CBS Puts Together Tribute to Glieber, to Show Saturday

A tribute to CBS sportscaster Frank Glieber, who died Wednesday at the age of 51, will be televised Saturday before the Denver-Utah NBA playoff game at 11:30 a.m.

Glieber had been scheduled to announce the Lakers’ game Sunday at Portland at 12:30 p.m. He will be replaced by Verne Lundquist, who will work with commentator James Brown.

Valid excuse: Lee Trevino will be missing from the NBC announcing team covering the MONY Tournament of Champions at Carlsbad this weekend. Instead, Trevino will be competing.

The announcing team will be Charlie Jones, Bob Goalby, John Brodie and Jay Randolph. Said Trevino: “I hope I win by 12 strokes, and then we’ll see what kind of announcer Charlie is when he has nothing to talk about.”

The final round Sunday will be televised at 1 p.m., which is later than usual. Saturday’s coverage will also start at 1.

Channel 7 sportscaster Ted Dawson is doing a five-minute sports news and commentary show for radio station KLOS-fm (95.5) weekdays at 8:20 a.m.

It has also been reported that Dawson may soon go back to doing the 6 and 11 p.m. sports news for Channel 7, with Harold Greene returning to news and newcomer Gene Washington moving into the 5 p.m. sports slot. Dawson, however, said he is unaware that such a change may take place.

Channel 7 news director Terry Crofoot said: “We are not contemplating any personnel changes at this time.”

Add Channel 7: The recent addition of Washington means that the station has eight sports reporters under contract. Besides Dawson and Greene, there are field reporters Bob Chandler and Dwight Stones, weekend sports anchor Ed Arnold, reporter Lynn Swann, who currently isn’t working for the station because of his USFL assignments with ABC, and reporter Kiki Vandeweghe, who is expected back soon, since the Lakers are about to put an end to his basketball season.

No other L.A. station has more than three sports reporters, and some have only one or two.

Channel 4 has three--Fred Roggin, Stu Nahan and Andy Liscano. Channel 2 also has three under contract, with Tony Hernandez, who had been free-lancing at the station, having just signed. The others are Jim Hill and Roy Firestone.

The most overused gimmick in local sports television news in recent years has been the live remote reports:

“And here, live from Dodger Stadium, is Stu Nahan.” Nahan: “Here’s my good friend Tommy Lasorda. How ya’ doing, Tommy? How’s the wife? How are the Dodgers going to do tonight?” Heavy stuff.

Well, Channel 4, for one, is cutting back on live remotes.

“People don’t want to just see two talking heads,” Channel 4’s Roggin said. “We think we can use the time more effectively by showing highlights or a meaningful feature. Not to say interviews aren’t important, but there has to be a reason for the interview, something specific to talk about.”

Peter O’Malley’s secretary called the Communicom cable company the other day to order Dodgervision for her boss, according to a Communicom salesman. Sorry, she was told, Communicom doesn’t carry Dodgervision. It is one of a number of cable companies in Southern California not offering the Dodgers’ pay-per-view package.

About 3,000 season packages of 20 games, costing $85, have been sold.

Meanwhile, 15,510 San Diego cable subscribers have bought the Padres’ 41-game package, which costs $120. For San Diego’s home opener against the San Francisco Giants, the Padres had another 5,627 order the game on a one-time basis.

The Padres estimate that a total of 395,000 have watched the six pay-per-view games televised so far this season.

The Dodgers’ next pay-per-view game will be Wednesday night against St. Louis. The next one for the Padres will be the same night against Pittsburgh.

The UCLA-Pepsi Invitational track meet May 18 will be televised on a same-day, tape-delayed basis on ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” rather than on NBC, which had been carrying it. NBC dropped the UCLA meet in favor of the Bruce Jenner meet May 25 at San Jose City College.

Sean McManus, NBC vice president in charge of sports programming, said that one reason for the dropping of the UCLA meet was the International Amateur Athletic Federation’s offer of a package deal of Mobil Grand Prix events to NBC. The Jenner meet is part of that deal. The UCLA meet is not.

McManus said it would be too costly to cover both meets. “The production costs for track meets are very high,” he said.

Other IAAF-Mobil Grand Prix events that NBC will carry include the World Cup marathon at Hiroshima, Japan, and the Grand Prix finals at Rome. The marathon was run April 14 and will be televised May 26 as a one-hour special, the same day the Jenner meet will be on. The Grand Prix finals will be held Sept. 7 and televised the same day.

McManus said that another reason for passing up the UCLA meet was the lack of a commitment from Pepsi to buy commercial time.

Meet promoter Al Franken said he wasn’t told that NBC wouldn’t be carrying his meet until early March. “I thought all along we had a deal,” Franken said. He was fortunate to sell the meet to ABC at such a late date. But Franken said the rights fee ABC is paying is considerably less than the one NBC would have paid.

Notes If you enjoy horse racing, Saturday is your day. You can start off by watching the pre-Kentucky Derby races at Churchill Downs live at 8 a.m. on ESPN. Then you can check out ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” at 12:30 p.m. On the program besides the Calgary Stampede rodeo will be taped coverage of today’s Kentucky Oaks, in which Earl Scheib’s Fran’s Valentine is running, plus a Kentucky Derby preview. The preview seems a little unnecessary since ABC will have plenty of pre-Derby coverage, beginning at 1:30 p.m. Post time isn’t until 2:38 p.m.

Recommended viewing: “The No-So-Great Moments in Sports,” with host Tim McCarver, will be televised by HBO Sunday from 10 to 11 p.m. It’s sort of an in-depth blooper show, with moments such as Roy Riegels’ wrong-way run, California’s kickoff return against the Stanford band, Rosie Ruiz in the Boston Marathon, the early years of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Also included are the antics of Bob Knight, Woody Hayes, John McEnroe, Billy Martin, Ty Cobb and Morganna Roberts. You’ve probably seen much of the footage, but it’s all nicely packaged in this show, and there are also some interesting interviews.

Radio beat: Are you ready for a track meet on radio? Yes, KWNK 670, the Simi Valley station heard almost nowhere, is covering Saturday’s USC-UCLA meet at Drake Stadium. The three-hour coverage will begin at 1:30 p.m. Anchoring the coverage will be Randy Rosenbloom, with former UCLA women’s Coach Scott Chism and announcers Pete Arbogast and Fred Wallin providing reports from the field. . . . After the track meet, Rosenbloom will head for Pauley Pavilion to announce the 7:30 p.m. NCAA volleyball championship game for KFOX-fm 93.5. . . . Add KWNK: Because there was much uncertainty about the Express’ future, the team lost some radio sponsors. So, for now, only KWNK will carry the games.