Strike Up the Band, Here Comes Parade of College Football

College football will get into full swing Saturday, with the television picture at least a little clearer than it was last season.

In June 1984, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision voiding the NCAA’s tightly constructed television contracts with ABC and CBS. What that did was create an open market--and chaos.

Under the old system, the NCAA held its members on a tight rein. They could make only three live TV appearances, two if they had made three the previous year. Only networks could carry games live. Local telecasts had to be tape-delayed.

Last season, after the Supreme Court decision, there was live college football on TV every Saturday, from early morning until late at night. Often there were several games on at a time.

The selection benefited the viewers, but not the colleges. The big money suddenly disappeared.

The glut of college football drove the ratings down, and advertisers paid less than they were expected to, or, in some cases, dropped out. Syndicators who paid more for TV rights than they should have, lost money--and some went out of business.

TCS/Metrosports, the Pacific 10 syndicator, was one of those. The conference collected only $2.5 million of the $3 million it had coming from TCS/Metrosports, and subsequently filed a suit in an effort to collect the remaining $500,000.

Another syndicator, Katz Sports, defaulted on a $2.9-million deal with the Big Ten.

Although many of the syndicators that were around last season have fallen by the wayside, there will still be almost nonstop college football on every Saturday this season, mainly because of Ted Turner’s WTBS, which has beefed up its schedule.

WTBS will televise games involving Southeastern Conference teams and Southern independents in the morning or early afternoon, then will show a 5 p.m. game involving teams from the Pac-10, Big Ten or Athletic Coast Conference. All WTBS telecasts will also be carried by Channel 13.

CBS, meanwhile, will televise morning or early-afternoon games involving teams from the Pac-10, Big Ten and ACC. CBS has separate deals with the University of Miami, Army and Navy.

ABC will televise games involving teams outside the Pac-10 and Big Ten that make up the College Football Assn.

CBS has already announced much of its schedule, and ABC will announce its schedule as the season progresses. Donn Bernstein, ABC’s college sports coordinator, said: “We have a bigger inventory of games, so it’s prudent that we wait and see which games will be the best.”

The USA cable network will televise a CFA game at 9 a.m. every Saturday. ESPN, meanwhile, will televise a 4:30 p.m. game every Saturday, and these will compete with the 5 p.m. telecasts of WTBS.

Said Bernstein: “I think WTBS’ move to night-time football is a careless one. We at ABC have found college football does not fare well on Saturday nights. Plus, WTBS’ audience is being fragmented by the ESPN package.”

The money that college football will earn from television this season is considerably less than it would have been had things remained the way they were before the Supreme Court decision.

ABC’s Bernstein figures that under the old system, the total would have been at least $92 million. ABC and CBS would have each chipped in $36 million, with WTBS offering up another $20 million or so, Bernstein said.

Under the current system, this season’s total television gross will be about $55 million, according to Bernstein. That breaks down to $15 million from ABC, $13 million from CBS, $12 million from ESPN, $10 million from WTBS, $1 million from Telstar (a syndication outfit that packages the Big East, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh and Syracuse), $1 million from Raycom (which packages the Big Eight and Southwest conferences) and about $3 million from assorted other syndicators.

“The ones who are really losing out now are the small fries who used to share in the TV revenue even if they didn’t get on,” Bernstein said.

Pac-10 schools, meanwhile, earned a little more in 1984 than they did in 1983, but figure to make less this season than in either of the previous two.

For the 1983 season, the Pac-10 earned about $7 million from TV, and last season, it earned about $7.25 million, even though it lost $500,000 when TCS/Metrosports went bankrupt. This season, with USC banned from TV and no separate package, Pac-10 schools will gross only about $6.25 million, with $4.25 million coming from CBS and $2 million coming from WTBS.

