L.A. Is Frozen Out; Viewers Won’t Get to See Refrigerator

It seems that Southern California viewers never get a break.

The Chicago Bears against the Dallas Cowboys, possibly the game of the year, will not be televised here because the Rams are playing Atlanta at the same time on Sunday, 10 a.m.

The Bear-Cowboy game is being televised by CBS to 67.6% of the nation, while CBS is sending the Rams and Falcons to only 6.2%.

Los Angeles and San Diego make up most of that 6.2%.

The NFL’s TV contract requires that the Ram game be shown here. When an NFL team plays on the road, the game must be televised back to its market area.

“We don’t have an option,” said Jay Strong, Channel 2’s program director.

And if he did?

“I think we would still be obligated to bring the Ram game back into this market,” he said.

San Diego gets the Ram game, too, like it or not, because the NFL regards L.A. and San Diego as one market. It calls San Diego a peripheral market.

“We tried to get Chicago and Dallas and couldn’t,” said Christie Elwood, the program coordinator at Channel 8, San Diego’s CBS affiliate. “We’ve gotten hundreds of calls from people complaining. Some have said they’re going to drive to Arizona to watch the Bears and Cowboys.”

People in Los Angeles who want to see the Bears and Cowboys can either find a place with a satellite dish or drive to Santa Maria or Bakersfield. Santa Maria’s KCOY and Bakersfield’s KERO will show the Bears and Cowboys.

The Bears and Cowboys will also be broadcast live on KNX radio.

Then there is the case of Saturday’s BYU-Air Force game at Provo, Utah. It figures to be one of the season’s more attractive matchups. But L.A. viewers won’t get it live, and those who can’t get Jerry Buss’ Prime Ticket Network won’t get it at all.

The game, which will start at 11 a.m., PST, will be shown on Prime Ticket at 4:15 p.m.

ABC passed on BYU-Air Force because it has Penn State-Notre Dame. The possibility of an ABC doubleheader, Penn State vs. Notre Dame followed by BYU-Air Force, is negated by the network’s contract with the CFA.

ABC is limited to one telecast in order to avoid CFA games going head to head. Syndicators are given the morning slot, or window, as it is called, ABC gets the afternoon window and ESPN gets the prime-time window, which is 4:30 p.m. in the West.

ESPN made an effort to land BYU-Air Force, but BYU, understandably, wouldn’t go for a later starting time. In order for ESPN to televise the game, it would have to start at 5:30 p.m. in Provo, where weather isn’t conducive to night football.

WTBS and the USA cable network were not able to pick up the game because neither has a deal with the Western Athletic Conference, of which both schools are members.

So it was left to an independent syndicator to come to the rescue, and that’s what Curt Gowdy Productions of Cheyenne, Wyo., did. Curt Gowdy Productions, which regularly televises Wyoming and Colorado State football, agreed to sell the Air Force-BYU telecast.

Salt Lake City CBS affiliate KSL was planning to televise the game anyway, so production was no problem. But selling it was.

“We couldn’t start selling it until Monday, because ABC didn’t release it until then,” said Dave Montgomery, vice president and general manager of Curt Gowdy Productions. “That made it tough. We contacted about 150 stations, including five in Los Angeles. We sold it to 15 or 16.”

Prime Ticket was the only taker in Los Angeles.

Almost all other stations are carrying the game live. The problem with a delayed telecast is that those watching either Notre Dame-Penn State on ABC or Iowa-Purdue on CBS surely will hear a BYU-Air Force score.

John Jackson of Prime Ticket said the reason for delaying the telecast is to avoid going head to head with the games on ABC and CBS. “If the game involved a local team, we would do it live,” Jackson said.

The announcers on the BYU-Air Force game will be regular BYU television announcers Craig Bolerjagk and Chris Tunis. Curt Gowdy was planning to do the play by play but his wife is ill, so he is staying home in Boston.

New host: Steve Garvey is the latest in a long line of hosts of “Greatest Sports Legends,” which will begin its 14th season next year.

Paul Hornung was the first host, followed by Reggie Jackson, Tom Seaver, George Plimpton, actor Ken Howard, Jayne Kennedy and now Garvey. Next year’s shows are currently being taped at La Costa, which makes it nice for Garvey, who lives in nearby La Jolla.

Add Garvey: He has added TV production to the long list of things he’s involved in. He’s tied in with a company called Adventure Communications and is putting together sports specials. One is the “Penn Reels Steve Garvey Billfish Classic,” which was taped off the Kona Coast Oct. 24-27 and will be televised on ESPN at 3 p.m. Sunday, and repeated several times during the week. The Dodgers’ Orel Hershiser and the San Diego Padres’ Kurt Bevacqua are among those who took part in the event.

Another show, the “Michelob Light Steve Garvey Sports Classic,” a 90-minute tennis special taped Nov. 2 at Calabasas, will be televised on ESPN Friday, Nov. 29, at 11 a.m. And the “Steve Garvey Celebrity Ski Classic,” to be taped Jan. 10-12 in the Deer Valley ski area at Park City, Utah, will also be shown by ESPN.

Garvey is still planning to squeeze in some baseball. “I have two years left on my contract (with the San Diego Padres),” he said. “I’ll evaluate my playing career after my contract expires.”

Add “Legends”: Billy Cunningham, who quit as coach of the Philadelphia 76ers after last season, was the subject of the show being taped Wednesday.

Cunningham is an executive for a financial printing company in Philadelphia and says he’s happy. At the time of his retirement, he said: “I’m not burned out. It is just time for Bill Cunningham to move on.”

Broadcasting interests Cunningham. He worked as a commentator for CBS during the NBA playoffs in 1976 before becoming coach of the 76ers.

This season, he will work some Atlantic Coast Conference games for a syndicator, Jefferson Pilot, and also some NBA playoff games for CBS.

Notes Ratings game: The Ram-New York Giant football game last Sunday got a phenomenal L.A. Nielsen rating of 21.4 with a 49% share of the audience. The Raider-San Diego Charger game, despite going head to head with Dallas-Washington, got an impressive 16.1 with a 35 share. The Cowboy-Redskin game drew a solid 8.5 with an 18 share. . . . Monday night’s San Francisco-Denver game drew a national rating of 19.9, the highest Monday night rating of the season. . . . In college football last Saturday, Washington-Arizona State on CBS got an L.A. rating of 5.1, and Alabama-LSU on ABC got a 4.0. . . . CBS radio reports that an average of six million listeners tuned into its Saturday baseball broadcasts this season.

Prime Ticket is suffering from some of the problems common to the cable industry. Last Saturday night a cable system in Palm Desert went off the air at 11 p.m., a half-hour after the start of the UCLA-Arizona telecast. Meanwhile, a viewer in Brentwood, watching on Group W, called the Forum at 11 p.m. Saturday to report that he was getting rock videos instead of the football game. David Cortney, the Kings’ publicist, took the call and reported the problem to Prime Ticket executive producer Keith Harris, who in turn called Group W and got things rectified. . . . USC football, besides being shown on Channel 2, the Financial News Network and Prime Ticket, is also carried by cable companies in Canada and Europe. The Italian cable company that carries the Trojans reaches 14 million homes. . . . “The Lakers: a Championship Preview,” with Jim Hill as host, will be televised by Channel 2 tonight at 7:30. . . . The second edition of “Steve Landesberg/Sports Fan” will be on Channel 4 at noon Sunday.