NBC Hasn’t Gotten On Track Covering the World Finals

NBC has been in less than championship form with its coverage of the track and field World Championships, which continue through Sunday.

Last Saturday’s first telecast was full of glitches and snafus, some NBC’s fault, some not. Worst was the way the confusion at the end of the 10,000-meter run was handled.

Some of the runners, led to believe they were on their last lap when actually they had one more to go, began sprinting.

This caught the eye of the NBC announcers, but unfortunately the Italian television cameras covering the event remained focused on winner Paul Kipkoech of Kenya. So what the announcers were talking about couldn’t be seen.

Then the announcers failed to clear up the confusion.

Also, viewers were told little about Kipkoech beyond the fact that he was a 24-year-old member of the Kenyan army. Didn’t anyone at NBC know that Kipkoech finished fifth in the 5,000 in the 1984 Olympics or that he was second in the cross-country World Championships in 1985 and again this year?

On Sunday, NBC did some sneaky editing, moving the 100 meters to the end of the three-hour telecast to hold viewers, then was lax when it failed to edit out a vulgarity by Ben Johnson during a taped interview with Dwight Stones.

Johnson, in the interview, said: “I don’t talk . . . “

There was no valid reason for not deleting it.

Also on Sunday, Charlie Jones got carried away by Johnson’s record-breaking performance in the 100 meters. Sure, the time of 9.83 seconds was great, but no reason for Jones to lose his poise. “Ya gotta love it,” screamed Jones.

Right out of the Ted Dawson school of broadcasting.

Commentator Missy Kane is blonde and has a cute Southern accent, but mostly all she does is jabber.

Evelyn Ashford, on the other hand, imparted insight during her brief stint on the air Sunday. She doesn’t talk as smoothly as Kane, but she has something to say.

Larry Rawson, NBC’s so-called track expert , Sunday said that East German high jumper Susanne Beyer, who finished third, wasn’t even in the top 50 in the world last year.

Not true. She was 14th in the world last year. Her name then, however, was Susanne Helm. She has since married. Expert Rawson should have known.

Generally, a lot more information could be passed along. So much is left out, and not because of time limitations.

NBC has found time to have Dick Enberg doing ridiculous David Letterman impersonations, but it can’t find time to do meaningful features.

Maybe NBC thought Sunday’s investigative report on the Ecclesia Athletic Assn., which lasted eight minutes, was meaningful. It wasn’t.

On Tuesday night, Enberg did what could have been a nice feature on an Italian triple jumper whose left arm has been weakened by polio, but the piece was too brief and shallow.

And Wednesday night’s off-day show was wasted on a round-table discussion over lunch. It might have worked had features and recaps been included in the show, but there were none. Just talking heads, and clanging dishes.

“Heidi” revisited: It doesn’t quite rank up there with the 1968 National Football League game between the New York Jets and Oakland Raiders which NBC cut away from to show the children’s movie, “Heidi,” but what the USA cable network has been doing with its U.S. Open coverage is pretty bad.

In an exciting opening-round match Tuesday night, Boris Becker, down 2 sets to 0, came back to win the next two and was leading Tim Wilkison, 1-0, in the fifth set when USA signed off at 8:24 p.m. PDT.

USA had to leave the Open because, contractually, it can’t cut into CBS’ 11:30 highlight shows, and 8:24 in the West is 11:24 in the East.

The next night, USA left the action even earlier, at 8 p.m. PDT, long before the end of Pat Cash’s rain-delayed loss to Peter Lundgren. The conclusion at 12:45 p.m. EDT wasn’t even seen on CBS, since the network kissed off the West Coast by not updating the show it had televised three hours earlier in the East.

It was a double fault by USA and CBS.

Distant signals: Anyone outside the immediate Southern California area in a position to hear both the Ram and Denver Bronco radio broadcasts last Saturday night could find a striking contrast in the two networks.

The Broncos have a strong flagship station, KOA in Denver, and are also carried on KSL, a powerful station in Salt Lake City.

