Even When View Is Blocked, Hearn Gets in Last Word

Channel 9 showed its final Laker telecast of the season Tuesday night, and tonight’s Laker game will be the last one for Prime Ticket, meaning it’s also the season finale for Chick Hearn and partner Stu Lantz.

Hearn, who complained about people blocking his view Tuesday night at Portland, made a few slips. He said Jerome Kersey was the Trail Blazer who collided with A.C. Green and picked up his third foul, when it was actually Clyde Drexler. Once he had Magic Johnson with the ball when it was James Worthy. And another time, Lantz had to tell him the ball went in the basket.

Quipped Hearn: “I hope (his wife) Marge is taping this game so I can watch it, because I haven’t seen anything yet.”

Despite occasional slips, Hearn remains the most entertaining announcer in basketball.

Also, kudos to Channel 9 producer-director Susan Stratton and her crew for Tuesday night’s telecast. They staged a clinic on how to televise a basketball game. The camera angles, the replays and the use of graphics were all on the mark.

Game time tonight is 7, at the request of TNT, which is televising the game nationally. But the TNT telecast, as usual for home games, is subject to blackout within a 35-mile radius of City Hall.

Road games are not subject to blackouts on TNT.

NBC will cover all remaining NBA games after tonight, with weeknight games such as Game 5 of the Laker-Portland series Tuesday beginning at 6 p.m. Game 4 of the series between the Chicago Bulls and Detroit Pistons on Monday will begin at 12:30 p.m.

NBC’s announcing team for the Portland-Laker series, Dick Enberg and Steve Jones, is a good one.

Enberg, in his rookie season on the NBA, has reminded viewers that he does basketball as well as anything.

Veteran Southern California TV watchers remember him from the old UCLA delayed telecasts on Channel 5 during the Bill Walton years in the early 1970s, and of course he went on to star with Al McGuire and Billy Packer on college basketball at the network level.

Jones, a Stu Lantz sound-alike, is to be congratulated on his objectivity during last Saturday’s Laker-Trail Blazer game.

Jones is a native of Portland and lives there now, where he works as a Trail Blazer television commentator. He also worked for Turner Broadcasting for three seasons before joining NBC this season.

Jones, a 1964 graduate of Oregon, was a guard for 11 seasons with the Spirits of St. Louis of the old American Basketball Assn., then played one season in the NBA before retiring in 1976. Jones’ NBA team? The Trail Blazers, of course.

NBC’s Marv Albert, a guest on Gabe Kaplan’s “Sportsnut” show on KLAC this week, was saying that his network will be doing cartwheels if it’s a Laker-Chicago final.

It’s easy to understand why. Portland and Detroit get the higher ratings, but Los Angeles and Chicago, the Nos. 2 and 3 markets in the country, attract more viewers.

For last weekend’s games involving their teams, the ratings were 36.1 in Portland, 29.2 in Detroit, 23.3 in Chicago and 11.8 in Los Angeles.

But Los Angeles had about twice as many viewers as Portland.

Each rating point in Los Angeles represents 50,260 television households, or 1% of the more than 5 million in the market. Each rating point in Portland represents 8,210, or 1% of 821,000 TV households.

Saturday’s Laker-Trail Blazer game was watched in 593,000 L.A.-area homes by about 1.5 million viewers and in 296,000 Portland homes by about 750,000 viewers.

A rating point in Chicago represents 31,420 homes; in Detroit it’s 17,220. Sunday’s Bull-Piston game was watched in 732,000 Chicago homes by nearly 1.8 million viewers and in 502,000 Detroit homes by about 1.25 million viewers.

The best thing that happened in NBC’s NBA pregame show last Saturday was that the “Insiders” segment was scrapped to make way for an interesting, in-depth look at what it is like to coach in the NBA. The “Insiders” group returned Sunday, although it was less giggly than usual.

Maybe before the season is out, “NBA Showtime” will start to resemble a show with some class.

Meanwhile, someone should tell Pat Riley to talk without using his hands so much. It’s distracting.

Cold-blooded: Cable companies may sometimes be a little insensitive, but what a Portland company, Columbia Cable, did recently takes the cake. A crew from Columbia went to a retirement home during a Trail Blazer telecast and pulled the plug. They claimed the folks there shouldn’t have moved a resident’s cable box to the big television in a large room.

“It was a horrible thing to do,” Trail Blazer executive Marshall Glickman said. “We are so mad at them.”

Bad joke: Is it true? Unfortunately, it is.

An Encino company is marketing greeting cards based on New England Patriot owner Victor Kiam’s quote made famous in these parts by KMPC’s Jim Healy: “She is a lovely lady and my apologies to her.”

Said Healy, when learning of the venture: “No one offered me any royalties.”

The company, called Kiamkaze Kards, claims the cards are ideal for an apology--or a joke--for a wife or a girlfriend. The cards, which sell for $1.50 apiece, or up to $75 for 100, read: “I said some things I shouldn’t have, I may have even called you names, but there’s one thing I want to know.” Then: “You’re a lovely lady . . . and my apologies to you.”

Lame, really lame.

KFI, before the football season, might want to consider changing its anti-sports advertising approach. “Wanna dodge baseball? KFI AM 640. More stimulating talk radio” is what the billboards are now proclaiming. But “Wanna dodge football?” won’t quite cut it, considering KFI is still the Raiders’ flagship station.

TV-Radio Notes

Bryant Gumbel won’t be the prime-time host at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, as he was at Seoul in 1988. NBC named Bob Costas to that position Thursday. . . . NBC also said it has acquired the rights to all U.S. Olympic trials. . . . Here’s some good advice for prospective sportscasters from Vin Scully: “Have the humility to prepare, and the confidence to bring it off.” Scully, crediting Lord Laurence Olivier with the quote, told it to Costas on a recent “Later” segment. . . . A little fear helps, too, Scully believes. “I’ve always been terrified of looking like a horse’s fanny,” he said. . . . Laker Coach Mike Dunleavy will be Roy Firestone’s guest on “Up Close” on ESPN today at 3:30 p.m. and again at midnight.

KMPC is still at least a week or so away from naming a UCLA football and basketball play-by-play announcer to replace Paul Olden, who has moved to the Rams. Bill Ward, the station’s general manager, is scheduled to meet with UCLA Athletic Director Peter Dalis and other school officials Wednesday to discuss candidates. John Rebenstorf, the football commentator last season who came from Cal State Fullerton, is still in the running for the play-by-play job, but a source said the station’s thinking is to bring in a new voice to the L.A. market. That is not good news for local applicants Joe Buttitta, Geoff Witcher, Phil Stone and several others. The source said Oklahoma Sooner play-by-play man John Brooks is also among the 30 or so applicants, but another Oklahoma announcer, Dan Rowe from Tulsa, has submitted more impressive tapes.

Joe McDonnell, formerly of KFI, showed plenty of resourcefulness recently in applying for a job at KMPC. He had Magic Johnson autograph a picture for Ward, which read: “You’ll have Magic on the radio if you hire Joe McDonnell.” Well, McDonnell didn’t get the job--actually the picture arrived a little late anyway--but it still did some good. McDonnell will fill in on “Angeltalk” when Bob Rowe goes on vacation June 17, and McDonnell will also be a regular contributor on Scott St. James’ new show, scheduled to begin on June 3.