Roggin Fires Some Shots of His Own

Channel 4’s Fred Roggin is feeling a little smug these days.

His Sunday night sports wrap-up show won a local Emmy award last weekend for best sports series.

And the lastest ratings show he’s pulling away from the competition.

So does Roggin show a little humility? Hardly.

Putting his guard down and letting his ego show, Roggin took some jabs at Channel 2’s Keith Olbermann.

“You know, that guy has fired so many missiles at us. It’s irritating,” Roggin told Paola Boivin of the Daily News. “Obviously, our station wins big, in news and sports. It’s a great time for Channel 4. Hell, he’s barely beating (Channel 7’s) Jim Hill. I’m not usually like this, but it disturbs me.”

Roggin singled out two things. One, he felt Olbermann did not give him proper credit last year for breaking the story that Cookie Rojas was out as Angel manager. And, two, that Olbermann criticized him for showing a gruesome tape of Buffalo Sabre goalie Clint Malarchuk getting his neck slashed by an opponent’s skate.

Said Roggin: “We’re all running a race. It’s a competitive race, and with every step he takes to us, we simply pull farther away. The gap is widening, so he’d better start running faster.”

On Thursday, after seeing his comments in print, Roggin said: “I was caught in a weak moment. I’m embarrassed. I shouldn’t have said it, but I did.”

Said Olbermann: “I think maybe he’s trying to stir up publicity. It’s the nature of the business.”

Roggin’s Sunday night show during the May sweeps period averaged a 7.9 rating and a 25 share, up two shares from a year ago.

Olbermann’s Sunday night show drew a 3.5 and a 12 share, down 2.5 ratings points and five share points from a year ago, when Jim Lampley was the host.

Hill’s show, which comes on 15 minutes later than the other two, drew a 3.1 and a 12, down three rating points and nine share points from a year ago.

It should be noted that the success of Roggin’s show is partially attributable to the success of both NBC’s prime-time programming and Channel 4’s newscasts.

Channel 7’s Hill, for his part, has been hustling, and his live interviews have become more focused. An example was an insightful interview with Byron Scott on last Sunday’s show.

But sometimes it seems Hill doesn’t get the support at Channel 7 that he had at Channel 2.

For instance, on Sunday’s show a graphic labeled Angel center fielder Devon White an Angel infielder . Also, a humorous piece at the end that showed Chicago Cub announcer Harry Caray dancing was abruptly cut short. Neither snafu was Hill’s fault.

Roggin, meanwhile, called Detroit’s John Salley Long Tong Salley. He did correct it to Long Tall Salley, so no big deal. Everyone makes mistakes.

What’s most bothersome about Roggin is his shameless self promotion. “We’ve got a great Hall of Shame tonight, so set your VCR,” he will almost always say.

Let the viewer decide if it’s great or not.

Roggin also purposely misleads viewers with his sports teases.

During the Laker-Portland playoff series, he showed a tape of Magic Johnson hitting the floor and said: “Magic goes down. Coming up on sports.”

The implication was Johnson was injured. He wasn’t.

Another time, the tease was about a perfect game. Turns out it was a perfect game by a pitcher for the Durham (N.C.) Bulls.

And one more thing: Roggin can’t seem to resist the low-brow, low-blow humor.

Changes at Indy: Bob Goodrich, ABC Sports producer in charge of Sunday’s Indy 500 coverage, said changes this year include an unmanned camera at the entrance to the pit area, a hand-held camera to show the speed coming out of Turn 4 and the straightaway, and improved microphones and microphone locations.

“Audio is very important in auto racing,” Goodrich said. “We’re so used to hearing bad audio. We improved the audio 50% last year and we want to improve another 50%.”

ABC will have race-cams in cars driven by Bobby Rahal, Al Unser Jr., Teo Fabi and either Mario or Michael Andretti. Goodrich will also use mini, helmet-mounted cameras on pit crew members.

