schenkel's Tearful Final PBA Telecast

Bowling Quote--When Does a PBA Player's Televised Conduct Become Inexcusable?

"I am tremendously impressed by Pete Weber's accomplishment in winning his record-breaking fifth U.S. Open title at the age of 49, and I don't have a major problem with his antics along the way and afterward. But for those of who say they were okay because they brought more attention to a sport dying from the lack of it, I wonder if there are limits to their 'ends justify the means' rationalization. That is, can they think of anything a player might say or do during a televised tournament that's beyond good taste or sportsmanship but falls short of felonious criminality of which they WOULDN'T approve, even if it brought more attention and money to professional bowling?


I guess I just have my reservations about this "anything that brings more attention to bowling" philosophy that I'm hearing from so many quarters in the wake of PDW's latest televised appearance. Why the next thing you know, PBA telecasts will feature scantily clad cheerleaders and blaring vevuzelas. Oh, wait...they already have." ~ Steve Curless

Is This the Future of PBA Telecasts?

I posted an entry the other day about PBA publicist and Xtra Frame announcer Mike Jakubowski's recent column on pba.com. In that column, Mr. Jakuboswki argued that bowling "purists" who want PBA telecasts on ESPN to faithfully mimic the staid ABC telecasts of yesteryear should come to their senses and realize that the PBA needs to keep up with the times and its younger demographic if it's going to survive much less flourish in an age of "computers, video games, cell phones, texting, 500 television channels and the Internet."

He cited contemporary examples of bleating vuvuzelas at NHL playoffs, pounded thundersticks behind the backboards at NBA playoffs, "racing sausages" and females sporting foam fingers and rally hats at MLB games, "thumping music" in many sports venues, and the slick promotional silliness of professional wrestling as laudable examples of ways to draw and keep more fans and suggested that the PBA needs to follow in their footsteps if it's to survive.

Well, maybe he's right, and the collegiate bowling program videos below, referred to me by frequent commenter Kerry, may be a foretaste of where PBA telecasts are headed. While you're watching, be sure to check out that Michael Fagan guy.

What do you think? Is this the direction in which the PBA should take its telecasts?

Mike J. Laneside Thinks PBA Telecasts Need to Change With the Times

"Many other professional sports combine entertainment elements within the sporting event, why can’t professional bowling?"

--Mike J. Laneside

PBA Xtra Frame's outstanding bowling announcer Mike Jakubowski (aka Mike J. Laneside) posted an article yesterday on the pba.com website that should provoke a lot of thought among bowling fans. It certainly has in me.

In his article, Is a Little Fun Really the End of the World?, Mr. Jakubowski argues that professional bowling needs to change with the times and do what's necessary to appeal to today's audience. Thus, bowling "purists" need to quit living in the somber Chris Schenkel style 60's and 70's of PBA telecasts and lighten up and embrace the vuvuzulas, blaring music, cheerleaders, and smack-talking, in-your-face competition of the season-ending Dick Weber PBA Playoffs of the modern era.

Here are some key passages from his article:

"Only a very small percentage of the audience in each sport sits in their seats the entire game or watches the entire telecast at home, watching every nuance, digesting every statistic, interpreting every announcer utterance. A very small percentage, the rest are there to have fun...The world of sports entertainment has changed by leaps and bounds over the last generation, while some professional bowling fans cling to the notion that presenting professional bowling the exact same way it was presented 30 or 40 years ago can engage a new generation of fans brought up on computers, video games, cell phones, texting, 500 television channels and the Internet – and most importantly, sponsors to support the sport. What other sport is presented the exact same way it was presented 30 or 40 years ago?...Pro bowling is starting to resemble professional wrestling? Good, it’s about time. I will take their television ratings, their merchandising outlets, their live audiences, their pay-per-view revenue and their sponsorship opportunities...Professional bowling never was, and never will be professional tennis or professional golf; no matter how desperately some bowlers or fans want it to be. Selling those models to a public that doesn’t buy it will never, ever work. Ever. No matter how often ‘purists’ post to Facebook or opine on message boards...This is the new world of instant social networking, smart phones and reality television. Instead of pining for something we can never be, how about we lean into what we really are?"

