Television Outlook : There Will Be a Lot of Bouncing Basketballs

Once again, the airwaves will be filled with college basketball this season. Some of the games will be shown on different outlets than in the past, but the overall picture hasn’t changed much.

CBS will televise 28 regular-season games, plus the NCAA tournament. Among the games on CBS’s schedule are St. John’s at UCLA Dec. 14, USC at Washington Jan. 11, USC at Arkansas Jan. 25, UCLA at Arizona State Feb. 15 and UCLA at Oregon March 8.

NBC will televise 22 regular-season games, including UCLA at Notre Dame Jan. 18, UCLA at California Jan. 25, UCLA at Louisville Feb. 1, Washington at USC Feb. 8, UCLA at USC Feb. 22 and DePaul at UCLA March 1.

ESPN, meanwhile, will again be the major carrier of college basketball. There are 116 regular-season games on ESPN’s schedule, down from last season’s 127. But there will be more prime-time and live telecasts. At least 95% of the ESPN telecasts will be shown live, and 80% will be shown in prime time. Last season, 63% of the telecasts were live, and 54% were in prime time.

ESPN also will televise 20 NCAA tournament early-round games.

Six conferences will be featured on a regular basis on ESPN--Atlantic Coast Conference (28 games), Big East (25), Metro (10), Pacific 10 (10), Sun Belt (8) and Southeastern (8). North Carolina and Maryland each will have nine appearances, St. John’s and Georgia Tech six each.

The USA cable network will offer 30 games. USA’s package last season included 38 games. USA will televise the semifinals and finals of both the Big Apple NIT preseason tournament Nov. 29 and Dec. 1 and the postseason NIT March 26 and 28.

The Big Apple NIT final, which is being syndicated by the Mizlou Network, also will be carried by Channel 9.

Pepperdine is among the 16 teams in the preseason NIT. The Waves play Kansas in a first-round game at Denver tonight at 8, PST. The game will be televised by Channel 63, the new Ventura station, as well as on Storer Cable (Channel 6) in the Conejo Valley and on Falcon Cable (Channel 8) in the Malibu area.

The same outlets will also televise Pepperdine’s road games against SMU Dec. 20 and DePaul Jan. 9.

In two important changes this season, Prime Ticket Network, Jerry Buss’ new all-sports cable channel, will televise at least 25 games and Channel 2 will televise a 19-game package of Pacific 10 games--11 involving either USC or UCLA.

Prime Ticket opens its college basketball schedule tonight with the USC women’s game against BYU at 5:45 p.m. at the Sports Arena. Next week, Prime Ticket will televise Washington State at Pepperdine on Tuesday at 8:15 p.m. and then USC at Syracuse on Friday at 5 p.m.

Prime Ticket also will televise Cal State Long Beach at UCLA next Saturday. PCAA powers Nevada Las Vegas and Fresno State will both make several appearances on Prime Ticket, as will USC and UCLA.

Prime Ticket also will televise the Rainbow Classic from Hawaii, which features NCAA defending champion Villanova, Dec. 27-28.

Channel 2’s package, produced by the Lorimar Sports Network, opens Sunday with UCLA at North Carolina at 4 p.m. That game also is being nationally televised by ESPN, but the ESPN telecast will be blacked out in much of the Los Angeles area.

Channel 2’s next telecast won’t be until Jan. 4, when Oregon plays at USC. On Jan. 5, Oregon State at UCLA also will be televised on Channel 2.

WGN, the Chicago superstation, will televise 41 games. Its schedule features 16 DePaul games and 15 Illinois games.

WTBS, which carried primarily Southeastern Conference games last season, will not televise any college basketball this season, but the “SCORE SportsWatch” show on the Financial News Network will offer some SEC games on a one-day tape-delayed basis.

The Satellite Programming Network will televise Oral Roberts home games, a package produced by the Roy Englebrecht Co. of Fountain Valley.

The season will be previewed on a CBS special, “NCAA Basketball: the Road Starts Here,” Saturday at 2 p.m. Billy Packer and Jim Nantz will co-host the show live, with feature reports coming from Brent Musburger, Gary Bender, Pat O’Brien and James Brown.

Topics include top-ranked Georgia Tech, various recruiting scandals, Kansas Coach Larry Brown, USC’s Cheryl Miller and new Kentucky Coach Eddie Sutton.

ESPN offers a one-hour special, “Dial Dick Vitale,” Tuesday night at 7:30. Viewers will be invited to calls ESPN’s studio at Bristol, Conn., to talk with Vitale about college basketball. Jim Kelly will host the show.

CBS, in the midst of a four-year contract, will televise the NCAA tournament this season and the next. Negotiations on a new contract probably will take place sometime after this season, and NBC hopes to be part of it. If not, NBC may quit televising college basketball altogether.

“We want to stay in college basketball, but we’re facing a situation where we might, and I emphasize the word might, have to pull back our involvement entirely if we can’t get a piece of the tournament action,” said Tom Merritt, an NBC spokesman. “It means that much to us.”

NBC was also miffed when CBS signed an exclusive contract last May with the Big East Conference that will go into effect next season. The contract prevents NBC from televising any Big East games.

NBC’s Merritt said that CBS might have hurt itself with that deal. “CBS is required to give the Big East 20 exposures,” he said. “That doesn’t leave them many for covering all the other conferences.”