December 2, 1995 – Austin American Statesman – This Day in Bowling History
BY RICHARD LORANT
Associated Press
BOSTON — Every Saturday morning for 38 years, thousands of New England TV viewers have been tuning in to watch a cheapo-looking production from a bowling alley.
Sweating contestants on “Candlepin .Bowling” vie for a share of $1,200 in prize money as their loved ones and other spectators cheer from a set of bleachers behind them.
But now the show is about to bowl its last frame. The beloved “Candlepin Bowling” is going off the air Jan. 27.
“Name another show that’s been on for 38 years. You can’t,” said Phil Rubin, who has produced it for most of that time. “Old Faithful the geyser is always there, and ‘Candlepin Bowling’ is always there.”
WCVB, Boston’s ABC affiliate, said it was forced to cancel the show to pump more money into its news operation. It’s shopping the show around to other stations, but there are no takers yet.
Candlepins is a regional variant of bowling that uses thin pins and balls small enough for an adult to palm. Players get three chances instead of two to knock down 10 pins, and pins in the alley are not swept away between shots.
News that the show is on its way out was met with dismay from dozens of league bowlers at Fairway Bowling in Natick, where the program has been taped for two decades.
“Everything stops at my home on Saturdays. I don’t answer the telephone anymore,” said Eleanor Bartholomew of Needham, one of the Ten O’clock Rollers who bowls every week at the 40-year-old lanes. “If I miss it, I tape it,” added Barbara Herber of Natick, another Roller.
Half the program’s audience consists of women older than 50, like Bartholomew and Herber, and nearly all the viewers are older than 35, WCVB says.
The show draws an average of 178,000 viewers and consistently rates in the station’s top 10 sports programs of the weekend, said WCVB research director Adri-enne Lotoski. Sometimes it draws more viewers than the Red Sox or the Celtics.
Part of the show’s appeal is that it has remained a constant in a changing world. Loyal viewers watched when Joe Cawlina hammered strikes in the 1950s, and when Tom Olszta picked up tough spares in .the 1990s. They watched all-time women’s standout Stasia Czernicki, and they’ll be watching her son John on the final broadcast next month.
And they watched Don Gillis, who was hired to do color for the first live broadcast in 1958 and took over the host’s duties a decade later. Gillis, still the host at 73, said he understands WCVB’s decision. In 1958, the station wouldn’t pick up the show until the Massachusetts Bowling Association agreed to underwrite part of the costs.
“The station said all right, but we’ll only guarantee it will be on 13 weeks,” Gillis said. “Here we are, talking about its demise nearly 40 years later.”