ON SUNDAY, following the Jets-Cardinals game on Fox, history will be made when close to 200 of the top bass fishermen in the country will compete on network television for big bucks.
This marriage between a network and competitive bass fishing was inevitable: With the growth of the sport it was almost a foregone conclusion that some network would give it a shot. The question is, will anglers, or non-anglers for that matter, want to watch someone catching a fish?
There are more than 55 million people in this country who fish every year, and Fox Sports is betting that a sable chunk of those folks will be tuning in. It should work when you consider the viewer numbers sports events such as golf and NASCAR racing get. You don’t have to play to get involved – my father used to love to watch golf and he never hit a ball in his life.
Fox will be broadcasting the $3.6 million Ranger Millennium Bass Tournament from Cypress Gardens, Fla., and while some parts of the country will be seeing this live we get it on tape (at approximately 4:30 p.m.) because the Jets are playing at 1 p.m.
“A number that is hard to ignore is that over 55 million people in the United States consider themselves anglers,” said Ed Goren, Executive Producer for Fox Sports. “Noting the high-profile companies already signed to sponsor this event, it is marketing-friendly. That’s exactly what they were saying about NASCAR just a few years ago.”
The production end of this is huge as Fox will be employing a small army of radio-frequency camera crews to follow each finalist during Sunday’s championship round, and will catalogue every moment of the champion angler’s day.
Joe Buck and Bob Brenly, two veteran baseball announcers for Fox, will be doing the play-by-play. Since this is the first time out of the box for an event like this, it will be interesting to see how these guys approach a professional fishing tournament. Brenly said he fished as a youngster, drifted away from the sport, then got hooked on it again when he was catcher for the San Francisco Giants. Buck is a novice, but that could work for him, since he will be learning along with everyone else and won’t get too technical.
The format for the bass tournament is designed specifically for television, with the full field of anglers competing for two days. The top 50 anglers from each division (professional and amateur), based on accumulated weight, advance to the second round of competition tomorrow. The field will be cut at the end of tomorrow’s competition, and the top 10 professionals will move on to Sunday’s championship round.
The winner will be going home with at least $400,000 and the prize could reach $1 million if the winning angler has met each of the event sponsor’s bonus cash requirements.
A bass tournament is a lot like being in the army: It’s always hurry up and wait. You have these super-powered bass boats that get to speeds of 60-70 mph and when the angler gets to a spot he thinks holds fish, he then patiently casts and waits until he gets a bite.
I don’t have any doubt that this event will draw viewers from Montana, Texas or Arkansas, but will it fly in the big markets of New York or Los Angeles? That remains to be seen. You can bet on one thing, if the numbers are good on Monday, there will be meetings at all the networks on Tuesday about getting in on professional bass fishing.
