Angels Celebrate 25th Anniversary in a Special Way

Anniversary special: This season marks the Angels’ 25th anniversary, and a one-hour special, “Angels’ 25th Anniversary: Heaven Can’t Wait,” will be shown on Channel 5 Monday at 8 p.m.

The show, with Dick Enberg as host, will chronicle the Angels’ major league history and include guest appearances by owner Gene Autry and past and present stars. The show was produced and directed by Michael Linder and written by John Wiebusch. David L. Simon is the executive producer.

Another Anniversary: Next Tuesday will mark the fifth anniversary of the USA cable network. After 2 1/2 years as the Madison Square Garden Sports Network, USA was launched on April 9, 1980, and has evolved from a part-time, all-sports network to a 24-hour-a-day service offering broad-based entertainment.

Sports will account for about 20% of the network’s programming this year, with more than 250 events scheduled. They include the National Hockey League, college football and basketball, weekly boxing, early-round Masters coverage and the French and U.S. tennis opens.

The executive producer of sports for the USA network is Jim Zrake, a 1970 UCLA graduate who worked for Channel 5 and later as a free-lance sports producer in Southern California before taking his current job four years ago.

The USA network’s sports coverage gets particular attention at this time of year because of its early-round Masters coverage--the tournament is next week--and its national coverage of the NHL playoffs, which will also open next week.

USA’s contract with the NHL will expire after this season, but Zrake said from his New York office that he expects his network and the NHL to reach a new agreement. “We are going after it very aggressively,” Zrake said.

Zrake said he sees his network’s sports role remaining somewhere in the same general area. “We will probably stay at about 20% sports, but we hope to upgrade the quality as we grow,” he said.

Last Add Anniversaries: Next Thursday marks the fifth anniversary of ESPN’s weekly Top Rank boxing series. Commentator Al Bernstein appeared on the second show of the series and has been a part of the show ever since. He was a part-time analyst until mid-1982, when he took over as ESPN’s only boxing analyst.

Bernstein, with Al Michaels, will work the pay-per-view and closed-circuit telecasts of the Marvin Hagler-Thomas Hearns fight April 15.

The year is 1990. The Raiders, playing the San Diego Chargers at the Coliseum, are leading by two touchdowns late in the game. They have third - and - one at the Charger 40 , an obvious running situation : Pick up the first down while killing the clock. But the quarterback, deciding to fool the Chargers, drops back and throws a short pass for the first down. The Chargers aren’t the only ones fooled. So are all the QB1 players watching on TV, who are now cursing the quarterback.

QB1 is a yet-to-be released video game that could change the way people watch football on television and, to some degree, the way the networks cover it.

It is played during a live football telecast, with the object being to correctly predict the type of play the quarterback is going to call.

The game is the brainchild of brothers Pat and Dan Downs, who, along with Los Angeles Express President Don Klosterman, founded National Telecommunicator Network, Inc., two years ago. Home Box Office, a division of Time, Inc., put up $1 million for the development of QB1, and other investors have followed.

Pat Downs is a former business manager of the San Diego Padres, and Dan Downs is a former assistant general manager of the Houston Oilers. Their game, which has been approved by the NFL, will be introduced in restaurants and taverns later this year, with full consumer introduction scheduled for 1986.

They are currently testing QB1, inviting various groups to their Carlsbad office two or three times a week to watch USFL telecasts and play the game.

The way television now covers football is frustrating to a QB1 player. For one thing, it is irritating when a director is fooling around with a sideline shot instead of showing the offensive formation before the ball is snapped.

Before each play, a QB1 player has to select what he thinks it will be. A player can keep it simple and pick any type of run or any type of pass.

Or he can get more complex, and call, say, a long pass to the right. If he’s right, he gets more points, but if he’s wrong, he stands to lose more. His score is quickly computerized and shown on a separate screen.

Playing QB1 makes one more likely to watch a game intently and stick with it until the end. During a recent testing session, a 31-13 victory by the Arizona Outlaws over the New Jersey Generals, none of the seven participants lost interest. Quite the contrary. The excitement lasted until the final play.

Channel 9 will carry all of the Kings’ road playoff games, beginning next Wednesday and Thursday nights at Edmonton.

Notes The final two rounds of the Nabisco-Dinah Shore golf tournament will be carried live this weekend by NBC, which is televising the LPGA tournament for the eighth straight year. Anchoring the coverage will be Charlie Jones and Lee Trevino. Reporting from key vantage points will be John Brodie, Jay Randolph, Marlene Floyd and Mary Bryan. ESPN will have NBC-produced coverage of the second round today at noon. . . . Baseball previews: NBC will look ahead at the season in a one-hour special Saturday at 12:30 . Bob Costas will be the host of the show, which also will have highlights of the Pizza Hut All-Star softball game played at Sarasota, Fla., just before the start of spring training. The game pitted National League stars against American League stars. . . . Johnny Bench will preview the season in a special on Channel 4 Sunday at noon. . . . Channel 2’s Jim Hill and Roy Firestone will preview the Dodgers and Angels in a half-hour special next Thursday night at 7:30. The show will be rebroadcast at 11:45 p.m.

Doctor J now has his own show. “Julius Erving’s Sports Focus” made its debut on ESPN last Tuesday. The show, which focuses on athletes who make good role models for youngsters, is produced by ESPN in association with New Focus, Inc., whose president is former UCLA basketball player Ralph Drollinger. . . . NBC’s Merlin Olsen is currently working on a pilot, “Father and Sons,” about a Little League baseball team. Olsen plays one of the three principal fathers. Another father in the pilot, being made by 20th Century Fox for NBC, is played by Ricky Nelson, who has more experience playing a son.

The Lakers will be on CBS Sunday. Their 12:30 p.m. game against Portland at the Forum will be the second half of a doubleheader. In the first game, at 10 a.m., New York will be at Boston. . . . The Spanish International Network’s World Cup soccer coverage will begin this weekend. A South America Group 2 qualifying match between Chile and Ecuador, played March 17, will be shown on Channel 34 Saturday at 4 p.m. On Sunday at 1:45 p.m. there will be a same-day delayed telecast of Uruguay against Chile, another Group 2 qualifying match. Commentary will be in both Spanish and English. . . . NBC’s first Saturday baseball telecast of the season will be San Diego at Atlanta April 13. . . . CBS radio, which is offering extensive coverage of the Masters next week, will broadcast 16 special golf reports this weekend. Jim Kelly will do the reports at 40 minutes after the hour on KNX 1070 Saturday and Sunday.