The Professional Bowlers Tour, also known as Pro Bowlers Tour, is a broadcast of the
Professional Bowlers Association
The Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) is the major sanctioning body for the sport of professional ten-pin bowling in the United States. Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, the PBA membership consists of over 3,000 members worldwide. Member ...
that aired on
ABC
ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet.
ABC or abc may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting
* American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster
** Disney–ABC Television ...
from
1962
Events January
* January 1 – Western Samoa becomes independent from New Zealand.
* January 3 – Pope John XXIII excommunicates Fidel Castro for preaching communism.
* January 8 – Harmelen train disaster: 93 die in the wor ...
to
1997
File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; '' Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of ...
. In the telecasts, sportscaster
Chris Schenkel
Christopher Eugene Schenkel (August 21, 1923 – September 11, 2005) was an American sportscaster. Over the course of five decades he called play-by-play for numerous sports on television and radio, becoming known for his smooth delivery and bar ...
and the graphics displayed during the show would refer to the show as "The Professional Bowlers Tour", possibly to disambiguate from the
NFL's use of the term "pro bowler" when referring to players who were selected for the
Pro Bowl
The National Football League All-Star Game (1939–1942), Pro Bowl (1951–2022), or Pro Bowl Games (starting in 2023) is an annual event held by the National Football League (NFL) featuring the league's star players.
The format has changed thro ...
—an event also televised on ABC for many years.
History
Prior to the debut of the PBA on
ABC
ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet.
ABC or abc may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting
* American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster
** Disney–ABC Television ...
television in 1962, most tournaments were organized where, once the cut was established after qualifying rounds, a set number of match-play games were bowled, and bonus pins were given to the winner of each match. The champion was then decided based on the final overall total pinfall.
From 1962 to 1965, ABC started televising the PBA Tour, starting with a limited number of tournaments on ABC's ''
Wide World of Sports'', and later having its own timeslot. Therefore, a
round-robin tournament format was implemented to determine the champion. The televised finals would be cut to the top four bowlers after match-play, and then three round-robin matches between the fourth, third and second-seeded bowlers would determine the final two bowlers. If any bowler were to win both of his matches in the round-robin, he would go on to face the tournament leader. If the three bowlers each split their matches to go 1 and 1 in the round-robin, total pinfall would decide which man would advance to the final match to face the tournament leader. The winner of the final match would win the tournament.
The first-ever telecast was actually taped and aired at a later date. The original commentators were
Chris Schenkel
Christopher Eugene Schenkel (August 21, 1923 – September 11, 2005) was an American sportscaster. Over the course of five decades he called play-by-play for numerous sports on television and radio, becoming known for his smooth delivery and bar ...
and then-active bowling star
Billy Welu
William Joseph Welu (July 3, 1932 – May 16, 1974) was an American professional bowler, executive for the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA), bowling broadcaster, and ambassador for the sport. A founding member of the PBA in 1958, he won f ...
. On May 16, 1974 Welu died suddenly of a
heart attack
A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which ma ...
.
For the remainder of the 1974 season, bowling legends
Dick Weber
Richard Anthony Weber (December 23, 1929 – February 14, 2005) was a ten-pin bowling professional and a founding member of the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA). Along with Don Carter, Weber is widely regarded as professional bowling's fi ...
and
Dave Davis filled Welu's analyst spot, but it was the young
Nelson Burton Jr. who was ultimately selected for the full-time analyst job in 1975. He remained Schenkel's broadcasting partner until the end of the series.
Popularity
Bowling
Bowling is a target sport and recreational activity in which a player rolls a ball toward pins (in pin bowling) or another target (in target bowling). The term ''bowling'' usually refers to pin bowling (most commonly ten-pin bowling), thou ...
became extremely popular after ABC began airing it on Saturday afternoons in 1962 (it had previously dabbled in bowling with ''
Make That Spare
''Make That Spare'' is a fifteen-minute bowling program that was broadcast on ABC from October 8, 1960, to September 11, 1964.
Broadcast history
The series was hosted by the former actor and nightclub singer Johnny Johnston except in the 1961-19 ...
'', a short-form series that had been airing on the network since 1960). The first Saturday afternoon telecast was the 1962 ''Empire State Open'' held at Redwood Lanes in
Albany, New York
Albany ( ) is the capital of the U.S. state of New York, also the seat and largest city of Albany County. Albany is on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River, and about north of New York C ...
