Mavericks Provide CBS With a Game to Televise Saturday

CBS owes a debt of gratitude to the Dallas Mavericks, since their victory over the Lakers Thursday night ensured the network of a basketball game to televise this weekend. Game 7 will be Saturday at 12:30.

Had the Lakers won, and the Detroit Pistons eliminated the Boston Celtics tonight in a game that will be televised live by CBS at 6, CBS would have been left with nothing until next Tuesday, when the championship series begins.

If the Celtics manage a victory tonight, Game 7 of that series will be Sunday at 10 a.m.

Brent Musburger seems to have toned down his act a bit, but the problem with Thursday night’s CBS telecast was a hyperactive director. As is too often the case on network television, there was just too much camera-switching.

Routinely, viewers got, boom-boom-boom, a close-up of a player, a close-up of one coach, then the other, then a crowd shot, then a . . .

Come on, CBS, tell director Bob Fishman to relax a little.

Jim Spence, the former No. 2 man at ABC Sports, was in town recently to promote his book, “Up Close and Personal,” and one of the subjects he addressed was the future of sports on television.

“I think the day is coming when most major sporting events will be on pay-per-view,” Spence said. “That’s where the big money will be.”

Television seems headed in that direction, which brings up this question: How much will viewers pay for an event?

The fee for last year’s Sugar Ray Leonard-Marvelous Marvin Hagler fight started at $30, and went to a then-record $40 on the day of the fight.

Promoters of the Mike Tyson-Michael Spinks pay-per-view telecast June 27 are recommending to cable operators that they charge $35 until June 20, then $40 through June 26, and, on fight day, $50.

The promoters of the telecast in California, from Bakersfield south to San Diego, are United Media Entertainment of Denver, which also owns the rights in a 10-state area, plus Cox Cable of San Diego and Cable Promotion Partners, which consists of Prime Ticket co-owners Jerry Buss and Bill Daniels.

Together, this group paid $2.7 million for Southern California TV rights.

Even at $40 or $50 a pop, to break even, sources say, at least 125,000 Southern California cable subscribers need to buy the fight. The telecast will be available in about 1.1 million homes in the area.

The Hagler-Leonard fight attracted 110,000 Southern California subscribers. But Rick Kulis, the president of Torrance-based Choice Entertainment, paid only $1.4 million for that fight, so Kulis’ company realized a nice profit.

Kulis also bid $1.4 million on Spinks-Tyson but lost out to United and its partners. Kulis, however, did win the rights to the Hawaii market.

Add Spinks-Tyson: The high price of the fight is designed to offset the high rights fee. But what it may do is force cable subscribers to team up with neighbors and hold a block party, with everyone chipping in. And that could hurt overall sales.

Actually, $50 isn’t so bad when you consider ringside seats at Trump Plaza in Atlantic City, N.J., the site of the fight, are $1,500.

The fight will also be shown at closed-circuit establishments throughout the nation where cable is not prevalent, but in Los Angeles closed-circuit showings will be limited to a few bar-restaurants and hotels, such as the Irvine Marriott, where tickets will be $35.

HBO, which will show a tape of the fight later, will also produce the live pay-per-view and closed-circuit coverage. So the announcers will be HBO’s Jim Lampley, Larry Merchant and Leonard.

Because Butch Lewis, Spinks’ manager, is being sued by HBO for $8 million for pulling his fighter out of the pay-cable network’s heavyweight tournament, he is making things tough on HBO. Lewis is not giving HBO access to Spinks.

HBO had to put together a 45-minute special, “Countdown to Tyson-Spinks,” without talking to Spinks, or members of his camp. Even so, it’s still a good show. It was televised Thursday night and will be repeated Saturday at 8 p.m.

Add pay-per-view: Monday night, the Thomas Hearns-Iran Barkley middleweight title fight at the Las Vegas Hilton will be televised on pay-per-view cable and SelecTV. Most companies are asking $14.95.

The undercard, which features Virgil Hill vs. Ramzi Hassan in a light-heavyweight title fight and Roger Mayweather and Harold Brazier in a super-lightweight title bout, will begin at 6 p.m. The main event is scheduled for 8.

The announcers will be Steve Albert and Gil Clancy, with Jim Hill serving as host. ESPN’s Al Bernstein will handle the wrapup.

Olympic rehearsal: Sunday’s Las Vegas Sports Invitational, a made-for-TV event that has amateur athletes competing in gymnastics, swimming, bicycling and boxing, and Sunday’s Pepsi track and field meet at UCLA, will be used by NBC as a practice for Seoul.

NBC will have the announcers and technicians it will use in Seoul working their specialties. The four hours of coverage will begin at 1 p.m., a delay of two hours.

The announcing team on the Pepsi meet will be Charlie Jones, Frank Shorter and newcomer Dave Sims. Sims, a former sportswriter in Philadelphia and New York, is now the host of a popular radio sports-talk show on WNBC in New York.

NBC will call the Pepsi meet simply the UCLA Invitational. The reason: Pepsi didn’t buy any commercial time.

You’re welcome: This thank-you note arrived this week from Channel 5’s Keith Olbermann: “Just wanted you to know that since your last article on me, two more stations have called to inquire as to my availability, so thanks for the publicity.”

ABC got sort of a bum rap for switching from last Monday’s rain-delayed game between the Dodgers and New York Mets to a game between the Oakland Athletics and the New York Yankees.

The move made sense at the time, because it was important that ABC got off the air in the East by 11:30 p.m., in time for Ted Koppel’s “Nightline” program on President Reagan’s visit to the Soviet Union.

As things turned out, the Oakland-Yankee game went 14 innings and ended an hour later than the Dodger game.

The bottom line is that there are more important things than a regular-season baseball game.

Where ABC may have erred was not continuing to feed the Dodger game into Los Angeles. Instead, ABC gave the announcers and most of the crew working the Dodger-Met game the rest of the night off.

TV-Radio Notes

Excerpts from Jim Spence’s hard-hitting book appear in the current TV Guide. Spence, during his stopover in Los Angeles, said he has no regrets. “I was honest and candid in the book,” he said. “My aim was to write something that would interest a reader in Dubuque.” . . . The Desert Scramble, the pay-per-view golf event held April 25 in Scottsdale, Ariz., which pitted Jack Nicklaus and Lee Trevino against Greg Norman and Ian Woosnam, will be televised by Channel 2 in two parts Saturday and Sunday at 3 p.m. both days.

Rick Kulis of Choice Entertainment, who handled the distribution of the Desert Scramble and who has also been involved in a number of major boxing pay-per-view programs, is also the owner of an indoor football team, the Las Vegas Aces. The Aces are a member of the World Indoor Football League, a rival of the Arena Football League. The Aces, coached by former Monroe High and Stanford quarterback Guy Benjamin, will begin play June 16.

According to the May Nielsen sweeps ratings, Fred Roggin’s “Sunday Night Sports” is the top-rated show of its type in Los Angeles. It averaged a 7.7 rating during the May sweeps. Channel 7’s “Jim Hill Sports” averaged a 6.0 and Channel 2’s “Sunday Sports Final” pulled a 5.7.