Abc Beginning To Take On Look Of Espn Junior

TV sports

ABC Sports is starting to look a lot like ESPN. ESPN executives and voices are mating with ABC, its Walt Disney Co. sibling. Already, Chris Berman is host of the “Monday Night Football” halftime show, Robin Roberts is host of “Wide World of Sports” and John Saunders is host of the college football studio show.

Starting early next year, Mike Tirico, with all of two seniors golf telecasts behind him, will replace Brent Musburger as ABC’s golf host. There’s more: ABC has shifted Joe Theismann and Mike Patrick, the voices of ESPN’s Sunday night NFL telecasts, to the NFL wild-card playoff game Dec. 28, replacing Musburger and Dick Vermeil, who will be busy with bowl games.

Steve Bornstein, president of ESPN, who replaced Dennis Swanson atop ABC Sports last spring, growls at the notion of the ESPNization of ABC Sports.

True, ESPN Radio’s Fabulous Sports Babe hasn’t replaced Chris Schenkel on bowling, but there is no doubt ABC is tapping ESPN to improve ABC.

“We’re contemporizing ABC Sports and enhancing our presentation,” Bornstein said. “I’ll do everything I can to improve our product. I don’t care if it comes from Mars, CBS, NBC or Fox we’ll use it.”

And, he said, as the need arises, more ESPN folks will time share on ABC.

Given ESPN’s power, it is no surprise ESPN is influencing ABC Sports. Why not? It’s bigger. It’s on virtually all the time. It’s a renowned brand name. The theme of “SportsCenter” is no doubt better known to young viewers than Jim McKay’s famous words that introduce “Wide World of Sports.”

ESPN is the sports maw. It has three networks, pay-per-view and on-line businesses. Save for “Monday Night Football,” ABC is a weekend enterprise.

Bornstein vows to reassert the former potency of “Wide World,” improve production of NASCAR races and upgrade golf, adding analyst Curtis Strange. “We’ll have the best golf coverage around,” Bornstein said.

The changes at ABC have most notably hurt Musburger, a good corporate soldier at $2.2 million a year through 2001. But he has been flayed by viewers and golfers. He was miscast as the host of the too-short halftime program on “Monday Night Football.” Now his role has been cut to the No. 2 college football guy and the quiet one beside Dick Vitale on college hoops.

What hurt Musburger most, said Todd Musburger, his brother and agent, was hearing about his diminished workload through press leaks.

“On balance, he’s been treated very fairly at ABC and has thoroughly enjoyed his 6 years there,” Todd said. “It’s unfortunate he learned of Steve Bornstein’s decisions in columns or from other people in the industry. Brent won’t miss a step because management failed to perform the way it should have.”

Bornstein praised Musburger as “an important part of the ABC family, whose contribution is very big.”

“Would I have rather talked to Brent before he read things in the paper?” he said. “Yes. Were we remiss on that? Yes.”

But Bornstein did not seem ready to anoint Musburger the successor to Keith Jackson on college football. Jackson has threatened to retire in two years.

“As long as Keith wants to stay, I want him,” he said.