, and was won by Fred Lening, 254–243, over J. Willard Sims. Chris Schenkel and
Jack Buck
John Francis "Jack" Buck (August 21, 1924 – June 18, 2002) was an American sportscaster, best known for his work announcing Major League Baseball games of the St. Louis Cardinals. His play-by-play work earned him recognition from numerous hal ...
called the action at that particular telecast. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, ''Pro Bowlers Tour'' typically outdrew
college football (then stifled by NCAA restrictions) and
college basketball
In United States colleges, top-tier basketball is governed by collegiate athletic bodies including National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), the United States Collegiate Athleti ...
(still not a major television event) in the ratings. Many sports fans considered it a weekly tradition to watch bowling on Saturday afternoons, which was a lead-in to ''
ABC's Wide World of Sports
''ABC's Wide World of Sports'' is an American sports anthology television program that aired on ABC from April 29, 1961 to January 3, 1998, primarily on Saturday afternoons. Hosted by Jim McKay, with a succession of co-hosts beginning in 198 ...
''. The series generally aired in the winter and spring as other networks later covered the summer and fall portions of the PBA Tour. In the 1990s, ABC also made stops in the summer events.
On the telecasts, Burton would host taped segments in which he would give tips or interesting facts about bowling.
Decline
Although the series maintained high ratings throughout most of its years, ABC (which was transitioning to new management after being purchased by
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Disney Stud ...
in 1996) opted against renewing its contract with the PBA, primarily due to the overall decline of bowling's popularity in the late 1980s and 1990s. This was partially attributed to the explosion of sports viewing choices in the 1990s, especially on cable television, the lack of any one bowling star to follow, and an aging audience for televised bowling. (Research in 1997 showed that 67% of the viewing audience for network TV bowling was at least 50 years old.)
Former PBA Commissioner Mark Gerberich, who presided over the PBA in the 1990s, summed up the decline in ABC viewership and related licensing contracts, stating, "In 1991, we got $200,000 a show which went into the prize funds. A year later, we got $50,000. In 1997, we were
paying $150,000 to stay on TV."
End of ABC's broadcasts aftermath
The final ''PBT'' broadcast aired on June 21, 1997 at the St. Clair Classic in Fairview Heights, Ill. that was won by
Walter Ray Williams Jr. It was a very emotional broadcast in which Williams Jr. and
Pete Weber, the game's two giants at the time, battled it out until the very end. It essentially marked the end of an era of bowling on
network television
Network, networking and networked may refer to:
Science and technology
* Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects
* Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks
Mathematics
...
due to declining ratings, although
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...
aired a few events during the 1998 and 1999 seasons.
Fox Sports Net
Fox Sports Networks (FSN), formerly known as Fox Sports Net, was the collective name for a group of regional sports channels in the United States. Formed in 1996 by News Corporation, the networks were acquired by The Walt Disney Company on Mar ...
aired some bowling telecasts in 2000, and ESPN took over from there.
Footage of the series' final broadcast in 1997 is featured in the 2006 DVD documentary ''
A League of Ordinary Gentlemen
''A League of Ordinary Gentlemen'' is a documentary film about ten-pin bowling that was released on DVD on March 21, 2006. It was written and directed by Christopher Browne and stars PBA Tour players Pete Weber, Walter Ray Williams Jr., Chris ...
''.
A member of the Weber family threw the first (Dick) and last (Pete) balls on the series, demonstrating how both the father and son each dominated their own eras of the sport.
It was reported in newspapers that Chris Schenkel did not intend to retire after the series ended, even though he was in his seventies by 1997, as he wanted to earn more money to pay for his grandchildren to go to college. When CBS picked up the PBA Tour in 1998, there was talk of Schenkel moving to that network, but it never materialized.
Gary Seibel (play-by-play) and
Marshall Holman
Marshall Holman (born September 29, 1954) is an American sports broadcaster and retired professional ten-pin bowler. He was known for his flamboyant, fiery demeanor and his success on the PBA Tour from the mid-1970s to the end of the 1980s. He i ...
(color) got the jobs instead.
Bo Burton has been the analyst on several bowling telecasts since his days on ''PBT''. He analyzed PBA events for ESPN during the 1998 season. He also did color commentary for the 1998 Women's College Bowling Championship on
ESPN2
ESPN2 is an American multinational pay television network owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company (which owns a controlling 80% stake) and Hearst Communications (which owns the remaining 20%).
ESPN2 was initially fo ...
, which included future PBA member
Kelly Kulick
Kelly Kulick (born March 16, 1977) is an American professional bowler and sportscaster. She has won ten professional women's bowling titles (six of them majors), one PBA Tour title (a major) and a professional mixed doubles title. Kulick is the ...
