He’s Ready to Attack ‘the Longest Day’

Being a sports television critic is usually a great job. For one thing, when your spouse or significant other complains about too much sports viewing, you can say, “But it’s my job.”

But there’s a downside too. Take Super Bowl Sunday, for example.

Fox’s pregame coverage begins at 8 a.m. The kickoff is scheduled for 3:25. That’s seven hours of pregame coverage and another 25 minutes of what Fox calls “pre-kick” coverage. Then the game, counting halftime, won’t be over until at least 7 p.m., and then there is the postgame show.

It makes for a long day. You can complain, but there isn’t much sympathy. It beats covering the IOC mess.

But who in his right mind, besides a sports television critic, is going to spend the whole day glued to the TV set?

“My mom and dad might watch all seven hours of the pregame,” said Scott Ackerson, Fox’s pregame producer. “Well, maybe not all seven hours.

“All we ask is that people tune in and take a look, and if they like what they see we hope they’ll stick around.”

Why seven hours of pregame hype? Because it gets ratings. When Fox did the Super Bowl two years ago, the four-hour pregame show did better than an NBA doubleheader on NBC.

And ratings translate to money. About $60 million in ad revenue will be generated by the pregame and postgame shows. The game, with 30-second spots going for as much as $1.6 million, will bring in $93 million.

PREGAME RUNDOWN

The hype gets underway tonight at 10:30 with TNT’s “Friday Night at the Super Bowl.” A couple of former Trojans, Keyshawn Johnson and Tim McDonald, join TNT regulars Ernie Johnson and Mark May on the main set.

NFL Films’ “Road to the Super Bowl,” the one show not to miss during Super Bowl weekend, will be on Channel 11 Saturday at 2 p.m.

Also on Saturday, at 11 a.m. on Channel 11, is a youth-oriented NFL Films special, “NFL Under the Helmet.” Following that show at noon is a college skills competition, and the competitors include UCLA quarterback Cade McNown and USC kicker Adam Abrams.

CBS gets into the act Saturday night at 8 with “NFL All-Star Comedy Blitz,” which was taped at Los Angeles’ Wiltern Theatre. Greg Gumbel and Phil Simms host the show, and the guests include Billy Crystal, Sheryl Crow and Brett Favre. The show benefits L.A.’s NFL Youth Education Town.

Fox starts off Sunday at 8 a.m. with a half-hour of its regular “Fox NFL Sunday” crew, followed by a special edition of Fox Sports Net’s “Hardcore Football” with Ronnie Lott, Bill Maas and Ron Pitts.

At 9 a.m. is a half-hour scene-setter with Keith Olbermann, then, from 9:30-11 a.m., John Madden and Pat Summerall present Madden’s All-Millennium team.

Then it’s back to Terry Bradshaw, James Brown, Howie Long and Cris Collinsworth for four hours.

PREGAME SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

Two segments of note during the pregame show are a Collinsworth interview with Stanley Wilson and a Bradshaw interview with Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson.

Collinsworth calls his interview with his former Cincinnati Bengal teammate “the most compelling thing I’ve done in broadcasting.” Collinsworth sat down with Wilson for a two-hour session a couple of weeks ago in the Los Angeles office of Wilson’s attorney.

The interview was edited down to six minutes and will be shown about 12:45.

“The first time we went to Wilson’s attorney’s office, on a Monday, Stanley was a no-show,” Collinsworth said.

Collinsworth, who demanded Wilson’s home phone number, called and left a message, saying he had been haunted for years by the question, why?

Why had Wilson, the night before the 1989 Super Bowl, let his teammates down by getting zonked on drugs in his hotel room?

“With Stanley in there blocking for Icky Woods, we might have gotten that first down we needed to keep the ball out of Joe Montana’s hands so he couldn’t have thrown that winning touchdown pass to John Taylor,” Collinsworth said.

“I was so close to being able to say I was a world champion. It’s an incomplete part of my life, a hole in my life, and I told him in that message that I’ve always wanted to ask him, ‘How in the world, on the biggest night of your life, could you do that?’ ”

Wilson got word to Collinsworth he would be at his attorney’s office the next Monday, and he was.

