Is It Too Late for CBS to Change Showing of Game 3 at 11:30 P.M.?

Basketball telecasts that start at 11:30 p.m. should be outlawed. It’s as simple as that. What CBS is doing to basketball fans is an injustice.

Maybe Congress should get into the act. Remember, back in 1972, it was Congress that required the NFL to televise home games that sold out 72 hours in advance.

At least the NBA’s league office should do something. Can you imagine the NFL permitting one of its playoff games to be televised at midnight?

Whatever it takes, 11:30 p.m. basketball telecasts should be banished forever, especially in Los Angeles when they involve the Lakers.

Channel 2, as of Tuesday, was planning to televise Game 3 of the Laker-Houston playoff series on a tape-delayed basis Friday night at 11:30, which means that the telecast will end about 2 a.m.

Jay Strong, Channel 2’s program director, said that his station is only following a network edict. He said that only games that can determine the outcome of a series can be televised live on a weeknight. That’s unfortunate.

What Channel 2 should do is televise Friday night’s game live or farm it out to Channel 9. “We’d take the game at a moment’s notice,” Chuck Velano, Channel 9’s general manager, said Tuesday.

An 11:30 telecast doesn’t do anybody any good. Sure, Channel 2 may get a bigger audience for a delayed Laker telecast than an old movie, but the audience is an unhappy one. Only insomniacs or swing-shift workers want to watch a basketball telecast that ends at 2 a.m. But what’s worse is that most viewers already know the result.

If CBS really cared about its L.A. audience, it would back off and let Channel 2 show the game live, even though an overtime might delay the start of the season finale of “Dallas.” Or let Channel 9 show it live.

Come on, CBS, do the right thing.