. Bo also called the 2007 and 2008
U.S. Women's Open
The U.S. Women's Open, one of 15 national golf championships conducted by the United States Golf Association (USGA), is the oldest of the LPGA Tour's five major championships, which includes the Chevron Championship, Women's PGA Championship, W ...
events on ESPN alongside
Marshall Holman
Marshall Holman (born September 29, 1954) is an American sports broadcaster and retired professional ten-pin bowler. He was known for his flamboyant, fiery demeanor and his success on the PBA Tour from the mid-1970s to the end of the 1980s. He i ...
, who developed somewhat of a friendship with Burton over the years as a frequent competitor on ''PBT'' telecasts. In 2008, Bo served alongside
Bill Macatee
Bill Macatee (born November 17, 1955) is an American sports broadcaster for CBS Sports and Tennis Channel.
Early life and career
Macatee was born in Rome, New York, and grew up in El Paso, Texas. He graduated from Burges High School in El Pas ...
and
Lynn Swann
Lynn Curtis Swann (born March 7, 1952) is an American former football player, broadcaster, politician, and athletic director, best known for his association with the University of Southern California and the Pittsburgh Steelers. He served on the ...
for the ''Bowling's Clash of Champions'', a contest that pitted men against women. In this event, broadcast on
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...
, a historic first time that a woman ever beat a man in a TV final occurred in the $50,000 title match, when
Lynda Barnes
Lynda Barnes (née Norry, born October 7, 1967) is one of the world's leading females tenpin bowlers. She is a former member of the PWBA (Professional Women's Bowling Association). Bowling as an amateur, Lynda won the 1998 USBC Queens championshi ...
, wife of professional bowler
Chris Barnes, defeated
Sean Rash
Sean Rash (born August 22, 1982) is an American ten-pin bowler who is considered one of the top players on the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) Tour. He currently owns 17 PBA Tour titles, including two major championships, and was the 2011 ...
to take the title.
Return of bowling on ABC
The PBA, through its renewed contract with ESPN, returned to ABC for the first time in over thirteen years, as it televised the ''
2011 Tournament of Champions'' from
Red Rock Lanes in
Las Vegas
Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...
. The event took place on January 22, 2011 in a live telecast, with
Rob Stone and
Randy Pedersen
Randy Pedersen (born May 28, 1962) is an American sportscaster and former professional Bowler (ten-pin), bowler. He is currently a color analyst for Fox Sports (United States), Fox Sports' coverage of the Professional Bowlers Association, PBA Tour ...
on the call, and Nelson Burton, Jr. joining them throughout the telecast with reflections on the history of the ''Pro Bowlers Tour'' on ABC. The second match of the telecast nearly ended in a perfect game as
Mika Koivuniemi
Mika Juhani Koivuniemi (born 6 April 1967) is a Finnish bowling coach and semi-retired professional ten-pin bowler. He competed on the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) tour in the United States, and won bowling titles in 21 different countr ...
defeated
Tom Daugherty
Tom Daugherty (born February 22, 1975) is a right-handed American professional ten-pin bowler residing in Riverview, Florida. He is a member of the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA), having joined in 2001. He is one of the few PBA bowlers ...
299–100. Daugherty broke the old record for th
lowest game in PBA Historyof 129, previously held by Steve Jaros. The match was also the largest differential in PBA history, with a spread of 199 pins. Koivuniemi went on to defeat top seed
Tom Smallwood
Thomas Smallwood (born November 4, 1977) is a professional ten-pin bowler competing on the PBA Tour. In 2009, the right-hander won his first PBA Tour title and first major in the PBA World Championship, defeating 2008–09 PBA Player of the Year ...
in the final match to take home a PBA-record $250,000 first prize.
PBA on Fox
In March 2018, the PBA announced a multi-year agreement with
Fox Sports
Fox Sports is the brand name for a number of sports channels, broadcast divisions, programming, and other media around the world.
The ''Fox Sports'' name has since been used for other sports media assets. These assets are held mainly by the F ...
to begin in 2019 and carry through at least the end of the 2022 season. Most events have been carried on
Fox Sports 1
Fox Sports 1 (FS1) is an American pay television channel owned by the Fox Sports Media Group, a unit of Fox Corporation. FS1 replaced the motorsports network Speed on August 17, 2013, at the same time that its companion channel Fox Sports ...
, but the deal has provisions to carry some events on the Fox broadcast network.
Commentators
*(1961–1974) Chris Schenkel, Billy Welu
*(1974–1975) Chris Schenkel, various guest commentators
*(1975–1997) Chris Schenkel, Nelson Burton Jr.
Other commentators
On some broadcasts, either Schenkel or Burton were on assignment so other commentators filled in.
*
Verne Lundquist
Merton Laverne Lundquist Jr. (born July 17, 1940) is an American sportscaster.
