A lone warrior, Ben Clark plows his way through the pack of towering behemoths. His arms pump like pistons. His legs are a blur. Rumbling, bumbling, stumbling, recovering, he blasts forward. Finally, triumph is his.
The television cameras catch it all -- the beads of sweat, the tortured brow, the glory. Clark's image is beamed to living rooms across the country, to devoted fans cheering from couches.
The sandy-haired dynamo from Richmond, Ind., is, after all, U.S. Grand Master National Champion.
Of jump-rope jumping.
Five million people watch "The Lawrence Welk Show" nationally on PBS every weekend -- 1 p.m. Sunday on Maryland Public Television -- according to Margaret Heron, syndication manager for The Welk Group in Santa Monica, Calif. "We're the most popular show on public television with people over 55," she says gaily.
There hasn't been a new episode of Welk's show since ABC canceled it in 1971. Welk died in 1992. "Lawrence had a wonderful band, wonderful dancers," Heron says. "It's good, wholesome family entertainment.
If you thought football owned the weekend, consider: A food infomercial. A women's movie. The U.S. Amateur Jump Roping Competition. Lawrence Welk.
There are real, live Americans who are not football fans. Television networks are trying to make sure they broadcast shows these non-fans will find appealing.
ABC's "Monday Night Football" often ranks in the top five prime-time shows of the week. On Sept. 27, 18.3 million people watched the San Francisco 49ers beat the Arizona Cardinals, 24-10. In comparison, on a recent Sunday afternoon, as 10.7 million people watched NFL football on CBS, 3.3 million watched a NASCAR Winston Cup race on TNN, and 318,000 watched the 1999 Fitness Universe Pageant on ESPN.
Click. Two women and a man dressed in black and glittery gold Lycra spring about a stage doing a routine to techno music that is part aerobics, part gymnastics and part Vegas showgirl. They bounce. They throw their ankles behind their ears. They smile through gritted teeth.
Click. A bride-to-be slides a lacy white garter up her thigh as a young woman narrates: "Mom was practically a virgin. Dad was the only man she ever made love to."
The size of the audience is not as important as its composition, says Stephen A. Greyser, a professor of consumer marketing at Harvard. "The idea is that when there is major programming of a definable type -- e.g. sports -- on several stations, one competes with it by having something very different that would attract a different kind of demographics. Even if the size of the audience is moderate, there would be advertisers who would find that desirable."
