This article was in Sunday's Fort Worth Star Telegram, presumably because the PBA is in Dallas. Tought I'd pass on the article as a matter of interest --It appears as if the PBA needs to figure out a way to reach the good old days of 1981 --- they were reaching 6.8 million households back then....
Posted on Sun, Jan. 23, 2005
PBA Tour eyes a return from TV's gutter
By David Sessions
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
Professional bowling first aired on ABC in 1962, and for 40 years, the game hardly changed while the world revolved and evolved around it.
A strike is still a strike, and a 7-10 split isn't any easier to pick up -- but the days of highly rated broadcasts are gone. Once a staple of weekend network television, the PBA Tour now finds itself fighting for viewers among the vast options of cable TV.
After languishing in the late '90s, the sport has tried to reinvent itself. First came an ownership group that changed the organization from a players' association to a privately owned league. Then came new rules and a recently renewed ESPN contract.
"Right at the time that new ownership came in, the organization itself -- unbeknownst to most people -- was in dire straits," said Dave Schroeder, the PBA's coordinating producer for television. "There was a very real danger of the tour being bankrupt within a year. We still had contracts on ESPN, but we were flying by the seat of our pants.
"There's a resurgence for our organization now. ... The new ownership has taken some chances."
Today, the PBA Dallas Open's final will be broadcast live at noon on ESPN. The network has aired bowling since its inception, and there have been major changes in the sport's television presence over the past quarter-century.
Bowling remains one of America's pastimes -- a $10 billion industry that ranks first in participation among recreational sports, according to a 2004 study by SGMA International, an organization representing sporting-goods manufacturers.
But the PBA Tour, which saw its telecasts reach as many as 6.8 million households in 1981, now attracts less than 10 percent of that total.
"Back then, you were working with just the three-network world," ESPN senior director of programming Leah Buhl said of bowling's heyday. "I don't think that [lower viewership number] necessarily transfers into a lack of interest in bowling, but a change in the television landscape."
The PBA Tour hasn't appeared on network television since 1997, and the sport teetered toward television irrelevance. By the 1999-2000 season, just before a group fronted by Microsoft executive Chris Peters took over, some national tour broadcasts were relegated to tape-delay on cable, ending a nearly four-decade stretch of live programming.
Under new leadership, the PBA Tour is attempting to regain its popularity with viewers.
The tour has made some simple changes, revising the dress code to allow bowlers more individuality and giving a uniform, branded look to all its marketing material.
Other changes are more profound: scrapping the old tournament qualification system for a new 64-player field that includes 58 bowlers with seasonal exemptions, setting a defined October-through-April season and airing events at the same time on the same day each week.
ESPN sees signs that point to the PBA's resurgence, including steady ratings that are up from the late '90s. The PBA and ESPN signed a new three-year contract in last summer.
"We certainly see it as a growth property," Buhl said. "We've got a long history with the PBA, and with the new ownership group, we expect big things from them."
The league still faces challenges, in a sports-saturated world that has seen the Philippine Basketball Association move to the top of Google's search results for "PBA." But the 42-year-old organization hopes its recent changes will help the game evolve with the rest of the sports world.
"There's no doubt we're in a little bit of a tough situation against football for part of our season," Schroeder said. "We just need to continue doing what we're doing with an eye for what can we tweak."
IN THE KNOW
How it rates
The first PBA telecast on ABC (on Jan. 6, 1962) posted a 4.7 rating and 13 share, numbers the PBA would love to come close to now. Bowlings' ratings over the past five years on ESPN (total numbers for households):
Year Telecasts Rating No. of households
2000-01 16 0.7 582,000
2001-02 20 0.8 716,000
2002-03 20 0.9 775,000
2003-04 20 0.8 731,000
2004-05 10 0.7 666,000
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