Pro Bowlers Tour
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The Pro Bowlers Tour is a broadcast of the Professional Bowlers Association that aired on ABC from 1961 – 1997.
The first-ever telecast was actually taped and aired at a later date. The original commentators were Chris Schenkel and Billy Welu. In 1974, Welu died suddenly of a heart attack. The search for his replacement included bowling legends Dick Weber and Dave Davis, but it was the young Nelson Burton Jr. who was ultimately selected for the analyst job in 1975. He remained Schenkel's broadcasting partner until the end of the series.
Bowling became extremely popular once ABC began airing it. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Pro Bowlers Tour typically outdrew college football and college basketball 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. The series generally aired in the winter and spring as other networks later covered the summer and fall portions of the PBA Tour. [Though in the 1990's it aired several summer stops].
On the telecasts, Burton would host taped segments in which he would give tips or interesting facts about bowling.
The final PBT broadcast was on June 21, 1997 at the St. Clair Classic 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 due to declining ratings, although CBS aired a few events during the 1998–99 season. Fox Sports Net aired some bowling 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.
[edit] Trivia
- Although the series maintained high ratings throughout most of its years, ABC opted against renewing its contract with the PBA primarily due to the overall decline of the sport in the late 1980s and 1990s. This can be attributed to changes in bowling ball technology and the fact that it became much easier to achieve higher scores, which resulted in less competition.
- Mike Aulby and John Mazza, 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.
- 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 became somewhat of a running gag about how Schenkel was absent during some of the memorable moments of the series because he was out on assignment covering other events for the network. For example, Schenkel missed the first three televised 300 games (1967, 1969, 1974) as well as the first 7-10 split conversion (1980). As his career progressed, he began covering bowling almost exclusively and thus saw many of the great moments toward the latter part of the series. Some even considered it to be a "curse" that if Schenkel was covering bowling, the bowlers would not throw a perfect game. This had some merit to it when Don Johnson rolled a 299 in 1970. He needed a strike on his final ball but only got nine.
- It was reported in newspapers that Chris Schenkel did not intend to retire after the series ended, even though he was in his mid-70s by 1997, as he wanted to earn 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 (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, which included future PBA member Kelly Kulick. Bo also called the 2007 Women's U.S. Open on ESPN alongside Marshall Holman, who developed somewhat of a friendship with Burton over the years as he was a frequent competitor on PBT telecasts.
[edit] Commentators
- (1961–1974) Chris Schenkel, Billy Welu
- (1974-1975) Chris Schenkel, various guest commentators
- (1975–1997) Chris Schenkel, Nelson Burton Jr.
[edit] Other guest commentators
On some broadcasts, either Schenkel or Burton were on assigment so other commentators filled in.