If you've been reading this blog for awhile, you know that I've been pretty critical of the PBA's attempts to make its bowling telecasts more "entertaining." I was especially displeased with its coverage of the "Bottlegate" incident and with the vuvuzelas and the Dick's antics in the Dick Weber PBA Playoffs, and I expressed the hope that the PBA wouldn't try to turn its telecasts into the "bowling equivalent of Wrestlemania."

Yet, judging by Mike J's column, that's exactly where the PBA may be headed because that's where it thinks today's fans and professional bowling's future appears to be if it's to have any future at all.

How do you feel about this? Does Mike J have a point? Do you think the PBA can stay alive and perhaps even become more prosperous by making itself more appealing to a broader demographic less interested in bowling per se than in being entertained, and how far in this direction do you think it can and should go before it goes too far to hold your interest?

I'm going to give the matter more thought and read what others have to say about it. Then I'll post more on the topic in an upcoming entry.

Bowling Quote of the Day--PBA Telecasts Getting Worse

"Does anyone else find it ironic that, despite 40 years of amazing technological advances in the world of broadcast electronics, the PBA TV show today doesn't look half as good as it did 40 years ago? This decline in program quality is in stark contrast to today's football or baseball broadcasts, which do look far better than they did in earlier decades. Look at old clips of the PBA on YouTube and, faded as they may be, they still look far more professional than today's shaky, out-of-focus, bowler-blocks-your-view-of-the-pins broadcast."

--David A. Mills, commenting in pbaforum.com

Should and Could the PBA Find Another TV Network?

"ESPN is awful... can't believe you wouldn't stick around long enough to see his reaction after he threw his last ball... For his first title you cut to commercial, that's brutal. No wonder bowling can't seem to gain a big fan-base let alone bigger sponsorship, even ESPN didn't see that as a broadcast worthy moment."
--Patti, commenting on PBA website

I wasn't able to watch yesterday's PBA title match live the way I usually do. But I recorded it with my DVR and watched it soon afterward. The final game finished later than it was supposed to, I set my DVR to record for only the 90 minutes for which the show was scheduled, and so I missed the very end of the tournament.

But I've since read that, because the program ran over its allotted time, ESPN didn't show the final frame or allow fans to see Brian Kretzer react to his victory. A lot of people on the PBA website and presumably elsewhere are angry about that. Here's what one disgruntled person named Michael wrote:

"Both ESPN and the PBA need to decide once and for all what they want to do. They run over so much so often - it is ridiculous. However so does Monday Night RAW for WWE. What does USA do? They show it til the end. 11:05, 11:06, 11:10pm, doesn't matter. We see the main event in full and that is for wrestling. Bowling seems to get disrespected because even the network doesn't respect it. If the PBA doesn't have an 'over-run' clause in their contract with ESPN, I'd say ditch ESPN and put the PBA on Spike or USA or something.

ESPN is a disgrace and the PBA should sue them if possible for damaging the PBA product week-in and week-out."

I agree with Patti and Michael that ESPN sure doesn't seem to give bowling the respect it gives other sports it carries and that this can't be good for the PBA. However, I'm not sure the PBA could find any other network to carry it and do a better job with it than ESPN does.

Would USA take it on, or Spike? And if either of them would, would they attract more viewers than THE sports network, ESPN? What do you think?

How Can We Make PBA Telecasts More Successful?

I'm having second thoughts about something I posted at the end of my entry yesterday. I wrote: "In my next post, I have a proposal to make about how the majority of televised finals might best be conducted in the future." After giving it more thought, I'm not sure my idea is such a good one. But I want to throw it out here anyway. Maybe you can tweak it or come up with a better idea for making the PBA telecasts draw a larger viewing audience without compromising the integrity of bowling or the PBA.

