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Wednesday, March 11, 1998 Page: 1C
WYOU won’t make NCAA fans mad
Palms sweat. Hearts beat faster. Tempers flare. Tears fall. Nerves
collapseScreams ring out.
Sometimes, wives pack up the kids and spend three weeks with grandmother.
Of course, that means home-cooked meals are replaced by TV dinners.
But those things are all part of the thrill of March Madness, arguably
television’s greatest spectacle. The NCAA Basketball Tournament makes such
overhyped events as the Super Bowl, the Academy Awards and the Olympics seem
mundane.
It all begins Thursday with 12 consecutive hours of first-round action,
starting at noon on WYOU-TV Channel 22.
Ditto Friday.
Fortunately, the tournament will be shown in its entirety on Channel 22,
which finally wised up.
Last year, you may recall, Channel 22 pre-empted a second-round game
between Indiana and North Carolina in favor of broadcasting Scranton’s St.
Patrick’s Day Parade. It proved to be the game in which Dean Smith became
college basketball’s winningest coach.
Apparently, Channel 22 learned a valuable lesson: Don’t mess with college
basketball fans.
“It made us realize how tremendous the drawing power of the NCAA Tournament
is,” said WYOU General Manager John Dittmeir. “It’s the pinnacle of the
basketball season, and we’re treating it as such.
“March Madness has been a real growing sport in terms of attractiveness to
its advertisers and viewers,” Dittmeir added. “Northeastern Pennsylvania has a
fever for basketball. We’re certainly excited about having the tournament.”
There’s another reason WYOU has seen the light.
Last year, CBS executives voiced their displeasure with Channel 22 for
pre-empting the basketball game.
“They said we (WYOU) needed to be more committed to the tournament,”
Dittmeir said. “We certainly want to maintain a good relationship with the
network.”
Meanwhile, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade will be telecast on WOLF-TV Channel
38, beginning at noon Saturday.
CBS has made a couple of important changes in this year’s tournament
coverage.
Greg Gumbel replaces Jim Nantz as studio host, with Nantz returning to
play-by-play duty. And the network wisely decided to ditch the four-way split
screen, which proved to be more irritating than informative.
The tournament appears to be wide open. There’s no prohibitive favorite,
and the possible matchups are intriguing: Princeton vs. North Carolina, UCLA
vs. Michigan and Duke vs. Kentucky.
It all culminates on Monday, March 30, with the championship game at the
Alamodome in San Antonio.
Until then, madness prevails.
* * *
What happens to lousy lawyers who can’t cut it in the courtroom? They
become lousy actors.
If we’re talking about Christopher Darden, that is.
Darden, who along with Marcia Clark unsuccessfully prosecuted O.J. Simpson.
has a co-starring role in ABC’s Thursday made-for-TV movie “One Hot Summer
Night.” The show airs at 9 p.m. on WNEP-TV Channel 16.
Darden’s performance in the crime drama is almost as absurd as the story
plot. He portrays a police detective who investigates the murder of a sports
tycoon.
The detective promises immunity to the hit man who gunned down the victim,
in return for his testimony against the man and woman he claims that hired
him.
The most amusing part of “One Hot Summer Night” occurs when a female
prosecutor who resembles Clark chews out Darden for letting a murderer go
free.
Darden is dreadfully boring and totally devoid of a personality. It may not
be entirely his fault. “One Hot Summer Night” is poorly scripted and
apparently is aimed at viewers who like stupid plots and trick endings.
But it’s hard to accept Darden as anything less than a clown. His acting is
so bad in “One Hot Summer Night,” that Erika Eleniak and Barry Bostwick come
across as only half a joke.
Of course there’s one way “One Hot Summer Night” could have been worse.
O.J. Simpson could have been in it.
* * *
WYOU weatherman Barry Finn called to clarify an editor’s note in Monday’s
Times Leader SAYSO column, which stated Finn is not a certified meteorologist,
because he doesn’t have a college degree.
Finn said he was 12 credits shy of a degree when he dropped out of