NBC Decides to Stay With Notre Dame : Television: Network says it is contractually obligated to broadcast football game instead of the Thomas hearings.

How popular is Notre Dame football? Apparently so popular that it gets precedence over a Congressional hearing.

NBC chose not to preempt any of Notre Dame’s game against Pittsburgh on Saturday for coverage of the Senate’s special hearings on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court.

All NBC preempted was about 15 minutes of the pregame show.

News anchor Tom Brokaw informed viewers that NBC, which has a five-year, $35 million deal with Notre Dame, was contractually bound to cover the game.

“We were prepared to cut away from it if there was news deemed worthy of coverage,” NBC spokesman Ed Markey said from New York.

Meanwhile, ABC, which has a contract with the College Football Assn., was willing to miss the start of the Miami-Penn State game to cover the hearings, then preempted most of its halftime show and all of the third quarter.

ABC picked up the game 4 1/2 minutes into the first quarter, after the Senate Judiciary Committee adjourned for lunch. ABC then went back to Washington from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. to cover Thomas’ testimony and didn’t leave it until committee chairman Joseph Biden was finished with his questioning.

“We made an editorial decision to go live to the hearing,” Sherrie Rollins, ABC’s director of news information, told Associated Press.

CBS, which left the hearings Friday night in favor of baseball, stayed with the hearings Saturday until 11:56 a.m. before leaving to cover Game 3 of the National League playoffs.

News anchor Dan Rather had to correct himself after saying, “We’re going to Game 4 of the American League Championship Series.”

After a pause, Rather said: “I’m sorry, my mistake, we’re going to the National League game.”

It wasn’t the first time Rather has had a problem with sports. He missed six minutes of the “CBS Evening News” on Sept. 11, 1987, after part of the show was preempted by U.S. Open tennis coverage. At first it was believed Rather walked off the set in a huff, but he later said that he was on the phone.

On Saturday, after CBS left the hearings, the network went to New York, joining Pat O’Brien and guest analyst Tom Lasorda in a studio there.

What was scheduled as a half-hour pregame shown was trimmed to four minutes.