First of all, let me explain that I personally like the old five person stepladder format the best. That is, the top five finishers after round-robin match play advance to the TV finals, #5 bowls #4 in the first match, the winner bowls #3, and so forth. However, it seems that we're now limited to seeing three matches rather than four and that ESPN and/or the PBA doesn't want to use the stepladder format all the time.

So what exciting alternatives might there be? I have to admit that I enjoyed yesterday's eliminator format in which the first match featured all four contestants bowling a game, with the low man going out after the first match, the low man of the remaining three bowlers being eliminated after the second match, and the last two bowlers vying for the title in the third and final match.

I liked the fact that all the bowlers were competing on the same set of conditions at the same time instead of some having to sit out of the competition while others competed and broke down the lanes in unpredictable ways. I think this was a truer test of ALL the bowlers' ability to deal with the lane conditions throughout the telecast. And it seemed to me that having all four compete at the outset and the remaining three compete in the second match made things a little faster-paced and more exciting for the typical viewer than a series of traditional one-on-one matches would be.

However, I'm still partial to round-robin match play for determining who makes it into the telecasts. This allows more bowlers to remain in the competition for a longer time and to either fade toward the end or figure things out and come on strong after a weak start to move way up in the standings or even make the telecast. It also rewards bowlers for being consistently good throughout match play. In other words, it encourages bowlers to keep bowling their best at all times instead of compiling big leads in "eliminator" matches and then coasting the rest of the way, or getting down in a match and giving up because they know they're going to be eliminated after one three-game match instead of being able to rebound from it in later matches.

But round-robin match play should produce rankings or seedings going into a telecast. That is, there's a bowler with the highest pinfall after match play, second highest pinfall, and so on down to fourth place. So how do you combine an eliminator format with one that ranks and rewards bowlers according to how many pins they knocked down in match play? Obviously, if you just throw everybody into the televised matches and don't give the higher ranked or seeded bowlers some kind of advantage for having knocked down more pins in match play than the lower seeded bowlers, the highest seeded bowler could be eliminated after the first match, and that wouldn't be fair. So, how do you make things fair?

Well, I'm not sure you could make them completely fair, but one possibility would be to handicap bowlers by rank. The first seeded bowler could have, say, 20 pins added to his score, second seed 10 pins, third seed five pins, and fourth seed zero pins. This way the bowlers get rewarded or punished for how they did in match play and are encouraged to do their very best throughout match play. Furthermore, I would add one other element to the mix.

I believe that PBA Tour championships should be decided by more than just one game. I think if you really want to know who the best bowler is on a particular Sunday or, at least, who bowled best that day, you should use more than one game to determine it. For instance, Chris Barnes lost a couple of major tournaments recently to opponents--Kelly Kulick and Walter Ray Williams--who bowled blockbuster single games against him in the title match. But suppose Barnes had more of a chance to utilize his superior skills to make adjustments and overcome those single big games shot against him the way he did against Wes Malott in the Masters where he bowled 300 in the final game to overcome a 40+ point deficit after two games? That was tremendously exciting, and it showcased Barnes' ability to make adjustments.

Why not take the remaining two bowlers in a televised eliminator format and use their three game total pinfall to determine who wins the title? So, for example, in yesterday's case, the bowler with the highest three game series between Mark Scroggings and Brian Kretzer would have won the championship. This would have encouraged both players to bowl their best all three games, and it would have been a truer test of who bowled best that day than any one game can provide.

I know this sounds a little complicated. But it has the virtues of round-robin match play, rewarding TV finalists according to their overall performance during match play, making the TV finals more exciting to the typical viewer, allowing or forcing all the players to deal with the same conditions, and being the truest test of who bowled best that day.

What do you think of my proposal? If you don't like it, do you have any better ideas for making the telecasts more popular with fans while still fair to the players?