Farr Kroger an ESPN priority
6/29/2002The Jamie Farr Kroger Classic will receive priority treatment from ESPN next month.
The final three rounds of the LPGA event, taking place July 11-14 at Highland Meadows Golf Club in Sylvania, will be televised on the all-sports network's flagship station.
A year ago the network broadcast the second and third rounds of the tournament on ESPN2 and the final round on ESPN.
The main advantage of being on ESPN over The Deuce is in visibility - ESPN is seen in 3 million more homes than ESPN2.
The second and third rounds of the tournament will air on ESPN from 1-3. The final round will air from 4-6.
“We're thankful to have an opportunity to get the tournament on television and promote northwest Ohio,” Farr Classic tournament director Judd Silverman said.
The Farr Kroger Classic, which was not televised in 1999 and 2000, appeared on ESPN2 in 1988 and was televised by the Golf Channel in 1996 and 1997.
Silverman said only a few of the 30 national commercial spots still remain unsold, but he said he believes all the spots will be purchased by tournament time.
Powers Pack No. 1
Channel 13 sportscaster Rob Powers wonders if July could turn out any better than June.
This month started out good and only kept getting better for the local ABC affiliate sports anchor, who also serves as sports director.
Powers enjoyed professional and personal bliss this month.
First he joined in the celebrating with his Channel 13 colleagues regarding the latest Nielsen ratings that revealed WTVG's newscasts for 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. as No. 1 in Toledo. Only days after that he received a regional Emmy Award for best sportscaster among 14 television markets, including Cleveland, covering three states.
Powers then went off and married his longtime fiancee, Debbie, whom he met while working in Indianapolis.
“It's been a pretty good month,” said Powers, the namesake for the station's nightly Powers Pack sports segment. “We get the ratings; we get the Emmy and we get married. I'm still kind of spinning right now.”
It seems only appropriate the Powers family spent its honeymoon in Orlando at Disney World.
The top sportscaster in the region on the top newscast in the city heads into July with a plan to be working in Toledo for another year.
He recently renewed his contract with ABC, and it officially begins today.
Unscripted falls flat
Unscripted with Chris Connelly is a done deal. The ESPN-produced, half-hour, sports-talk program that replaced the once-popular Up Close show lasted only half a year before the decision was made to yank it off the air. A ratings failure, its final show aired earlier this week.
Connelly, a former MTV VJ, was supposed to bring to ESPN a fresh approach to the TV sports-talk format. He was supposed to make us forget about Roy Firestone.
It looks as if the one name we'll soon be forgetting is Connelly's.
Channel changing
Meanwhile, ESPN is scheduled to air The Major League Baseball All-Star Selection Show on Sunday night at 7.
Well, ESPN thinks so as it begins its countdown toward gearing up for the upcoming 2002 season by showing NFL Team Yearbooks from the 2001 season. The half-hour-long videotapes that re-cap each team's season will begin airing Monday afternoon at 1.