Notes Saturday’s UCLA opener at BYU will be televised live at 4:30 p.m. by ESPN. . . . Saturday’s USC opener at Illinois, which begins at 11 a.m., PDT, will be televised by the Satellite Programming Network (SPN) at 8:30 p.m. and again Sunday by Channel 2 at about 4 p.m., after U.S. Open coverage. . . . SPN, which will televise Illinois football on taped-delay all season, is carried by the following cable companies: Group W in Buena Park, El Monte, Fullerton, Gardena, Santa Monica, Seal Beach, South Gate, Torrance and Lompoc; Falcon in Pasadena and Riverside; Western in Compton; Rogers in Garden Grove; Pacific Cable in Hungtington Beach; Tribune Cable in Lakewood; Western in South El Monte; Santa Barbara Cable; and Coachella Valley Cable in Banning.

UCLA’s radio announcers this season are Joel Meyers and Bob Steinbrinck, both full-time KMPC employees. Kent Derdivanis, who handled the play-by-play two years ago and shared duties with Meyers last season, was asked to be the commentator this season. He declined. Meyers reportedly was moved into the full-time play-by-play slot because KMPC wanted to him to get more recognition for promotional reasons. . . . The Trojans’ radio voices on KNX will again be Tom Kelly and Fred Gallagher.

USC’s five-year contract with KNX, that covers both football and men’s basketball, will pay a total of $1.46 million. But that’s nothing compared to the radio deal the University of Washington recently made with Seattle radio station KIRO. It will pay $5.42 million over three years, or about $1.8 million a year, which is more than double what any other school gets from radio. Nebraska gets $700,000 per year for radio rights, Ohio State $550,000 and Oklahoma $500,000. . . . Speaking of college basketball, Channel 2 will televise, live, 19 games involving Pac-10 teams. Seven of those games will involve UCLA, five will involve USC, and one, on Jan. 29, will involve both. UCLA’s nonconference game at North Carolina Nov. 24 will be the package opener, then 18 conference games will be shown starting Jan. 4. . . . Where they are now dept.: Former Ram Les Josephson is a radio commentator on Arizona football games. Ray Scott is the play-by-play announcer and former Arizona State and Arizona coach Ed Doherty the other commentator. . . . Cal State Fullerton’s home football games this season will be televised by Titan Cable, which is available in Anaheim, Fullerton, Placentia and Santa Ana. The announcers are Eric Nelson, Bill Robertson and Wes Morgan. Titan Cable will also carry basketball and other Cal State Fullerton sports.

TV fights: Marvis Frazier vs. Jose (Nino) Ribalta on ESPN next Wednesday, Larry Holmes vs. Michael Spinks on HBO Sept. 21, and a doubleheader, Marvelous Marvin Hagler vs. John (The Beast) Mugabi and Thomas Hearns vs. James Schuler, Nov. 14 on pay-per-view cable TV. The doubleheader, which promoters are calling a double-hitter, is being distributed to cable companies by Choice Channel of Century City. . . . The Rams’ Nolan Cromwell and the Raiders’ Mike Haynes will alternate as co-hosts with Bob Elder on a new Channel 56 show, “Chalk Talk ‘85,” which will make its debut this weekend. “Chalk Talk ‘85” will be shown at 11:30 a.m. every Saturday and repeated at 9 the same evening. . . . Another new Channel 56 show is “Sports on the Go,” with Elder and Barbi Mitchell, on Sundays at 10 a.m. The first show, televised last Sunday, was filmed at C.J. Brett’s in Hermosa Beach, a restaurant and sports bar owned by George Brett and his brothers. . . . Golden Gater Productions, a Bay Area syndicator, has the rights to the 5th Avenue Mile, which will be run Sept. 28 in New York and will feature Sebastian Coe. GGP’s Steve Barr said Channel 7 will televise the race the following day at 4 p.m.

Pro football Sunday: San Francisco vs. Minnesota on CBS at 10 a.m., San Diego vs. Buffalo at 1 p.m. Channel 39, San Diego’s NBC affiliate, will also televise Seattle vs. Cincinnati at 10 a.m. Channel 4 is limited to one game because the Rams and Raiders are at home. . . . ABC will open with an attractive Monday night matchup, Washington at Dallas. NBC’s radio coverage on Monday nights will usually be carried by KMPC, but because the Angels play Kansas City Monday, KLAC will carry the football game.