ABC Has Technical Difficulties

Was this the Twilight Zone or what? Or was that really Tom Kelly’s voice on the ABC telecast for a couple of plays during the third quarter of Saturday’s USC-Notre Dame 17-17 tie?

Prime Ticket’s Kelly turning up on ABC was only one of the bizarre occurrences caused by a power outage in the television compound and other parts of the Coliseum.

The outage, which lasted about 45 minutes, knocked ABC off the air with eight seconds left in the half.

By the time the second half began, ABC producer Bob Goodrich had made arrangements to borrow a feed from Prime Ticket, which was taping the game for showing later Saturday night and wasn’t affected by the outage.

But ABC still had to figure out a way to get some kind of audio over the air.

For a while, ABC announcers Keith Jackson and Bob Griese used telephones, but their voices were almost unintelligible.

ABC then went to Kelly and Prime Ticket partner Craig Fertig, but soon lost them. Next, John Saunders calling the game from an ABC studio in New York.Just about then the problem was rectified.

Jack O’Hara, the executive producer of ABC Sports who was in the New York studio but in phone contract with the crew in Los Angeles, was informed after the game that the outage was caused by a main breaker at the stadium blowing.

“Our No. 1 priority was to give viewers coverage of the game no matter how we did it,” O’Hara said. “We owe a great deal of gratitude to Prime Ticket for supplying us with a picture.”

Actually, not much was missed except a field-goal try by USC’s Cole Ford at the end of the first half.

That’s not nearly as bad as what happened in 1986, when CBS missed John Carney’s game-winning field goal in a 38-37 Notre Dame victory over USC because of an ill-timed commercial break. CBS had to show the kick on tape.