His Farewell Tour Apparently Didn’t Include Broadcasts

After a year away from basketball, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is interested in returning--as a broadcaster.

Abdul-Jabbar, in New York recently to appear on “Later With Bob Costas,” met with Terry O’Neil, the executive producer of NBC Sports.

Among other things, they talked about the possibility of Abdul-Jabbar being a part of next season’s NBA coverage. Abdul-Jabbar said that what interested him most was studio work and/or features.

O’Neil said he plans to name an NBA coordinating producer in a month or so, and would get back to Abdul-Jabbar after that.

An NBC spokesman, confirming the meeting took place, said the on-air personalities aren’t expected to be named until after the season.

The Sports Emmys were presented in New York this week. Some highlights:

--Besides Jim McKay, who won the first lifetime achievement award, the top individual winners were Al Michaels and John Madden, but neither was present. Michaels is in a contract dispute with ABC, and Madden, who does not fly, stayed home in the Bay Area.

--The award for best feature went to ESPN for a piece it did on Montreal pitcher Tim Burke going to Guatemala to pick up his 2-year-old adopted son. Chris Myers was the reporter, John Hamlin the producer.

--ABC was the big winner with 15 awards. CBS was second with five and ESPN third with three.

--ABC won for sports journalism for its Bay Area earthquake coverage during the World Series. Its Indy 500 coverage was cited as the best live sports, “Monday Night Football” tied with ESPN’s “Speedworld” for best live sports series, and “Trans-Antarctica! The International Expedition” won for best-edited special.

--CBS won two awards for “NFL Today.” Executive producer Ted Shaker, in accepting the awards, showed class by acknowledging former host Brent Musburger, who has been critical of Shaker since his April 1 firing.

--NFL Films won its 40th Emmy, with “This is the NFL” getting the award for best non-live series.

--Independent producer Bud Greenspan won for film editing with “Calgary ‘88: 16 Days of Glory,” which was shown on the Disney Channel. It is Greenspan’s fifth Emmy.

Radio station KLAC held a reception at the Sheraton Universal Hotel Thursday evening to introduce its new sports-talk host, Gabe Kaplan.

Kaplan, former star of the ABC sitcom “Welcome Back, Kotter,” begins as host of “Sportsnuts” Monday. The show will be broadcast weeknights 5 to 6.

Kaplan, venturing into radio for the first time, said he plans to invite fellow comedians to take part in the first half-hour of the shows, then have celebrity guests the second half. He will take a few calls from listeners during both segments.

Kaplan landed the KLAC job when a mutual friend got him together with station general manager Norm Epstein.

Kaplan said among guests already agreeing to take part are James Caan, Dick Van Patten, Jerry Buss, Jerry West and O.J. Simpson.

“I’m kind of your typical sports nut,” Kaplan said. “I watch a lot of sports on television over the weekend, then talk about it during the week with friends. That’s what I’m going to do on the show.”

Ratings game: The top-rated network sports show last weekend wasn’t a baseball or basketball game, or the Long Beach Grand Prix.

It was a 16-year-old fight--Muhammad Ali’s eighth-round knockout victory over George Foreman in Zaire. The replay of the 1974 fight, shown Saturday afternoon on NBC, drew a Los Angeles Nielsen rating of 4.6.

Saturday’s Angel-Twin game on CBS got a 3.0 rating in Los Angeles, Sunday’s Boston-Philadelphia NBA game on CBS drew a 3.6, and the Grand Prix, blacked out in Los Angeles, averaged a 3.0 in other major markets on ABC.

The Ali-Foreman fight is part of NBC’s “Greatest Fights Ever” series. The next installment, to be shown May 12, will be the Ali-Joe Frazier “Thrilla in Manila.”

NBC’s replay last year of the 1964 Ali-Sonny Liston fight won an Emmy for program achievement. It was the only sports Emmy NBC won.

Add ratings: Channel 11’s Dodger marathon didn’t do very well.

From 11 p.m. Friday night until the pregame show the following day at 6 p.m., the station averaged only a 1.6 Nielsen rating. The pregame show got a 5.0, and Saturday night’s game, a 6-5 loss to Houston, got a solid 9.3.

The fireworks that followed held a 4.1 rating.

Greg Nathanson, the station’s general manager, was pleased with the quality of the show. He stayed up baby-sitting his two-week-old niece and watched quite a bit of it.

“I thought it was amazing how well it moved,” Nathanson said. “But the ratings were a little lower than I thought they’d be.”

The SportsChannel regional network in the Bay Area recently used Willie Mays as a guest commentator on two Giant telecasts.

The San Francisco Chronicle’s Tom Fitzgerald wrote: “When Brett Butler was thrown out on a close play at first base, Mays’ only comment was: ‘Damn!’

“On the final pitch of the game, Robby Thompson tried to check his swing. As home plate umpire Dana Demuth pointed at first base umpire Tom Hallion, Mays cried, ‘No-o-o-o.’

“When Hallion ruled Thompson had swung, Mays yelled: ‘Jesus Christ!’

“This happened on Easter Sunday.”

TV-Radio Notes

CBS baseball is on hiatus until June 16, marking the first time in 38 years there will be baseball Saturdays without a network “Game of the Week.” . . . Over the next three weekends, CBS will have NBA playoff doubleheaders on Saturdays and Sundays. The network will have a minimum of 57 hours of playoff coverage, about 10 more than the minimum scheduled last season. . . . During the first four days of the playoffs, which began Thursday, there will be 28 hours of coverage on TNT, Prime Ticket and CBS combined, up from 20 during the same period last season.

A new CBS pregame program, “The Basketball Show,” with Pat O’Brien as host and Bill Raftery as studio analyst, makes its debut this weekend, airing at 9:30 a.m. both days. . . . At 10 a.m. Saturday, CBS will show the New York Knicks vs. the Boston Celtics, with announcers Verne Lundquist and Billy Cunningham and reporter Lesley Visser. Cunningham is filling in for Lundquist’s regular partner, Len Elmore, who had to bow out because of a personal commitment. . . . The second game Saturday, at 12:30 p.m., will be Indiana-Detroit, with James Brown, Tom Heinsohn and Jim Gray. . . . The Sunday lineup: Milwaukee-Chicago at 10 a.m., with Greg Gumbel, Quinn Buckner and Andrea Joyce, followed by Houston-Lakers, with Dick Stockton, Hubie Brown and Tim Brandt.

ABC will televise the finals of a nationwide three-on-three basketball tournament, Coup de Hoop, as part of “Wide World of Sports” June 23. Regional men’s and women’s competition begins in May, and the finals will be held at Muscle Beach in Venice June 16 and shown on ABC a week later. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the honorary commissioner. More than $1 million in cash and prizes will be awarded, with some division winners getting as much as $100,000. Special events include wheelchair, slam-dunk and three-point competitions. . . . . ABC has also announced it will televise a live, two-hour special, “The All-Star Sports Awards,” at 9 p.m. June 25. Athletes of the year in nine sports, as selected by public balloting, plus six living legends will be honored at the Universal Amphitheater. Ballots are available through May 11 at a number of stores and newsstands, or fans can call 1-900-454-3000. Proceeds will go to Special Olympics.