THE ART OF LOCAL $PORT$CA$TING

Huh?

Jim Hill--the man KABC-TV Channel 7 hired away from KCBS-TV Channel 2 at a reported $750,000 a year for reasons that remain unclear--was ending a report last week on the Dallas Cowboys being the first NFL team to undertake voluntary AIDS testing.

Although all the players “passed,” Hill reported, some Cowboys wondered what would have happened if one of them had tested positive. Not to worry. Hill added that Cowboys management vowed that in such a case, “they will indeed, help their player recuperate and, hopefully, get back on a speedy recovery. The Dallas Cowboys, once again, are the most innovative team in professional sports.”

And in medicine, apparently.

Did club officials really use those words in referring to AIDS? And if so, did Hill not wonder about them?

Is it possible that Hill, who appears in three newscasts nightly, was unaware that merely testing positive for the AIDS virus does not necessarily mean that someone has AIDS? Well, AIDS confusion does still persist.

But is it possible that Hill also did not know there is no “speedy recovery” from AIDS, that contracting the virus is a death sentence? Did he think that AIDS could be treated like a pulled hamstring, or was it just a slip of the tongue? And, finally, how was it possible that co-anchors Jerry Dunphy and Ann Martin--after hearing their station’s new sports director err--did not gently correct him? On the contrary, the $1-million-a-year Dunphy compounded things by capping Hill’s report on AIDS with the following segue to the weather report:

“And we only hope the doctors are as hot as some of the weather we’re going to be talking about.”

Ugh!

Money doesn’t always buy much these days. Norman Corwin had it right when he wrote a terrific little book several years ago gloomily titled “Trivializing America: The Triumph of Mediocrity.”

“Mediocrity is a business, like making low-quality shirts for low-income consumers at a low price,” and different from others only because it transcends all layers of society, Corwin noted in one chapter. America is the only nation that celebrates mediocrity, he continued, “the only country where mediocrity rules by fiat, as in the structured mediocrity of most of commercial television, and the planned obsolescence of many manufactured products.”

Corwin gave a wonderful example: then Sen. Roman L. Hruska defending G. Harrold Carswell, Richard Nixon’s ultimately rejected choice for U. S. Supreme Court justice, who had been accused of being mediocre.

“Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers,” argued Hruska, a Nebraska Republican. “They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance?”

It’s a long jump from Supreme Courting to sportscasting. But let’s try anyway, for the Carswelling of local sportscasting has been relentlessly spreading, fungus-like, almost since the inception of modern TV itself.

As art, local sportscasting is generally painting by the numbers. There are at least a couple of TV Carswells in every city, and Los Angeles has always had more than its share. The coming of Hill to Channel 7, for example, was accompanied by the going of Ted Dawson from the same station, Sneezy leaving the sports staff to make room for Dopey.

Considering the spotty record of sportscasting here, therefore, connoisseurs of the genre should be on their feet applauding Channel 2’s hiring of former ABC sportscaster Jim Lampley as Hill’s replacement starting next month. Lampley is simply first rate.

There will be enormous pressure on Lampley, especially on his feet, for he’ll be filling small shoes.

Although it sought to keep Hill, Channel 2 came out a winner by losing him. Hill is more recognizable here than Lampley, having been in Los Angeles for so many years. Otherwise, no contest.

Hill is a nice-looking guy who wears nice-looking clothes. His sportscasting skills end there. In fact, his too frequent misstatements (as in the AIDS report) have become his personal signature, and one can’t begin to predict the verbal adventures awaiting him in his other new assignment as co-host of ABC’s “College Football Today” starting Sept. 12.

Lampley, who quit ABC recently over a reported conflict over assignments, will also do 11 NFL games for CBS under a contract paying a reported $700,000 a year. That’s also enough to scrape by on.

If past performance is a guide, however, Lampley will bring a new dimension to Los Angeles sportscasting. He’s professional, articulate and an excellent communicator. Beyond even those qualities, though, he has a world view of sports honed from his many global assignments for ABC. Although occasionally criticized as too bland, Lampley has a sharp, playful sense of humor that may surface on a local newscast. And in contrast to Hill, he has no history of doing interviews while mentally sitting on the lap of the person he’s interviewing.

Now, there are some good people already working in local sportscasting here, people who are specialists. Funny/mean Keith Olbermann of KTLA Channel 5 may be the only sadist currently working in local sports. Scott St. James of KHJ-TV Channel 9 can be charmingly outspoken. KNBC Channel 4’s Fred Roggin gives highlights that are highlights.

Yet there is a lethal condition in local sportscasting that belies cuteness or glibness or even sports astuteness, a condition that even someone as skilled as Lampley may be unable to alter, even if he chose to.

The fact is that sportscasts are extensions of the very industry they purport to cover. They advertise, but rarely analyze; salute, but rarely cover incisively. The line separating the reporting and the reported is now almost invisible.

There is no probing. Everything is on the surface. Sportscasts are parades of soft interviews, clips and nightly statistics. Imagine if other news were covered on TV the same way:

“Full slate of world events today. Iran over Iraq, Oliver North walloped the Iran- contra committee and terrorists hung another defeat on hapless Beirut. On another front, Pretoria came from behind to clobber striking black miners and, hey, how about the fast footwork of scrappy Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in averting that clubbing in New Delhi? One of our minicam units is with him now. Thanks for being with us, Raj. Where’d you get those moves?”

Given TV’s dependence on sports for revenue, no wonder so much of sportscasting is soft. The sports industry and the reporting-sports-on-TV industry are co-mingling and incestuous, a condition fed at once by tradition and the Howard Cosell-labeled “jockocracy.” He was referring to the invasion of sportscasting by former jocks, most of whom are hired solely because of their recognizable names and implied credibility.

Some credibility.

At Channel 7, for example, Hill is a former NFL player (whose brother, David Hill, plays for the Rams). And the station’s second-string sports reporter, Gene Washington, is a former NFL player.

NFL or not, these aren’t sportscasts, they’re reunions.

On his Channel 7 premiere last week, Hill interviewed Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda who, along with several Dodger players, had already taped TV promos welcoming Hill to Channel 7. Hence, Hill’s well-earned reputation--as a benign, non-threatening sportscaster--was untainted.

A half million, $750,000 or a million, what’s the difference? Mediocrity doesn’t come cheap.