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.

Dick Allen Lives Up to His New First Name in Season Ending Dick Weber PBA Playoff Finals

"Sometimes the villain dresses in white."

--Dick Allen

Yesterday's televised finals of the Dick Weber PBA Playoffs marked the end of the 2010-2011 PBA Tour season. I'm always sorry to see the season come to a close. But this year I'm especially sorry that it ended with the obnoxious blaring of vuvuzelas and a victory by a guy who lived up to his four-letter first name over the guy I wanted to win.

Even though I don't like his bowling style, I respect Dick Allen's bowling skill. I even respect the fact that when Randy Pedersen asked him after the match how he felt about Chris Barnes' two consecutive pocket 7-10's late in the second game, he told the truth. He said he loved it because it gave him the chance he needed to sow up the match.

What I didn't respect were his comments several weeks ago in the tournament when he crowed about ending Walter Ray's chances of extending his record string of consecutive years of winning at least one title, and his whole demeanor yesterday, including his taunting stare at Chris Barnes at one point in the match as though it were Wrestlemania instead of professional bowling, and his deliberately throwing his fill ball in the tenth frame off the wrong foot and striking after winning the first game, and then saying, "I like salt, especially in a wound."

To me, Dick Allen habitually acts like an obnoxious jerk. I don't know if he does it on purpose just to stir up himself and everyone else, or if it's just the way he is. But one thing's for sure. Whenever he bowls, I'll be rooting for the other guy (or gal).

I did chuckle at something Randy Pedersen said during the telecast. He said that Allen liked to brag about beating Chris Barnes ten years ago in a PBA regional, and that Barnes had responded by saying, "For Ritchie, that was the greatest moment of his life. For me, it was just a warm up for the next tournament." Well, I guess Allen now has a new "greatest moment" to brag about.

Random Thoughts

I wasn't thrilled with the whole format of this tournament. First of all, arbitrarily placing the bowlers in regions and then allowing only the winners of each region to progress to the final few weeks of televised play kept some of the best players out of the proceedings and made Sunday's finals a pretty lackluster affair. I've always liked to see formats which allow the proverbial cream to rise to the top, and it seems to me that round robin match play amongst the top qualifiers followed by a stepladder finals is the best way of getting the finest bowlers into the finals while still meeting the time constraints of television. On the other hand, without the format of this tournament, guys like Randy Weiss might well never have had the chance to make it to the finals and there's something to be said for giving guys like him a chance they don't ordinarily receive, and Allen and Barnes bowled well enough that they might very well have made it anyway.

A good thing about making the title match two games instead of just one is that it affords the best player that day a better chance of winning the title than if the match is decided by only one game. In one game, someone can get a good or bad break or two and win or lose more because of that than anything else, whereas two games makes it more likely that the person who actually performs better will win. But that's only if the match is decided by total pins. That's not how yesterday's title would have been decided if Allen and Barnes had won a game apiece, which they very easily could have. The match and title would then have been awarded to the guy who got the highest count on one ball in a sudden death rolloff, where, once again, a good or bad break rather than quality of performance might well have determined the outcome. So, I say if you're going to have the top two bowl a two-game match for the title, let total pins decide the winner.

One Thoughtful Commentator

A habitually thoughtful commentator had this to say in Pba.com's PBA Forum about Sunday's telecast:

"I think bowling should always be the most memorable part of a show, with individual bowling personalities behind that. But with this most recent broadcast, I almost don't remember the matches because there were so many distractions that took away from that. Here is what most comes to mind when I think of this last show from most memorable to least:

Vuvuzelas

The over-kill of shots of the purposely placed 'hotties'

Poor camera work

Allen's personality

The recap of the season

And oh yeah, there was bowling and the matches themselves

Bowling should always be the most memorable part of the show and any gimmicks come after that. It's one thing for bowlers to have personality on the show-I think that's a good thing, but the sport and the bowling itself needs to maintain decorum and a professional feel. We are already struggling with the perception people have of bowling, and this show didn't help that in my opinion."

You can read Bill Vint's Pba.com story on the telecast here. And if you missed yesterday's televised finals, I'll post videos of them in a future entry as soon as they become available online.

Vuvuzelas Almost Ruin Dick Weber PBA Playoffs

I guess I'll say congratulations to Dick Allen for winning the Dick Weber PBA Playoffs title today. I say "I guess," because I'm not Mr. Allen's biggest fan, and after today, I'm even less of one. However, he bowled well to make it into the finals, and he bowled well enough to win today.

But something else happened on the telecast today that I hope never happens again. In fact, if it does, I'll turn off the TV and do something else. People in the stands were blowing vuvuzelas. It sounded like a soccer match instead of a PBA telecast. One reason I don't like soccer is the fans blowing those horns from hell. I detest those horns and could not believe that some lamebrain from the PBA would say, "Hey, I've got a bright idea that will bring more fans to the telecast! We'll hand out vuvuzelas to the fans and let them go hog wild blowing them."

That guy should be fired. Well, maybe not fired, but his or her future 'bright ideas' should be regarded with extreme skepticism unless they're a whole lot brighter than the one that cursed the telecast today and almost sent me reaching for the medicine cabinet for a Bayer aspirin (one of the show's sponsors).

Here are what some commenters on Facebook had to say about those wretched horns on the PBA Facebook page:

"And people wonder why bowling isn't taken seriously..."

"you have got to be kidding me."

"It's gonna be a circus....bad idea...won't even watch it."

"Okay, I'll turn on closed captioning and turn the sound off."

"Terrible idea. But hey, we are just fans, what do we matter, right?"

"Yet another example of how the Industry has been slowly destroying itself for three decades now."

"whoever thought this was a good idea should be canned...immediately"

"Be nice everyone, the pba doesn't take criticism well. And this bad idea is just par for the course for these guys."

"What next? Pro Cosmic Bowling?"

"They were an irritant at the recent World Cup...and now this is in the PBA? What's next...turn down the lights,crank up the music,and make it 9-pin no tap?"

I'll have more to say about today's tournament and maybe a little more to say about the vuvuzelas in my next post, but I had to vent my spleen here and now about this aural outrage.