The Palm Beach Post from West Palm Beach, Florida • Page 878

Public TV Scores With Football Despite Setbacks, Ivy League Telecasts a Hit football programs for public television. "We felt the Ivy League package would be probably better suited to public television, where there was not so much pressure to deliver ratings," Frank said. Eleven public television stations in the Northeast, including the outlets in New York, Boston, Washington, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, agreed to show the Saturday telecasts. Raising the nearly $400,000 to cover the production proved difficult, however. Ordinarily, public TV officials assemble financing for programs from public funds as well as money from corporate donors, a process that can take many months.

For Ivy League football. Trans World International brought unusual resources to the fund-raising by using its sales staff to canvass potential corporate underwriters. "It was an unbelievably difficult sell," Frank said. "I was amazed. I thought there were enough Ivy League graduates and supporters in positions of authority that this package would move more rapidly than it did." In the end, four companies signed on as underwriters: Travelers Insurance, the GTE American Brands Inc.

and American Express. "It is important for us to reach upscale thought leaders, and we thought there would be a concentration of these people in the audience," said Philip Stevens, director of corporate advertising at GTE. "There was also an interest in being good citizens by supporting public television. And it probably didn't hurt that our chairman went to Yale." The athletic directors of the eight Ivy League colleges selected the games to be televised, and Harney assembled the broadcast team: Dick Galiette, a Yale football announcer for 21 years; Upton Bell, a former general manager of the New England Patriots, as color commentator, and Sean McDonough, "a young kid out of Syracuse," according to Harney, as the sidelines reporter. Harney produced the telecasts at a cost of about $45,000 each.

This compares with the $70,000 to $120,000 for comparable broadcasts by CBS or ABC. The main reason for the lower cost is the use of nonunion personnel for the Ivy League telecasts, Frank said. In addition, Harney said he used fewer cameras and tape machines than his commercial counterparts. "The networks can isolate virtually anyone who throws or handles the football," Frank said. "We have to take our chances." With fewer resources, the Ivy League games have encountered several technical problems.

In the first telecast, between Columbia and Harvard, the camera missed a touchdown, Harney said, because "the cameraman got faked out." In the Harvard-Brown game, a power failure kept the telecast off the air for 28 minutes while the producers searched for a backup generator. At the Yale-Dartmouth game, technicians had to spend three hours before game time trying to lure a skunk from some electrical cables. Audience ratings for the Ivy League telecasts have about equaled the programs they replaced. There was no advertising for the series, however, because of a lack of money. "The ratings have been modest," Frank said, "but nobody is complaining.

By Sally Bedell Smith Nw Yrk Tlmtl NEW YORK They missed a touchdown in their first game, had to extricate a skunk from their equipment in the third and lost their power for the first half-hour of the seventh, but the producers of the first telecasts of Ivy League football on public television attracted nearly 700,000 viewers each Saturday. "I have had more comment, frankly, on Ivy League football this season than anything except possibly two of our new prime time series, The Brain and Civilization and the Jews, said John Jay Iselin, president of WNET-Chan-nel 13, the New York metropolitan area's major public television station. With last month's telecast of the ninth contest, the Harvard-Yale game in Cambridge, the Ivy League Game of the Week ended its first season. The prospects for a second season will depend on decisions by public television, the participating colleges and sponsoring corporations. The first such decision could come this month, when Ivy League athletic directors meet to assess this year's experience.

"We've accomplished one of our two goals, giving every one of the league's teams exposure," said Al Paul, athletic director at Columbia University. "But financially, we didn't realize what we had hoped to. While we received enough sponsorship to cover the costs, we did not realize a profit." Televised Ivy League football was made possible by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling June 27 that the exclusive control exercised by the National Collegiate Athletic Association over football TV rights was illegal. "The Supreme Court decision allowed individual institutions to make television deals, which they have done," said Greg Harney, the producer of the Ivy League games, which are presented by WGBH-TV, the Boston public television station.

Shortly before the Supreme Court ruling, Harney was approached by Barry Frank, a former president of CBS Sports who is now senior corporate vice president of Trans World International, an agent and packager of sports programs for television. Having secured the cooperation of the Ivy League, Frank wanted Harney, a producer for 26 years at WGBH, to assemble a series of FENCES, INC. HOME OF THE EXPERIENCED FENCE PEOPLE WOOD CHUN LINK ORNAMENTAL All MINIM WE IN) IT All' Why pay mora? Buy frn th manufacture VWt out lottery thawfaaai We Deliver Free Estimates We Do It All Lie. U10388 p. VERTICAL 0099 DXO SHADOWBOARD C.O 6x8 STOCKADE 21" 6x8 SKINNY DIP 25" 732-3710 392-3122 3 3.