Paul Page, Sam Posey and Bobby Unser will announce the race. Don Ohlmeyer will direct.

Both radio and TV coverage begin at 8 a.m. Radio coverage will be carried in Southern California by KORG (1190) of Anaheim.

New role: Kurt Rambis, decked out in a brown suit at Tuesday night’s Laker game, drew lots of attention and cheers from the crowd. The former Laker, now with the Charlotte Hornets, was at the Forum to file a live report for the 9 o’clock news on Channel 9.

Rambis’ main problem was that the crowd noise, reaching deafening proportions, made it nearly impossible for him to hear anchor Scott St. James back at the Channel 9 studios.

But St. James was pleased with the results. “He’s having fun and we’re having fun,” St. James said.

New programming: Dick Ebersol, NBC Sports president, announced at an affiliates meeting in San Francisco this week that a three-part mini-series, “The Greatest Fights Ever,” will be shown next April and May to help fill the void left when baseball switches to CBS.

Also, on April 7, 1990, NBC will show a Saturday afternoon, made-for-TV movie, “Joe D. and the Blonde,” based on Roger Kahn’s book about Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe.

TV-Radio Notes

Recommended viewing: Part II of Bud Greenspan’s excellent “Calgary ‘88: 16 Days of Glory,” will be shown for the first time on the Disney Channel Sunday at 9 p.m. It will be repeated several times during the month of June, as will Part I, which made its debut in March. The four stories Greenspan offers in the 1 1/2-hour Part II are all interesting and complete, things not seen before. But the best segment is the final one on women’s figure skating. You hear Debi Thomas saying, right after her performance, “Oh well, I didn’t want to win anyway.” . . . Greenspan will be the keynote speaker at the 10th induction ceremony of the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, to be held June 4 at the Irvine Hilton Hotel. Fred Roggin will serve as the master of ceremonies.

The Sugar Ray Leonard-Thomas Hearns pay-per-view telecast originating from Caesars Palace in Las Vegas June 12 will have an attractive undercard. Four Olympic gold medalists--Ray Mercer, Andrew Maynard, Robert Wangila and Kennedy McKinney, and a silver medalist--Michael Carbajal--will fight in separate six-rounders. . . . KMPC’s Joel Meyers this week interviewed a disinterested Hearns, who simply went through the motions. After the interview, Meyers said on the air: “I wonder what time it is in Detroit? Maybe we woke him up.” . . . Besides Roggin, the other major winner in sports at last weekend’s local Emmy awards dinner in Pasadena was Roy Firestone for his work as host of Channel 9’s Laker pregame shows.

A number of pro basketball stars will take part in MTV’s “NBA Sunday,” which will be televised this Sunday from 2 to 8 p.m. Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Byron Scott of the Lakers are among those who have taped segments for the show. . . . Attention tennis fans: NBC kicks off its French Open coverage Sunday at 2 p.m. with a taped one-hour special, “The French Open . . . A Revolution.” Many of tennis’ current and past stars will be featured. NBC will present weekend coverage through the men’s final June 11, with ESPN providing weekday coverage. . . . UCLA’s victory over Stanford in the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. volleyball championship match May 6 at Pauley Pavilion will be televised by CBS this Saturday at 10 a.m. Tim Brant and Chris Marlowe will report.

The Goodwill Games, to be held at Seattle from July 20 through Aug. 5, 1990, will be televised on TBS rather than Turner Broadcasting’s newer TNT network. . . . According to Donn Bernstein, a Goodwill Games publicist, Dennis Swanson, ABC Sports president, asked TBS about the possibility of purchasing some of the Goodwill Games weekend programming to show on ABC. But the TBS board of directors said no. Their thinking is to make the event, with 2,500 athletes from 50 countries, a TBS exclusive. “It’s kind of ironic,” said Bernstein, a former ABC publicist. “For a long time, the networks pretended that cable didn’t exist. Now they want to be partners.”