That doesn’t say much for the Rams’ radio network, which has weak-signaled KMPC as its flagship station and only 19 other English-language stations. The Broncos also have a network of 50 stations.

One good thing about listening to the Bronco broadcast last Saturday was getting Bronco announcers Bob Martin and Larry Zimmer, who were objective and informative. Zimmer, the commentator, offered insight about both teams.

Insight is something you don’t get much of from Ram commentators Dick Bass and Jack Youngblood. Bob Starr is solid as the Ram play-by-play announcer, but his partners laugh a lot and tell you little.

TV-Radio Notes There will be five college football games televised Saturday. The best of the bunch probably is Stanford at Washington on Channel 7 at 1 p.m. This is not an ABC game. It is being syndicated to 13 West Coast stations by GGP Productions of San Francisco. The announcers will be Mike Barry of San Francisco and former Ram quarterback Bob Lee. . . . UCLA’s football opener at San Diego State Saturday night at 6:30 will be televised live on pay-per-view cable in San Diego and shown on a one-day delay Sunday at 7:30 p.m. by Prime Ticket in Los Angeles. . . . Saturday, Prime Ticket offers Cal State Fullerton at Hawaii live at 10:30 p.m. . . . USC’s opener at Michigan State Monday will be nationally televised by ABC at 5 p.m. PDT. The announcers will be Keith Jackson and ABC newcomer Bob Griese, who has replaced Tim Brant. . . . Brant, now at CBS, will be the play-by-play announcer on the Rams’ regular-season opener at Houston on Sunday, Sept. 13. His partner will be Hank Stram. . . . ABC’s first Saturday college telecast will be Notre Dame at Michigan Sept. 12 at noon. The same day, ESPN will televise UCLA-Nebraska live at 2 p.m. Prime Ticket will show UCLA-Nebraska the following day at 5:30.

The Rams and Raiders will play their final exhibition games Saturday. The Raiders’ 1 p.m. game against the Chicago Bears at the Coliseum will be televised by Channel 7 at 11:45 p.m. Saturday, and the Rams’ 6 p.m. game against Washington at Anaheim will not be televised. The Rams are the only team in the NFL without an exhibition season television package. . . . “The John Robinson Show,” absent from the airwaves since 1984, returns this season to Channel 2 with a new host, Jim Lampley. The first show will be televised Saturday, Sept. 12, at 9 p.m. . . . Former Channel 7 sportscaster Ted Dawson has been hired by CBS affiliate KDFW in Dallas. His first day will be Monday. . . . Fran Tarkenton has been hired by WTBS, which becomes TBS next week. Tarkenton will work on the Sunday night “Sports Page” shows, which are televised at 8 p.m. PDT. Tarkenton makes his debut this Sunday, previewing the NFL season. . . . The NFL season will also be previewed in “NFL Update ‘87,” a one-hour show produced by NFL Films and televised by Channel 4 Saturday at 3 p.m.

Attention tennis fans: A half-hour show, “Champions of the Future,” will be televised by Channel 2 Monday at 11 a.m. Young tennis stars are the focus of this show with co-hosts Jim Simpson and Tracy Austin. Among those examined are Michael Joyce, 14, of Los Angeles. . . . Attention high school sports buffs: ESPN’s “Scholastic Sports America” returned this week at a new time, Wednesdays 4:30 p.m., PDT. The season’s second show next Wednesday focuses on young athletes in the Soviet Union. This show was put together by an ESPN crew which accompanied an American high school all-star basketball team to the Soviet Union earlier this year. . . . Surprise visit: Tom Lasorda, at the Channel 11 studios taping an upcoming “Hollywood Squares” last Sunday night, stunned Channel 11 sportscaster Rick Monday when he walked onto the set while he was showing highlights (or lowlights) of the Dodgers’ latest loss. After some good-natured bantering, Monday told Lasorda: “Get outta here.”