Biography
Early life and career
Lundquist was born in Duluth, Minnesota. He graduated from Austin High School in Austin, Texas, before attending Texas Lutheran U ...
*
Al Michaels
Alan Richard Michaels (born November 12, 1944) is an American television sportscaster currently working as the play-by-play announcer for '' Thursday Night Football'' on Prime Video and in an emeritus role for NBC Sports. He has worked on n ...
*
Dick Weber
Richard Anthony Weber (December 23, 1929 – February 14, 2005) was a ten-pin bowling professional and a founding member of the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA). Along with Don Carter, Weber is widely regarded as professional bowling's fi ...
*
Johnny Petraglia
John Petraglia Sr. (born March 3, 1947) is an American professional bowler. He is a member of the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA), where he won 14 PBA Tour titles. He has also won eight PBA Senior Tour titles. He is a member of both the P ...
*
Dave Diles
*
Tim Brant
*
Bud Palmer
John Shove "Bud" Palmer (born John Palmer Flynn; September 14, 1921 – March 19, 2013) was an American professional basketball player. He was a member of the New York Knicks during the team's first three seasons in the Basketball Association of A ...
*
Keith Jackson
Mike Aulby
Mike Aulby (born March 25, 1960, in Indianapolis, Indiana) is a left-handed bowler and former member of the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA). He is one of only five PBA bowlers to win both a Rookie and Player of the Year award. ( Tommy Jones ...
and
John Mazza
John Mazza (born February 23, 1964) is a left-handed ten-pin bowler and former touring player for the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA). Mazza won eight titles on the PBA Tour and collected over $850,000 in earnings. He also won 11 PBA Regi ...
, among other pros who were not competing on the telecasts, served as a lane-level reporters for PBT and would interview bowlers competing on the show.
It became somewhat of a
running gag
A running gag, or running joke, is a literary device that takes the form of an amusing joke or a comical reference and appears repeatedly throughout a work of literature or other form of storytelling. Though they are similar, catchphrases are no ...
about how Schenkel was absent during some of the memorable moments of the series. He was not in the booth for the PBA's first-ever televised
300 game, rolled by
Jack Biondolillo
Jack Joseph Biondolillo (August 30, 1940 – October 2, 2021) was a professional bowler and member of the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA).
Biondolillo won two PBA titles in his career, both in 1963, and he finished runner-up in a PBA tou ...
at the 1967 ''
Tournament of Champions'', due to a broadcast union strike. He was out on assignment covering other events for the network during each of the next two televised 300 games (
Johnny Guenther in 1969 and
Jim Stefanich 1974) and he also missed the first televised 7–10 split conversion as done by
Mark Roth
Mark may refer to:
Currency
* Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible mark, the currency of Bosnia and Herzegovina
* East German mark, the currency of the German Democratic Republic
* Estonian mark, the currency of Estonia between 1918 and 1927
* Fi ...
in 1980. Some even considered it to be a "curse" that if Schenkel was covering bowling, the bowlers would not throw a perfect game. This appeared to have some merit to it when
Don Johnson
Donnie Wayne Johnson (born December 15, 1949) is an American actor, producer and singer. He played the role of James "Sonny" Crockett in the 1980s television series ''Miami Vice'', for which he won a Golden Globe, and received a Primetime Emm ...
rolled a memorable 299 in the 1970 ''Tournament of Champions''. He needed a strike on his final ball, but left a 10-pin. The curse was finally broken in 1987; with both Schenkel and Burton in the broadcast booth,
Pete McCordic rolled a 300 game against
Wayne Webb
}
Wayne Webb (born August 4, 1957) is an American professional bowler from Rehoboth, Massachusetts. He was known for his success from the late 1970s to the end of the 1980s. Webb is one of only 17 players in history to win at least 20 PBA Tour tit ...
. Immediately after the final strike, Schenkel yelled, "We have it! We have it!"
As his career progressed, he began covering bowling almost exclusively and thus saw most of the PBA's great moments toward the latter part of the series. Schenkel would be in the booth for five more televised 300 games, as well as one of the only other two televised 7–10 split conversions during the Professional Bowlers Tour series, by
John Mazza
John Mazza (born February 23, 1964) is a left-handed ten-pin bowler and former touring player for the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA). Mazza won eight titles on the PBA Tour and collected over $850,000 in earnings. He also won 11 PBA Regi ...
.
References
External links
*
Professional Bowlers Tour Memorable Moments on Video
{{Bowling on television
ABC Sports
American Broadcasting Company original programming
1961 American television series debuts
1997 American television series endings
1970s American television series
1980s American television series
Bowling television series