New Z Channel Set to Carry Baseball Beginning April 3

On Jan. 12 came word that a new sports and movie pay-cable channel would begin operating in the Los Angeles area in April and would carry 35 home Dodger games and 35 home Angel games.

Since then, the people involved in this project, which began as joint venture between American Cablesystems and Philadelphia-based Spectacor, have been working without much fanfare toward a target date of April 3, the day of the final Freeway Series game.

Initially, the new company called itself American Spectacor, but after merging with the Santa Monica-based Z Channel in late January, it became simply the new Z Channel.

Spearheading the project is Spectacor, which is owned by the Ed Snider family of Philadelphia, and Joseph M. Cohen, who founded the Madison Square Garden network and the USA cable network.

Spectacor owns the Spectrum in Philadelphia and the Flyers and, in 1976, started PRISM, a Philadelphia sports and movie pay-cable channel which it sold in 1983.

Z Channel, since the merger, has been increasing its subscriber base and, according to Cohen, will be available to more than a million of the L.A. market’s 4.6 million homes by April 1. Before the merger, Z Channel was available to 619,000 homes.

Z Channel now costs about $12 or $13 a month on most systems. The new Z Channel, offering both movies and baseball, probably will cost only a dollar or two more per month. The price will vary from system to system.

A promotional campaign will begin this weekend. Some newspaper ads will carry Z Channel’s baseball schedule, and others will list the cable companies offering the channel.

Down the road, Z Channel is planning to televise other sports. Negotiations are under way with the Clippers for games next season. Boxing is among the other possibilities.

The Clippers, by the way, signed a new 3-year deal with Channel 5 this week.

Add Z Channel: The endeavor has its skeptics, including Prime Ticket co-owners Jerry Buss and Bill Daniels.

Buss said: “There are normally about 21 baseball games on TV a week. What’s the difference between 21 and 23? Not enough to pay extra for.”

Daniels said: “If they get really lucky and the Dodgers win the National League pennant and the Angels win the American League pennant, they’ll only lose a couple of million.”

Cohen said: “I don’t count Daniels’ money, and I don’t think he should count ours.”

However, Buss and Daniels, as well as Cohen, downplay the competitiveness between Prime Ticket and Z.

Cohen said: “We aren’t in competition with Prime Ticket because we do business differently. We have a different cost structure and a different programming structure.”

Cohen said he thought there is room for both services in this market. “We wish them well,” he said.

Buss and Daniels said essentially the same thing about Z Channel.

The big difference between the two services is that Prime Ticket, which carries only sports, is offered by cable companies as part of the basic service to subscribers, whereas there is an extra charge for Z Channel.

Prime Ticket and Z Channel executives may say they are not in competition, but they sure are when it comes to acquiring rights.

Prime Ticket would love to have the Dodgers and Angels, and Z Channel would love to have USC and UCLA.

While Cohen was negotiating with the two baseball teams, he was also negotiating with the two universities.

But Prime Ticket won that battle, signing a new multiyear deal with USC and UCLA a little more than a month ago. And instead of simply sending out a press release to announce it, as it probably would have under normal circumstances, Prime Ticket held a press conference at the Forum.

Buss, Daniels, Prime Ticket President Tony Acone, USC Athletic Director Mike McGee and UCLA Athletic Director Pete Dallis were all on hand.

Last add Z: The channel’s Angel announcers, as reported earlier, will be Joel Meyers and Joe Torre.

The Dodger announcers will be Tony Hernandez, Channel 2’s backup sports anchor who wasn’t even considered a candidate a couple of weeks ago, and Rick Monday.

Why Hernandez? Because Jim Lampley, a longtime friend of Cohen, went to bat for his Channel 2 colleague. Also, Cohen was impressed with Hernandez’s audition tape.

Don Drysdale was considered a candidate for the play-by-play job at one time, but Cohen said Drysdale’s radio commitments to the Dodgers took him out of the running.

Cohen also talked to Steve Garvey about becoming the commentator, but it didn’t go much beyond that.

