It’s Closer but Still Not a Clipper Town Just Yet

Has Los Angeles become a Clipper town?

The question brought a laugh from Magic Johnson, who had a lot to do with making L.A. a Laker town.

“They’d have to win a whole lot of championships for that to happen,” said Johnson, who among other things is an NBA studio analyst for TNT. “But I think it’s great what the Clippers are doing. It’s great for the city and great for the NBA to have two teams in L.A. that are playoff caliber.

“I’m excited about next season. The Lakers showed late in the season what they can do, and the Clippers are showing us now.”

Johnson contends the Lakers did well in the first round of the playoffs against the Phoenix Suns, if you take away Game 7.

“You have to remember we almost won that series in Game 6,” he said.

In most cases, broadcasters shouldn’t refer to a team as “we,” but maybe Johnson can get away with it because he owns about 5% of the Lakers.

The Clippers’ impressive victory over the Suns in Game 2 of their second-round series Wednesday night has elevated L.A.’s “other team” to new heights.

Game 3 tonight at Staples Center can be watched on either FSN Prime Ticket, with Ralph Lawler and Michael Smith, or on ESPN. Radio coverage with Matt Pinto is available at 570.

Game 4 will be on TNT Sunday at 5 p.m., and Games 5 and 7 are scheduled for TNT. Game 6, if necessary, will be on ESPN, which does not have exclusivity in the second round. The local carrier for that game will be Channel 5, even though it is a Clipper home game. FSN West/Prime Ticket had to farm out the game because of scheduling conflicts.

Games 1 and 2 -- televised only on TNT -- got L.A. ratings of 7.6 and 6.3, respectively. Game 6 of the Lakers-Sun series got an L.A. rating of 10.0.

Those numbers indicate the Lakers still own this town. But the Clippers are gaining on them.

And Then There’s the Ducks

What do the Mighty Ducks have to do to get a decent television rating?

Game 3 of their second-round playoff series against the Colorado Avalanche on Tuesday night on OLN, a dramatic overtime victory, got a dismal 0.3 rating in L.A. It got a 5.7 rating in Denver -- and a 0.9 in the Bay Area, home to the San Jose Sharks, who are battling the Edmonton Oilers for the right to move on to the Western Conference finals. West Coast fans are hoping for a Shark-Duck showdown in the finals.

When they were on NBC last Saturday, the Ducks and Avalanche got a 5.6 rating in Denver and a 1.0 in L.A. The national rating was also a 1.0.

OLN will have all but one game during the conference finals, and the OLN telecasts will be exclusive, meaning no local carriers. And that means a lot of cable subscribers get shut out.

OLN is available on satellite -- Channel 608 on DirecTV and Channel 151 on Dish Network -- but is available in only 45% of the cable households in the Los Angeles market, which includes Orange County.

On some cable systems, such as Adelphia, it is available only to digital subscribers, which comes at a premium price.

The NHL, still reeling from last season’s lockout, should be concerned with exposure above all else. To award OLN so much exclusivity during the playoffs has proved to be a big mistake -- one that is being felt here in Southern California.