Thanks to NFL, Viewers Gain One Game, Lose Another

The Rams’ home game against the New Orleans Saints Sunday is a sellout because the Ford Motor Co. bought the remaining 2,197 tickets Thursday. So it will be televised by Channel 2.

More good news is that Dan Fouts will be working the game with Dick Stockton. Fouts, who is in his first year with CBS, has become one of the network’s top commentators.

The bad news is that Channel 2 now will not show the 10 a.m. Chicago-Washington game. Los Angeles gets two 1 o’clock telecasts--the Channel 4 game is the Raiders at San Francisco--and nothing at 10 a.m. Why? Blame it on antiquated National Football League policies.

Because the Rams are home, neither CBS nor NBC may show more than one game Sunday. The thinking is that a network doubleheader might hurt the live gate.

Since the Ram game is a sellout anyway, it makes absolutely no sense. But that’s the greedy, stick-it-to-the-fans NFL for you.

The announcers for the Raider-49er game will be Tom Hammond and Joe Namath. You can argue who was a better quarterback, Namath or Fouts, but when it comes to being a commentator, it’s no contest--Fouts by a landslide.

Add Fouts: He has a few things going for him. For one thing, broadcasting is in his genes, since his father, Bob, used to do radio and TV play-by-play for the 49ers. As a kid, Fouts would sit in the press box and help his father by keeping statistics.

As a former quarterback, Fouts obviously knows the game, and he shows up well prepared.

“I treat broadcasting the same way I did football,” he said. “You have to be prepared for anything that might happen.”

Fouts follows the kind of work schedule it takes to do the job right. He takes Mondays off, then spends 8 or 9 hours a day the rest of the week reviewing tapes and interviewing players and coaches.

“You’ll have to pardon me,” he said during a phone interview. “While we’re talking, I’m watching a tape of the Rams’ game with the Saints a couple of weeks ago.”

Fouts, who has already worked three Ram telecasts this season, including last Sunday’s game at Philadelphia, has opinions and isn’t afraid to voice them.

“I’ve never been shy about telling people how I feel,” he said.

When the Eagles’ Andre (Dirty) Waters took a cheap shot at Jim Everett, Fouts spoke up right away. And when Stockton, who rarely criticizes anybody or anything, tried to downplay things by simply calling Waters “aggressive and intimidating,” Fouts didn’t let his partner get away with it.

“If that’s intimidation, I don’t buy it,” Fouts said. “There’s no place in football for that kind of play.”

During the interview, he said: “That was as bad as I’ve ever seen. I can’t believe (the officials) missed it.”

Last Add Fouts: Although he played for San Diego, Fouts is eminently qualified to work Ram games.

Ram offensive coordinator Ernie Zampese worked with Fouts for 8 seasons in San Diego.

“I can recognize patterns and know what they’re trying to do,” Fouts said.

And John Robinson was Fouts’ offensive coordinator at Oregon.

“We threw the heck out of the ball, and he was the mastermind behind it,” Fouts said. “The running game wasn’t his thing until he went to USC.”

Fouts and Gil Haskell, Ram running back coach, are both from San Francisco. “We’ve been close for years,” Fouts said.

Also, Fouts and receiver coach Norval Turner were teammates at Oregon.

“I know just about the whole coaching staff,” Fouts said.

About his success as a rookie commentator, Fouts said: “If someone had told me a year ago I’d be getting top assignments and working alongside Dick Stockton, I’d have thought they were crazy.

“Working with Dick has been great, and producer David Winner and director Bob Fishman have helped me a lot.”

Boxing Beat: Promoters of Monday night’s Sugar Ray Leonard-Donny Lalonde fight said there would be no re-showings. But guess what? HBO will show it Saturday at 10 p.m., Sunday at 11:30 a.m. and Monday at 11:30 p.m.

HBO had its own announcers--Jim Lampley, Larry Merchant and fill-in Kevin Rooney, who is Mike Tyson’s trainer--in Las Vegas to call the fight. This was Rooney’s second HBO assignment.

The 1 1/2-hour HBO show will include updated interviews with the two fighters. They bad-mouthed each other before the fight but carried on like best friends during tapings in the HBO studio this week.

Mike Trainer, Leonard’s business manager, insisted that the replay be kept under wraps in order to sell the fight to as many pay-per-view customers as possible. Still, the fight is expected to lose money, possibly as much as $5 million.

The problem was that Titan Sports, the distributor of the pay-per-view telecast, originally sought a 5% up-front guarantee from cable operators--meaning that operators could lose money if fewer than 5% of their subscribers bought the fight.

