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Start Free Trial NowTitle: Plug pulled on ABC sports coverage
Description: TV Time 13; WIBW, KTKA
•Plugpulled on ABC sports coverage By PHIL ANDERSON Slal'f writer Not everyone in Shawnee County or northeast Kansas has cable tele vision. Not that many have an anten- na-capable of pulling in Kansas City stations. That means Topeka’s WIBW-TV (CBS, channel 13), KSNT-TV (NBC, channel 27) and KTWU-TV (PBS, channel 11) are the only stations some viewers have to turn to The nice thing about it is they only have to switch their dials three places, from 11 to 27. The bad part of it is there seldom is any ABC programming available anymore It’s particularly rough for sports fans on Monday nights dur ing the fall, when football is on, and in the summer, when baseball makes an occasional appearance. Between those seasons are ABC presentations of boxing matches. auto races, bowling tournaments, golf matches, USFL football games and specialized programming such as “The Superstars” and “Wide World of Sports” that viewers can not receive locally. WIBW used to carrj an abun dance of ABC’s weekend sporting events, such as NCAA football, “The Superstars” and “Wide World of Sports.” WIBW hasn’t carried a significant ABC sporting event, with the excep tion of the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day, for more than a year KSNT took an abbre\ iated \ ersion of ABC’s NCAA football package last fall when WIBW dropped it to go for the CBS coverage. But dropping the big events has not constituted the most noticeable change in ABC sports coverage around here The greatest amount of agony and defeat afflicted on sports viewers has come from the departure of “Wide World," which still stands head and shoulders above “CBS Sports Saturday,” “CBS Sports Sunday” and NBC’s “SportsWorld,” despite improve ments made by those anthology shows. Carlos Fernandez, WIBW pro gram director? said his station de cided to go almost exclusively with CBS sports offerings when the net work demonstrated a commitment to beefing up its weekend coverage by signing long term deals with the NCAA for basketball and football coverage. The deal proved to be a good one for WIBW last fall, when two Kansas University football games received regional coverage and one Kansas Slate game got on CBS “It made a big difference," Fer nandez said “Prior to that, CBS Continued on page K>
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Clipped 1 month ago
- Topeka Daily Capital
- Topeka, Kansas
- Mar, 13 1983 - Page 73