PBA Tour in The Media
The PBA provided its first televised event in 1962, and became a Saturday afternoon staple on the ABC schedule from 1965.
| Years | Network | Play-By-Play | Color Commentary | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1962–1974 | ABC | Chris Schenkel | Billy Welu | Various announcers filled in whenever Schenkel was on assignment. Keith Jackson did play by play for the second televised 300 game in 1969, while Bud Palmer did the same for a 300 in 1974. |
| 1974-75 | ABC | Chris Schenkel | Dave Davis, Dick Weber | Davis and Weber alternated on telecasts after Welu's death in 1974. |
| 1975–1997 | ABC | Chris Schenkel | Nelson Burton Jr. | Dave Diles was Schenkel's fill-in while on assignment. Dick Weber filled in for Burton in the 1970s-1980s when Burton was competing. Johnny Petraglia filled in from that time. |
| Late 1970s | HBO | Various | Various | Among the first sports broadcasts on HBO. |
| Late 1970s | CBS | Frank Glieber | Dave Davis | Part of the CBS Sports Spectacular summer series. |
| 1981–1982 | USA Network | Al Trautwig | Mike Durbin | Spring and Summer tour events. |
| 1984–1991 | NBC | Jay Randolph | Earl Anthony | Fall Tour Stops. |
| 1986-1994 | ESPN | Denny Schreiner | Mike Durbin | ESPN's first venture into bowling. Marshall Holman filled in for Durbin on occasion. Durbin later moved into the play-by-play role with Holman becoming the new analyst. |
| 1998–2001 | CBS | Gary Seidel | Marshall Holman | The "golden pin" era of the PBA. Chris Schenkel expressed interest in moving to CBS, but was passed over. |
| 2002–2007 | ESPN | Dave Ryan | Randy Pedersen | Chris Barnes and Norm Duke would fill in as extra commentators during select telecasts. |
| 2007–2011 | ESPN | Rob Stone | Randy Pedersen | Laneside reporters (Cathy Dorin-Lizzi or Carolyn Dorin-Ballard) were sometimes added when a PBA Women's Series event was included in the telecast. |
| 2012- | ESPN | Lon McEachern | Randy Pedersen | Current announcing team. Gary Thorne took over for Rob Stone at three live broadcasts in 2012 after Stone left for a new position at FOX Sports, but McEachern was named Stone's permanent replacement for the 2012-13 season. |
In its heyday, ABC's Professional Bowlers Tour outranked all sporting events on Saturdays with the exception of college football telecasts.
The 1991 Tournament of Champions was delayed for over thirty minutes at the start due to a bomb threat being phoned in at Rivera Lanes in Fairlawn, Ohio. The ABC telecast joined in during the evacuation's final stages and featured interviews with local officials, as well as classic clips from previous T of C telecasts.
Mark Roth, whose first career title was captured at the 1975 King Louie Open in Kansas by rolling a televised 299 game, gained immortality by becoming the first bowler to convert the almost-impossible "7-10 split" on national television in the first match of the ARC Alameda Open on January 5, 1980. In 1991, John Mazza and Jess Stayrook also accomplished this feat on television. During the 2005-06 season, Walter Ray Williams Jr. became the only bowler to convert the 4-6-7-10 "big four" combination on television.
In 2005, ESPN Classic began televising old bowling broadcasts daily, including some of the more memorable ones in which bowlers shot perfect games or records were set. All of the telecasts originally aired on either ABC or ESPN since those are the tapes to which the network owns the rights.
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Famous quotes containing the words tour and/or media:
“Left Washington, September 6, on a tour through Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Virginia.... Absent nineteen days. Received every where heartily. The country is again one and united! I am very happy to be able to feel that the course taken has turned out so well.”
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