Kings Take Hockey to Prime Time in L.A.

Despite the Kings’ 8-3 loss Thursday night, they have been in the television limelight, for once, and Prime Ticket’s coverage has been outstanding.

Casual sports fans are learning what hockey fans have known for years--that announcer Bob Miller is in the same league as Vin Scully and Chick Hearn. He’s that good.

Also, commentator Nick Nickson is solid, and Rich Marotta handles the pregame and between-period assignments well.

As for the camera work in Calgary, the Canadian Broadcasting Co. deserves most of the credit. Prime Ticket is using the CBC feed but has two cameras of its own there, along with producer Mark Stulberger.

The Lakers will say goodby to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Sunday even though he’s not going yet. It’s his final regular-season game, but there are still the playoffs.

The pregame ceremony at the Forum honoring the retiring center--yes, another one of those--is not the main reason CBS changed its mind and decided to televise the Lakers’ 12:30 p.m. game against Seattle instead of an Atlanta-Detroit game.

When the Clippers beat the Lakers last Saturday night, the Pacific Division race got tighter. That’s why CBS made the switch.

The network will not show the farewell ceremony live. Instead, the plan is to have an edited version on an extended pregame show.

But if the preceding Greensboro golf tournament happens to run long, the pregame ceremony probably will be part of the halftime show, cutting into a planned round-table discussion on the playoffs.

Prime Ticket will tape the entire Kareem ceremony and show it as a special on the night of one of the first-round playoff games.

Several sources have said that Channel 7 has hired Todd Donoho of FNN/SCORE as a sports anchorman and reporter to replace Gene Washington, and that Donoho will begin doing sports on the station’s 11 o’clock news sometime in June.

Donoho, a one-time sports anchorman in Cincinnati, declined comment.

Terry Crofoot, Channel 7’s general manager, said a replacement for Washington has not yet been hired. “Todd Donoho is a candidate, but so is Joe Fowler (who has done some recent fill-in work at Channel 4) and a couple of other people,” Crofoot said.

Are black athletes better than white athletes? NBC tackles this topic in an excellent one-hour prime-time documentary, “Black Athletes--Fact and Fiction,” next Tuesday night at 10. Tom Brokaw is the host of the show.

Carl Lewis says, “Generally, the blacks physically are made better.”

One scientist says, “They should be proud God was on their side.”

But Stanford track Coach Brooks Johnson and sociologist Harry Edwards, both black, say there is no difference.

Says Edwards: “People who control sports are overwhelmingly white. What we are seeing today is the black athletes being reduced to gladiators for entertainment business.”

Also Tuesday night, there will be a special half-hour round-table discussion on the same topic, beginning at 11:30 p.m.

Rained out: Scully and his new NBC partner, Tom Seaver, are still trying to make make their regular-season debut after being rained out of their first two assignments.

They’re scheduled to work a game Saturday between Seaver’s old team, the New York Mets, and the Chicago Cubs at Shea Stadium in New York.

Saturday also marks a special anniversary for Seaver. On April 22, 1970, he struck out the last 10 San Diego Padres he faced and 19 overall in a 2-1 Met win.

Scully’s first NBC baseball assignment was a game in Milwaukee in 1983 that was snowed out.

“Having done primarily Dodger games, I wasn’t really used to something like this happening,” Scully said. “I remember as we were leaving the booth, I turned to Joe Garagiola as if to say, ‘Well, what now?’ And Joe just looked at me and said, ‘Well, we go home. And yes, you’ll get paid.’ ”

TV-Radio Notes

ESPN once again will provide coverage of the National Football League draft. This year’s coverage will run from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, with Chris Berman serving as host. Besides continuous updates and features, there also will be live reports from eight different locations throughout the country, including Rams Park. KNX will carry CBS Radio’s periodic coverage, beginning at 9:16 a.m. . . . CBS Radio has extended its contract with the NFL, calling for weekend and Monday night broadcasts through the 1995 season.

Attention fans of beach sports: A 15-week series, “A Day at the Beach,” which will spotlight such sports as surfing, board sailing, skateboarding, jet-ski racing and bodyboarding, makes its debut on ESPN Saturday at 6 p.m. Dyno Comm of Mission Viejo is the producer of the series. . . . Following “A Day at the Beach” at 7 p.m. Saturday on ESPN will be pro beach volleyball, taped at Ft. Meyers, Fla. This is the first of six tournaments that Lynn Shackelford and Chris Marlowe will announce for ESPN.

Marvin Hagler will serve as commentator of the pay-per-view and closed-circuit telecast of the June 12 Sugar Ray Leonard-Thomas Hearns fight at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Tim Ryan will handle the blow-by-blow, Gil Clancy will provide commentary, and Jim Hill will serve as host. Roberto Duran will be a commentator on the Spanish-language simulcast. The pay-per-view and closed-circuit telecast will be distributed in Southern California by Rick Kulis’ Torrance-based Choice Entertainment. . . . The ratings for Top Rank’s boxing series on ESPN are up 29% over last year, and ESPN and Top Rank this week reached agreement on a two-year contract extension.

Mark Breland defends his World Boxing Assn. welterweight title against Rafael Pineda on “Wide World of Sports” Saturday. The program, which also will carry the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct, is being shown on a three-hour delay at 4:30 p.m. by Channel 7. . . . Z Channel will televise Monday night’s fight between Armando Baeza and Benny Lopez at the Irvine Marriott Hotel at 8:30. . . . NBC offers the Superstars final competition on “Sports- World” Sunday at 1 p.m., with Ahmad Rashad, Jimmy Cefalo and Fred Roggin reporting. . . . KPWR-FM (105.9), L.A.’s top-rated radio station, has a new sportscaster, and guess who. Would you believe Ailene Roggin, Fred’s wife? She’ll be on every Friday morning at 8:10. She made her debut last week, and wasn’t bad.