New Link for Golf: Desert Scramble Is on Pay-Per-View

Is it worth $12.95 to watch Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, Greg Norman and Ian Woosnam play golf on TV?

Promoters of the $300,000 Desert Scramble, in which Nicklaus and Trevino will square off against Norman and Woosnam, think it is.

The telecast from the Nicklaus-designed Cochise Golf Course at the Desert Mountain Resort near Scottsdale, Ariz., will be shown live on pay-per-view cable, a first for golf, Monday at 4 p.m. and repeated at 7. Either showing can be ordered right up until air time.

“This is turning into a nice little event,” said Rick Kulis, president of Torrance-based Choice Entertainment, which will distribute the show nationally to cable systems representing 6.5 million homes.

In the Los Angeles market, 20 systems, with 625,000 homes, will carry the telecast.

Terry Jastrow, ABC golf producer and also president of Santa Monica-based Jack Nicklaus Productions, which is producing the telecast, said the golfers will wear microphones.

“Being able to hear them banter back and forth makes this a special telecast,” Jastrow said.

“Not having the intrusion of commercials is also a plus. We’ll insert tips and other programming along the way that we couldn’t do on a regular telecast.”

Kulis and Jastrow said the venture will be profitable if they have at least a 1% sign-up. That translates to 65,000 subscribers nationally.

In the Scramble format, each player drives and then the teams select the preferred shot and play from that point.

The announcers will be Dave Marr of ABC and Renton Laidlaw of BBC.

Baseball galore: Round-the-clock baseball is what a proposed cable network will offer if Peter Ueberroth has his way.

The commissioner has announced plans for such a 24-hour network, which would begin operation in 1990.

“It would come on with the first game at noon Eastern time and would not go off until 2 a.m. or (when) the last West Coast game ends,” Ueberroth said. That’s 9 a.m. until 11 p.m., Pacific time.

When there were no live games, there could be tapes of the previous day’s games, minor league games, highlight films, scoreboard shows and scrolls of box scores and averages, according to Ueberroth and Bryan Burns, baseball’s senior vice president for broadcasting.

The network would be part of basic cable, meaning that viewers would not have to pay an additional fee for the channel.

Games played by local teams could be blacked out to avoid interference with local stations, and an out-of-town game could replace it in that market, Burns said.

Add baseball: Planning is in a preliminary stage, and the proposed network’s start depends in large part on how negotiations with ABC and NBC go. Those negotiations are scheduled to be held late this year or early next.

Baseball’s contract with those networks will expire after the 1989 season.

Cable networks such as ESPN and HBO have already expressed interest in televising baseball and will be represented in the next negotiations.

A lot of people probably will say that a 24-hour baseball network will never work. But then a lot of people once said that about ESPN, too.

Some early-season baseball observations:

--The Angels’ on-the-job training program seems to be working. Ken Brett’s play-by-play is vastly improved over last season. But then cynics will say there was a lot of room for improvement.

--Baltimore Orioles announcer Jon Miller and former player Kurt Bevacqua, who worked last Saturday’s Dodger-Atlanta game for NBC, did a commendable job. Miller was Eric Tracy’s radio guest on “Dodger Spotlight” and treated listeners to his impersonations. Miller does Scully as well as Scully does himself.

--It seems, generally speaking, that Dodger fans have gotten used to Ross Porter. The mail coming this way regarding Porter is mostly positive. That couldn’t be said a few years ago. To the Dodgers’ credit, they stuck by Porter in his early years on the job, despite criticism.

--Is NBC partial to the National League? It may seem that way at times--the West Coast gets the Chicago Cubs and the Pittsburgh Pirates Saturday--but American League teams will soon be appearing, too. NBC’s main game on Saturday, April 30, will be Cleveland at Oakland. But Los Angeles will get the Angels at Toronto that day.

Bad decision: HBO announcers Jim Lampley, Larry Merchant and Sugar Ray Leonard were as shocked as everyone else that Las Vegas judges scored last Saturday’s Marlon Starling-Mark Breland fight a draw.

Merchant was still baffled several days after the fight. “It boggles the mind that a judge could have actually given the fight to Breland,” he said. “He fought like a wet noodle.

“Over the years I have seen few really bad decisions. But this was one of the worst I’ve ever seen.”

Comeback: Former Buffalo Bill and Raider wide receiver Bob Chandler, who got away from sports to spend two years as the co-host of Channel 2’s “2 on the Town,” is getting back into sportscasting.

He recently did a feature for ESPN on the Rams, looking ahead to the National Football League draft, and he will file reports from Dallas during ESPN’s draft coverage Sunday. Also, CBS has expressed interest in him as a football commentator.

“The time away from sports was good for me,” Chandler said. “It was tough adjusting to being a non-player. But now I’m a sports fan again.”

Add football draft: ESPN’s draft coverage Sunday will begin at 9 a.m. and run through 4 p.m. Chris Berman will serve as studio host and will be joined by former Bronco Tom Jackson and Sports Illustrated’s Paul Zimmerman.

Among those reporting from various locations, besides Chandler, will be the Sporting News’ Howard Balzer, who will be stationed at Rams Park in Anaheim. The Rams have 5 of the first 47 picks.

The new Z Channel was dealt a blow this week when U.S. District Court Judge Manuel Real ruled that the pay-cable service could not televise commercials during its Dodger and Angel telecasts.

Z Channel, formerly a local channel transmitting via a microwave system, expanded its base by going to satellite transmission on April 1. But that change violated terms of Z Channel’s contracts with HBO and four major film suppliers.

The suppliers threatened to cut off Z Channel’s movie supply and Z Channel sued, claiming that the suppliers were trying to squelch competition.

Real upheld his April 1 decision in which he said that Z Channel could use satellite transmission but could not show commercials during Dodger and Angel telecasts, since selling advertising also violates the terms of Z Channel’s contracts with the movie suppliers.

Z Channel is considering an appeal.

TV-Radio Notes

Golden State’s Don Nelson will serve as a commentator for TBS during the National Basketball Assn. playoffs. . . . Prime Ticket will televise the Lakers’ first two playoff games against San Antonio next Friday night and May 1. . . . ABC’s Long Beach Grand Prix coverage last Sunday, blacked out in Los Angeles, will be shown by Channel 7 Saturday at 12:30 p.m. . . . ABC begins its Olympic trials coverage Sunday when it televises the men’s marathon trial, the New Jersey Waterfront Marathon. Channel 7 will show the race at noon, a delay of two hours. . . . Because of Sunday’s NFL draft, Channel 2 is expanding its “Sunday Sports Final” show this weekend by 15 minutes.