TV-Radio Notes

CBS should take some lessons from ESPN on when to cut from one basketball game to another. CBS’s cutting hasn’t been very sharp, to say the least. Thursday night, CBS teased its audience during the Villanova-Kentucky telecast by showing a little of the Duke-Rhode Island game. But during the critical last minute of Duke’s one-point victory, CBS was away on a commercial break. Somebody fell asleep at the switch. . . . Brent Musburger and Billy Packer will be the announcers on tonight’s National Collegiate Athletic Assn. tournament doubleheader--North Carolina vs. Michigan at 5 p.m., followed by Arizona vs. Iowa around 7. . . . The announcers for this weekend’s regional finals will be: Saturday, Tim Brant and Bill Raftery on the East and Dick Stockton and Billy Cunningham on the Southeast, and, Sunday, Verne Lundquist and Tom Heinsohn on the Midwest and Musburger and Packer on the West.

Sports Illustrated’s Curry Kirkpatrick, working as a commentator for the first time last Saturday, was well prepared and offered a number of interesting tidbits, but his inexperience as a broadcaster showed. Making an NCAA tournament game his first assignment wasn’t a good move. . . . Heinsohn, meanwhile, seems more relaxed doing college games than he did during the National Basketball Assn. championship series between the Lakers and Boston Celtics last season. For one thing, he doesn’t have to weigh each comment, wondering if it is too pro-Celtic. Heinsohn is no great commentator, but making matters worse was CBS putting him in an awkward position by having him work games involving the Celtics.

Versatility Department: Tim Ryan, who regularly does boxing and pro football for CBS, was doing college basketball last weekend, and this weekend he is working the World Figure Skating Championships at Budapest. Ryan, who grew up in Toronto and graduated from Notre Dame in 1961, used to be a hockey announcer both at New York station WPIX and at NBC in the ‘70s before NBC dropped the sport. He was been with CBS since 1977.

Ryan said he was a hockey player as a kid in Toronto. “If you were a figure skater, you were a sissy,” he said. His appreciation for figure skating, however, has grown over the years. He worked the World Championships last year as well. “It’s really a fascinating sport,” he said. “I wish we had the time to show all the psyching out that takes place at the practices and during the warmups.” . . . Ryan will work with Scott Hamilton and Judy Blumberg this weekend as CBS devotes seven hours to the World Championships, including two hours of prime-time coverage Saturday night from 8 to 10, when Katarina Witt and Debi Thomas square off again.

Another major event on television this weekend is the Players Championship golf tournament at Ponte Vedra, Fla. ESPN will televise today’s second round at 1 p.m., and NBC will show Saturday’s round at 1 p.m. and Sunday’s at 11 a.m. NBC will use 21 cameras to cover holes 3 through 18. Vin Scully will be the telecast host, and Charlie Jones will be stationed at the difficult 17th hole to, among other things, count the balls going into the water. NBC will even use Bob Costas on golf for the first time. “It’s our major,” said NBC spokesman Kevin Monaghan. . . . Speaking of Costas, his “Costas: Coast to Coast” Sunday night show is sorely missed since KMPC dropped it. KFI is scheduled to pick it up this fall.

Fresno’s Vic (the Brick) Jacobs, rumored to be a candidate to replace Rick Monday at Channel 11, says he has not been contacted by the station. . . . Channel 4’s Mike Smith, who is leaving the station next month, is starting a video company in San Diego with National League umpire Paul Runge. . . . The Dodgers will be profiled in a 5-minute piece on ESPN’s “SportsCenter” show tonight. . . . Mel Allen looks ahead to the baseball season Sunday at 10 a.m. on Channel 4. Allen’s “This Week in Baseball” premieres Saturday, April 2, at noon on Channel 4.

Recommended viewing: Iditarod sled-dog racing highlights on ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” Saturday at 4:30 p.m. . . . New Raider Coach Mike Shanahan will be Russ Bolinger’s guest on the “Sunday Sports Wrapup” show on KIK-FM Sunday night from 7 to 9. A few Raider players will also be on the show.