Day 1 on CBS: It’s Not ESPN, and It’s Not Bad

CBS, faced with the task of covering 16 games in about 10 hours of air time, did amazingly well during Day 1 of the NCAA tournament.

CBS wasn’t perfect. It missed the start of the Pepperdine-Seton Hall game, but then it could be argued that the Waves didn’t show up for the start, either.

But CBS didn’t miss much that mattered.

Give an assist to ESPN. The standard that the cable network set no doubt put pressure on CBS to do equally well, and it did.

One thing, though. CBS should forget the split screen. It’s too distracting.

Also, the announcers need to give the scores more often, particularly since the graphics people are often busy putting up scores from other games.

Overall, there was little to complain about, although one weak spot was the studio work of Mike Francesa, a New York radio talk-show host. But daytime partner Andrea Joyce was solid.

The real star Thursday was Bill Walton.

The rest of the nation found out what Los Angeles already knows--that Walton is an outstanding basketball commentator. He’s not there simply because of his marquee value.

During Pittsburgh’s overtime victory over Georgia, Walton’s point about playing to kill the clock rather than playing to score was right on.

And he certainly isn’t reluctant to express an opinion or be critical.

Jim Henderson and Dan Bonner will be the announcers for today’s UCLA-Penn State game at 11:45 a.m.

Henderson is a New Orleans TV sportscaster and the radio voice of the Saints.

Bonner, who does play-by-play for ESPN, played for Virginia in the early 1970s and was an academic All-American.

CBS could field a pretty impressive team with its lineup of NCAA tournament commentators, which includes Walton, Len Elmore, Billy Cunningham, Quinn Buckner and Jack Givens.

With ESPN no longer involved in the coverage, you may be going through Dick Vitale withdrawal.

No?

Anyway, for anyone who needs a Vitale fix, he has a new video, “Time Out, Baby.” Produced by Steve Rotfeld and distributed by ESPN Home Video, this 30-minute tape is actually pretty good. Vitale picks four all-decade teams and an overall all-time team.

The influx of pay-per-view boxing has started.

You may not have noticed, but last Friday Carl (the Truth) Williams fought someone named Robert Daniels on pay-per-view.

You will be seeing more of that type of fight on pay-per-view, at least for a while.

Skeptics don’t think they will sell.

“To make it on pay-per-view, you have to have a big event,” says Rick Kulis, president of Event Entertainment, who has been the distributor of both successful and unsuccessful pay-per-view boxing shows.

Monday night’s card at the Mirage in Las Vegas, featuring Mike Tyson against Donovan (Razor) Ruddock, is the kind of event that will sell.

Like him or not, promoter Don King has put together what figures to be a good show. It includes three attractive undercard fights--middleweights Roberto Duran and Pat Lawlor, welterweights Simon Brown and Maurice Blocker, which could be the best fight of the night, and popular lightweight Julio Cesar Chavez against John Duplessis.

The card begins at 6 p.m. The Duran fight is scheduled for 10 rounds, the other three for 12 rounds each.

The price is $34.95 on most cable systems.

King is distributing this fight himself via his new company, KingVision, in association with SET (Showtime Entertainment Television), a division of the Showtime network.

The announcers will be Steve Albert and Ferdie Pacheco, with Jim Hill serving as host and former Miss America Suzette Charles also contributing.

There will be no live radio coverage of Monday’s fights, but KNX will have reporter Rory Markas in Las Vegas to provide progress reports.

KABC’s Steve Edwards and KLAC’s Gabe Kaplan will be among those doing radio prefight shows from the site.

Add fight: With more and more homes now equipped to receive pay-per-view events--Monday’s fight will be available in 16.1 million nationally--there will be fewer closed-circuit showings.

Still, nearly 50 Southern California establishments will offer the fight, including the Spice nightclub in Hollywood, C.J. Barrymore in El Segundo, the Sports Deli in Century City, and Don Enrique’s in Santa Monica. Most places will have a cover charge.

Add pay-per-view: An ambitious undertaking is the one planned by TVKO, a new division of Time Warner Sports headed by longtime HBO Sports boss Seth Abraham.

TVKO’s initial endeavor will be the Evander Holyfield-George Foreman fight April 19.

Rival promoter King, despite earlier predicting that Foreman would beat Holyfield, on Thursday called this fight a farce.

“You had a farce in October with Holyfield and (Buster) Douglas,” King said. “Douglas laid down like a dog and howled at the moon. And you’ve got another farce with Holyfield-Foreman.

“With our card (Tyson-Ruddock), we’re bringing integrity back to boxing,” King said.

Integrity and boxing are words that really don’t go together, but at least King’s show does have some legitimacy.

Still, Holyfield-Foreman will sell. Call it the curiosity factor.

TVKO plans to show 24 fights a year on pay-per-view, plus eight to 10 a year on HBO.

KingVision is planning 12 pay-per-view fights a year--four megafights, as King calls them, and eight others.

Also, Jerry Buss, in association with Event Entertainment’s Kulis, will show Virgil Hill-Thomas Hearns from Caesars Palace June 3 on pay-per-view.

All this may prove to be too much pay-per-view.

TV-Radio Notes

Prime Ticket President John Severino, widely known for his commentaries when he was the general manager at Channel 7, will begin doing commentaries for Prime Ticket. In the first one, which will be shown on “Press Box” tonight, Severino says it’s time for Jerry Tarkanian to leave his troubles behind at Nevada Las Vegas and take an NBA job. Maybe Severino knows something.

Major League Baseball Productions has created a series of 24 two-hour segments called “The Greatest Games Ever Played.” Prime Ticket will be the exclusive carrier of the series, beginning in May, and Steve Garvey will be the host. Channel 11 has another Dodger special Saturday at 7:30 p.m., “Orel Hershiser: the Road Back.” Ross Porter is the host of the show produced by Greg Wyatt and Bill Brandt. . . . Holy cow, another Caray: Turner Broadcasting has hired Chip Caray, 26, as an Atlanta Braves’ announcer. He is the son of Skip and the grandson of Harry.

NBC’s Bob Costas didn’t pull any punches in an interview last weekend with Rickey Henderson, who is unhappy with his $3-million-a-year contract with the Oakland Athletics. Said Costas: “What would happen if they gave you a new contract for whatever figure and you had two bad years in a row and they came to you and said, ‘You’re not the player we thought we signed. We want to renegotiate down?’ What would your answer be?” Said Henderson: “I don’t see where a player that’s out there giving 100% needs some decrease in his contract money-wise.” Henderson is a beauty.

You may have noticed the “Jennon Productions” logo that is on some of Fred Roggin’s Hall of Shame footage. Jennon Productions, a synthesis of the names of Roggin’s twins, Jeffrey and Shannon, is the production company that created the nationally syndicated “Roggin’s Heroes.” The logo is often distracting, but Roggin says it’s there to keep anyone from stealing footage that sometimes costs thousands of dollars. . . . Hopefully, Roggin didn’t pay much for a couple of segments that ran on Channel 4 last Sunday night. One showed an elderly woman awkwardly going down a slide. The other showed a woman’s rear stuck in an inner tube. Lame, really lame.