Many cable operators rejected that deal. Also, the asking price of $29.95 was considered too high by many.

ABC has had problems covering the New York City Marathon, and this year was no exception. There was nothing as bad as missing the winner crossing the finish line, which happened last year, but Sunday’s telecast had plenty of flaws.

When Joan Benoit Samuelson stopped because of stomach cramps, then started to run again, Katherine Switzer tried to interview her on the course.

Announcer Al Trautwig said Steve Jones missed the course record by .07 of a second, when actually he missed it by 7 seconds.

Early coverage of the men’s race was confusing. When a virtual unknown from Spain was leading, ABC was caught unprepared, so it concentrated on the women.

ABC planned to follow first-time runner Bobby Murcer but lost him early, at about the eighth mile, and gave up.

Overall, ABC never went deep enough in telling viewers where runners were.

Then, if you watched ABC-owned Channel 7 for a recap of the race Sunday night, Jim Hill left out the key moment--when Samuelson ran into a water boy and fell.

Hill had plenty of time for a long interview with Jackie Joyner-Kersee and her coach-husband, Bob Kersee, but apparently not enough time to show Samuelson’s mishap.

Lisa Bowman, former KABC “Sportstalk” co-host, is now doing fill-in work for KMPC. Joel Meyers was away on a Mutual Radio assignment last weekend, so Bowman handled “Sportsline” Friday and Monday, and she also subbed for vacationing Bob Rowe on “Ram Talk” Sunday.

Monday, Bowman did a nice job of interviewing USC receiver Erik Affholter, boxing promoter Don Fraser and football official Norm Schacter.

TV-Radio Notes

The names being heard most often as possible replacements for Joe Garagiola at NBC are, in order, Don Sutton, Joe Morgan, Tom Seaver and Joe Torre. Longshots are Reggie Jackson and, if he decides to retire, Mike Schmidt. Tim McCarver might be available by 1990 if ABC drops baseball. . . . The USC-Arizona State game at Tempe, Ariz., will be televised by ABC at 12:30 p.m., PST, Saturday, with the network’s A team of Keith Jackson, Bob Griese and Mike Adamle working.

Occidental, one of Southern California’s best-kept college football secrets, gets some radio exposure Saturday night. KIEV (870) will broadcast the Tigers’ 7:30 game at Whittier, with Ted Brock and Jeff Fellenzer reporting. . . . The Z Channel will carry five Loyola Marymount basketball games, beginning Dec. 7 against Oregon State. Tony Hernandez and Ann Meyers will be the announcers. . . . Add Loyola: Four other games will be nationally televised. ESPN will show a Dec. 1 game at UC Santa Barbara, ESPN a Dec. 17 game at Oklahoma, CBS a Jan. 14 game at DePaul and USA a Jan. 29 home game against Pepperdine.

Z Channel’s first Clipper telecast will be Saturday night’s game against Phoenix, with Ralph Lawler and Keith Erickson. Erickson reportedly was considered for the Channel 5 job that Kevin Loughery got, but he told friends he wasn’t interested in the travel involved. Z Channel does only home games. . . . Prime Ticket has boosted its subscriber numbers by more than 15% since June with the addition of 363,000 households. John Severino, Prime Ticket’s president, said the network is carried by 94 cable systems in more than 350 communities in Southern California, Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii.

Videos: NBC Enterprises and Wood Knapp Video are marketing an Olympic highlight video for $29.95 and 6 individual Olympic sport videos for $19.95 each. The whole package is going for $99.95. The videos are narrated by Bryant Gumbel. . . . An hourlong World Series video, narrated by Bob Costas and retailing for $19.95, reached stores this week.

New York Giants linebacker Harry Carson, appearing on HBO’s “Inside the NFL” Thursday night, somewhat surprisingly announced that he will retire at the end of the season. Carson made the announcement during a taping Wednesday night. . . . An interview with Mark Gastineau and Brigitte Nielsen, to be taped in Arizona today, will be shown on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Tuesday at 7:35 a.m., PST.

Mike Pearl, one of ABC’s top producers, is leaving the network to head the 1992 Winter Olympic coverage for CBS. . . . NBC’s Breeders’ Cup telecast Saturday drew a 4.0 national Nielsen rating. Last year, the event drew only a 2.9. In Los Angeles, this year’s rating was a 4.6. . . . The telecast wasn’t perfect, but considering it was 4 hours of mostly live television, it wasn’t as bad as KMPC’s Jim Healy says. He has been nit-picking it all week, going on and on. Who cares? Mama mia.