KCOP Is Taking No Shortcuts Sunday in Marathon Coverage

If you think running a marathon is tough, you ought to try televising one.

Just ask some of those working Sunday’s Los Angeles Marathon for KCOP (Channel 13).

“We have 213 employees and at least 150 of them will be involved with the race in some capacity,” Rick Feldman, station manager, said.

Although many of the technicians and cameramen are hired from outside, about 50 KCOP employees will be on the job Sunday.

The other 100 or so will be volunteers. Some will be among the 160 volunteers at the KCOP water station at the halfway point on Hollywood Boulevard and others will be among the 80 volunteers on cellular phones, keeping race central advised of occurrences along the course.

The announcing team will be at race central, a studio at the station on La Brea Avenue near Melrose. The team consists of host Mike Chamberlin and expert commentators Larry Rawson, Toni Reavis, Cathy Griffin and Bill Rogers. All but Rogers worked Channel 13’s coverage of the inaugural L.A. Marathon last year.

Another addition is Bob Prichard, a sports physiologist who specializes in biomechanics. He will use a John Madden-type chalkboard to analyze runners’ form.

Also on hand will be Ken Young of Tucson, who runs the National Running Data Center. He is considered one of the nation’s foremost authorities on distance runners.

Thus, if there’s a surprise leader late in the race, as there was last year when Sylvia Mosqueda was the front-runner among the women before dropping out at the 19-mile mark, Young can provide immediate information.

Channel 13 also will have a full staff of reporters on the course. Regular news anchor Tim Malloy will be at the start-finish line, and colleague Wendy Rutledge, who ran in last year’s race, will ride in a vehicle this year, reporting on runners in the pack.

Others will file reports from neighborhoods and ethnic areas, such as Chinatown and Little Tokyo, along the way.

Twenty-eight cameras will be used, three more than last year. Three of them will be moving--one on the truck ahead of the leaders, one on a motorcycle following the women’s leader and one on the vehicle with Rutledge.

Three helicopters will be used to transmit the signals from the moving cameras. Also, there will be cameras atop two large cranes and another in the Goodyear blimp.

The man putting it all together is producer Phil Olsman.

Olsman, 39, a native of Kenosha, Wis., and a graduate of Southern Illinois University, has been a Los Angeles-based free-lance producer-director since 1968. He has worked sports events for NBC and various shows for production companies.

Said Feldman: “We knew when we got into this last year that we had to go outside the station to find someone with the expertise to televise a marathon. Phil came highly recommended.”

Olsman’s worst fear is rain. “Rain would mean the helicopters wouldn’t go up and we’d lose our three moving cameras,” he said.

“We have 15 stationary cameras along the route, but the moving cameras are the most important.”

Channel 13’s coverage actually will begin tonight with a half-hour preview show at 10:30, following a shortened version of the 10 o’clock news.

Sunday’s prerace coverage will start at 8 a.m. and will include the start of the wheelchair race a half-hour later. The main event will begin at 9. The coverage will end about noon.

At 3 p.m. Sunday, ESPN will present an hour of highlights in an edited version of Channel 13’s coverage. And at 5 p.m., Channel 52 will present a one-hour highlight show in Spanish.

At 8 p.m., Channel 13 will televise a one-hour wrap-up.

Besides the television coverage, KNX will provide four hours of live radio coverage, using six reporters.

Feldman said that Channel 13 got involved in the marathon last year for two reasons.

“We were the only independent station in town without a sports identity,” he said. “KTLA has the Angels, KTTV has the Dodgers and KHJ has the Lakers. Now we’re the L.A. Marathon station.

“The other reason was to supply a platform for promoting our news team of Tim Malloy, Wendy Rutledge and Mike Chamberlin.”

Last year, the station’s outlay was all in production costs. There was no rights fee. This year there is.

“(But) last year we lost money,” Feldman said. “This year it looks like we’ll make money.

“But we’re not doing this just to make money. If we were, we could cut corners on production and increase our profit. But our main goal is to put on a quality show.”

Said Olsman: “We want to sustain the interest of the viewer throughout the telecast. I think we can do this by covering the stories about the runners in the pack. We won’t be just covering the leaders.”

Olsman has produced a lot of feature material--more, he said, than can ever be used.

Olsman, Feldman and others involved are hoping for a higher Nielsen rating than the 13 last year’s race drew. That’s hoping for a lot, though. Nobody figured last year’s telecast would do anywhere near that well.

“We were expecting maybe a 5 or 6,” Feldman said. “I can vividly remember the moment when I called New York and was told the rating was a 13. It was definitely the high point of my broadcasting career.”

TV-Radio Notes Chick Hearn will work his 2,000th consecutive Laker game Saturday night from Utah. Is that a broadcast record? Probably not. Baseball announcer Harry Caray, for instance, claims to have never missed a day of work, not even an inning, dating back to 1946. That involves more than 7,000 consecutive games. Caray is recovering from a slight stroke in a Palm Springs hospital. . . . Former Dodger first baseman Wes Parker has been hired by KABC radio to replace Al Downing on “Dodgertalk” for road games and all Saturday games. He’ll make his debut April 9 when the Dodgers play at San Francisco. . . . CBS football commentator Pat Haden, who has yet to sign a new contract, reportedly is a candidate to replace Tim Brant at ABC. Brant recently left ABC for CBS. . . . Joe Buttitta, who has been working at Channel 11 as a fill-in replacement for Elaine Perkins the past couple of months, has been hired full-time as weekend sports anchor and weekday sports reporter. . . . Dan Avey, former King commentator, will work the team’s home games next Tuesday against Minnesota and March 11 against Buffalo as the host for Prime Ticket’s coverage. He’s filling in for the vacationing Rich Marotta. . . . Channel 2 sportscaster Jim Hill has been named honorary chairman of the Parent Drug Alert program, which involves staging workshops at Los Angeles high schools to educate parents.

HBO, which will televise the James (Bonecrusher) Smith-Mike Tyson fight March 7, will preview the Marvin Hagler-Sugar Ray Leonard fight in a one-hour special next Wednesday at 9:30 p.m. . . . On the undercard of the Smith-Tyson fight will be a heavyweight bout between Tyrell Biggs and David Bey. . . . The Hagler-Leonard fight April 6 will be televised on closed-circuit and pay-per-view cable by Choice Channel and Prime Ticket. . . . Tyson will be the subject of a one-hour special on ESPN Sunday at 7 p.m. . . . Recommended viewing: ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” Sunday includes taped coverage of the Race Across America, a 3,107-mile bicycle race from Huntington Beach to Atlantic City, N.J. There are 26 competitors in the race. Something new this year was the use of Super 8 video cameras by several riders’ support crews. ABC used a production crew of 30 to tape the event.

Two Dodger specials will be televised by Channel 11 this weekend. “The 25th Anniversary of Dodger Stadium,” with Ross Porter as guide, will be shown Saturday at 8:30 p.m. “The Blue of ‘62,” an hour show about the 1962 Dodger team, will be shown Sunday at 9 p.m. Also included is footage of the recent “dream game,” between the ’62 Dodgers and ’62 Giants, played at Phoenix to benefit the Phoenix Memorial Hospital fund. . . . As expected, ABC has hired Bobby Unser as an auto racing announcer. His first assignment will be the Phoenix 200, where he will work the pits. Unser formerly worked for NBC. . . . The prize money for bowling a 300 game during ABC’s coverage of the True Value Open Saturday is $200,000, double the usual amount.