BY JOHN FAY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Channel 12's broadcast of the Bengals exhibition opener went a whole lot better for the station than it did for the Bengals.
The production was crisp. Play-by-play man Brad Johansen was solid. And analyst Sam Wyche showed why CBS is putting him back in the booth. My one major complaint about the broadcast was Wyche's reluctance to criticize. He explained away too many of the Bengals' problems by saying it was early.
The games switched back to Channel 12 this year after a year on Channel 5. That isn't as big a change as you might expect. Channel 12 signed long-time producer-director Lou Rainone to do the games. Rainone did the games for 5 last year, so the production was the same quality, plus having a New York crew helped.
The only glitch was a problem with the sound at the beginning of an interview with assistant coach Jim Anderson. (Overall, the interviews with assistants about battles for certain positions were a nice touch.)
But the switch from Channel 5 to 12 meant Johansen replaced George Vogel as the play-by-play guy. Johansen, the sports director at 12, was like Vogel in that he hadn't done any play-by-play recently. In fact, Johansen had never done football and his play-by-play experience was limited to doing basketball games for the campus radio station at Bradley as a student in the early 1980s.
He had no trouble adjusting.
Johansen's style isn't flashy. He tells you what's going on without being too wordy. His call of the Giants first touchdown -- "Tiki Barber. Inside. Touchdown" -- illustrated that.
It was obvious Johansen knows the Bengals. He and Wyche also were in synch, never stepping on one another's words.
ONE COMPLAINT:
Johansen almost always says the quarterback "hits his man," rather than saying, "Blake hits Pickens." He did this so much with the Giants you wondered if he knew their receivers.
One of things that was nice was there was equal excitement in his voice when the Giants made a play as there was when the Bengals did.
Johansen seemed to sense that Wyche was not going to criticize the Bengals and started doing so himself. He summed up the Bengals halftime performance thusly: "The Bengals are starting abysmally again."
You didn't hear anything like that out of Wyche, who sounded like Sam the Coach. He tweaked the referees constantly but didn't blame the players even when they clearly screwed up.
When the Bengals went down 24-3, he said: "Come on, Cincinnati, don't run off the field with your head down." You had the feeling Bruce Coslet might have had something more pointed to say.
Wyche really missed the significance of Jeff Blake's struggles. The Blake-Neil O'Donnell battle is the story of the Bengals preseason. Wyche obviously knows this. It was clear he spent plenty of time with the Bengals coaches.
Wyche picked up on the quarterback battle a little bit during the second half. When O'Donnell was forced to throw the ball away on fourth and 1, Wyche said: "When you're analyzing the quarterback situation, that's a situation when Jeff Blake excels. Right there, he'd make a play."
But then a little later, he said: "It's not a fair time to judge Neil O'Donnell right now."
Wyche's worst moment was when he said rookie Randy Moss was with the Detroit Lions twice. Moss is with Minnesota.
But, as Sam would say, it's early. Anthony Munoz will join Wyche and Johansen for the next three exhibition games.
REPEAT PERFORMANCE:
Fox Sports Ohio will rebroadcast the Bengals - New York Giants game tonight at 7. FSO will also rebroadcast the third and fourth exhibitions. The Detroit game will air Monday, Aug. 24, at 7 p.m. The Atlanta game will air Sunday, Aug. 30, at 7 p.m.
John Fay covers TV/radio for The Enquirer. He can be reached at 768-8445.