Bradshaw’s interview with Henderson should be almost as compelling. It was 20 years ago, before Super Bowl XIII, that Henderson, a Dallas Cowboy linebacker, said Bradshaw, the Pittsburgh Steeler quarterback, “was so dumb he couldn’t spell cat if you spotted him the ‘c’ and the ‘t.’ ”

The Bradshaw-Henderson interview is scheduled to be shown between 2 and 2:30. A Bradshaw interview with John Elway will be shown during the pregame show’s last half-hour.

Then, after the introduction of players and Cher’s rendition of the national anthem, we’ll almost be ready for the kickoff.

SHORT WAVES

There is other sports programming on television this weekend. Fox kicks off a series of 10 horse races with live coverage of the Donn Handicap at Gulfstream in Hallandale, Fla., Saturday at 1 p.m., featuring Silver Charm. The second race in the series will be the Santa Anita Handicap on March 6. . . . CBS offers the Phoenix Open, featuring David Duval and Tiger Woods. . . . Oops Dept.: Channel 7 got some bad information on satellite coordinates from ABC last weekend and gave us about 10 minutes of North Carolina-Wake Forest instead of UCLA-Louisville. The switch to the UCLA game took place in mid-play. Also, TV listings had Channel 7 showing Washington-Stanford at 3 p.m. Instead, it gave us the kids’ programming that was preempted by the 10 a.m. UCLA game. . . . Note to newscasters: Don’t get trapped into saying Jack Nicklaus had “successful” hip replacement surgery. We won’t know if it as successful until months, possibly years, from now.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

What Los Angeles Is Watching

A sampling of L.A. Nielsen ratings for Jan. 23-24, including sports on cable networks:

SATURDAY

*--*

Over-the-air Channel Rating Share Figure skating: World Professional Championships 4 8.6 15 College basketball: UCLA at Louisville 7 2.6 8 Golf: Bob Hope Chrysler Classic 7 2.4 7 College basketball: Michigan at Purdue 2 1.4 4 Boxing: Cuauhtemoc Gomez vs. Angel Rosario 34 1.2 7 Skiing: Jonny Moseley Invitational 4 1.1 3 Skiing: U.S. Freestyle World Cup 4 0.8 2 College basketball: Fresno State at Brigham Young 56 0.8 1 College basketball: Providence at Arkansas 2 0.5 2

*--*

*--*

Cable Network Rating College football: Senior Bowl TBS 1.2 Hockey: NHL All-Star Saturday festivities ESPN 1.0 Golf: Senior MasterCard Championship ESPN 0.8 Boxing: Mike Tyson vs. Francois Botha (tape) SHO 0.7 Tennis: Australian Open ESPN2 0.7 College basketball: George Washington-Rhode Island ESPN2 0.4 College basketball: Oklahoma State at Texas ESPN 0.3 College basketball: Arizona State at Oregon FSW 0.1

Cable Share College football: Senior Bowl 4 Hockey: NHL All-Star Saturday festivities 2 Golf: Senior MasterCard Championship 2 Boxing: Mike Tyson vs. Francois Botha (tape) 1 Tennis: Australian Open 1 College basketball: George Washington-Rhode Island 1 College basketball: Oklahoma State at Texas 1 College basketball: Arizona State at Oregon 0

*--*

SUNDAY

*--*

Over-the-air Channel Rating Share Golf: Bob Hope Chrysler Classic 7 3.9 9 Gymnastics: Reese’s International Cup 4 3.8 10 Auto racing: IRL Indy 200 at Orlando 7 2.4 5 College basketball: Missouri at Kansas 2 2.4 6 Soccer: Guadalajara vs. Tigres 34 2.3 6 College basketball: Duke at St. John’s 2 2.2 5 Hockey: NHL All-Star game 11 2.0 5 College basketball: Michigan State at Indiana 2 1.4 3

*--*

*--*

Cable Network Rating Share Golf: Senior MasterCard Championship ESPN 1.2 2 College football: Hula Bowl ESPN 0.9 2 Bowling: Albuquerque Open ESPN 0.5 1 Skiing: World Cup men’s slalom ESPN 0.5 1 Tennis: Australian Open ESPN2 0.4 1 Horse racing: Santa Anita Live FSW2 0.3 1

*--*

Note: Each rating point represents 50,092 L.A. households. Cable ratings reflect the entire market, even though cable is in only 63% of L.A. households.