Rams-Raiders’ Telecast? No Chance

As expected, Sunday’s Ram-Raider game at the Coliseum fell about 17,000 tickets short of selling out in time to lift the television blackout.

But a case can be made for showing the game anyway.

The NFL television contract stipulates that a team’s road games must be televised in its home market.

And since this is a Ram road game, it should be televised in Los Angeles.

Seems logical, doesn’t it? Now only if the NFL would see it that way.

An NFL spokesman, Dick Maxwell, said that, in this case, the non-sellout takes precedence over the visiting team’s home market.

With the Ram-Raider game blacked out, CBS is going with what may be a better game--the run-and-shoot offense Detroit Lions at San Francisco.

NBC’s 10 a.m. game features another run-and-shoot team, the Houston Oilers at Miami.

Because of the World Series, there is no Sunday night football on cable this weekend.

TNT wrapped up its NFL schedule Thursday night with Chicago-Green Bay, and ESPN opens on Oct. 27 with Washington at the New York Giants.

Maybe, just maybe, the CBS baseball curse is over. Finally, good things are happening.

The National League championship series went to seven games, and Game 6 Wednesday night drew an 18.3 national Nielsen rating, the highest playoff rating since Game 7 between the Dodgers and New York Mets in 1988 got a 22.2.

If things keep going this way, maybe the World Series will go six or seven games.

Then there would be no question that the curse has been broken.

CBS lost $55 million on baseball last year--the first of an ill-advised, four-year, $1.08-billion contract--and already has written off $115 million for losses in the remainder of the contract.

CBS’ hit-and-miss regular-season coverage has been heavily criticized, and last season’s World Series sweep by the Cincinnati Reds added to the financial woes.

It appeared that the problems might be subsiding when the Atlanta Braves, with an apparent national following, attracted ratings in the 14s for the first two National League playoff games.

But then along came the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill Senate hearings, stealing baseball’s thunder, and the ratings took a dive.

NBC and ABC, covering the hearings, combined for a 26.5 rating last Friday. CBS, stuck with drab old baseball, got a 10.1, an all-time low for night-time postseason play.

The weekend ratings were equally dismal.

But there is new life at CBS today.

CBS didn’t have weeknight pregame shows during the playoffs, but there will be pregame shows during the World Series.

Coverage will begin at 5 p.m. on each game night. Game times vary from 5:26 to 5:40. Saturday’s start is 5:29.

Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda, used by CBS last weekend on the National League series, will be part of the World Series television crew as well. So will backup commentator Jim Kaat, and that is good news, because Kaat has emerged as a star.

Kaat, besides working for CBS, is also an announcer for the Minnesota Twins, which means he knows that team thoroughly. But Kaat is also professional enough to remain objective.

Lead commentator Tim McCarver generally does fine work, but he sometimes stretches for a line.

He reached for the sky Wednesday night when he said: “It’s appropriate the Goodyear blimp is here, because both these teams, the Pirates and Braves, had good years.”

Jay Leno came up with a great suggestion the other night. He said that if they had put the Thomas-Hill hearings on pay-per-view, the national debt would have been wiped out.

Tonight’s TVKO pay-per-view fight between Tommy (Duke) Morrison and Ray Mercer, two undefeated heavyweights, won’t do quite that well, but TVKO president Seth Abraham is optimistic.

“I think there’s a good chance that we’ll have our first profitable monthly fight,” Abraham said recently, while in Los Angeles.

Although having done well with its megafights, such as Evander Holyfield-George Foreman, TVKO has been taking a bath on its monthly shows.

“I thought it would be difficult, but I never thought it would be this difficult,” Abraham said.

One problem may be the $19.95 price. That’s pretty steep for the caliber of fights we used to get free on network television.

Tonight’s fight is also being distributed by Rick Kulis’ Event Entertainment to about 20 sports bars.

Happy birthday: Prime Ticket’s “Press Box,” the half-hour sports-news show that is on Sunday through Friday, usually at 10 p.m., celebrated its one-year anniversary Wednesday night.

Considering it was a ground-breaking show for a regional sports network, congratulations are in order to anchors Larry Burnett, Alan Massengale and Glen Walker, reporter Randi Hall and senior producers Sol Steinberg and Tom Reilly and all the others working behind the scenes.

“We knew going in it would take time to establish ourselves,” said Steinberg, who used to be Fred Roggin’s senior producer at Channel 4. “We still have a ways to go. We haven’t peaked yet, but we’re headed in the right direction.”

Don Corsini, Prime Ticket’s program director, who was a driving force to get the show on the air, said: “We think the show has strong production values, and we’ve had dependable advertiser support. “The worst-case scenario is, we break even.”

Recommended viewing: The second season of a fascinating series, “Amazing Games,” begins on ESPN Tuesday at 7 p.m.

The series is produced by Nicholas Stein, with former Raider wide receiver Bob Chandler serving as host.

Tuesday’s show, the first of five that will air through Nov. 19, spotlights games from around that world that are . . . well, amazing.

Bouzkashi is one of those games. It may be the most bizarre and violent game anyway.

An “Amazing Games” crew went to an Afghani refugee camp on the Pakistani border to film it.

As Chandler points out, in football they use a pigskin. In this game, they use the carcass of a calf, which has been ceremoniously skinned and stuffed with sand.

The competitors, who each carry a whip, are on horseback and the object is to carry the calf to a designated spot. Whipping other competitors is permitted, but whipping a horse is not.

Other segments on Tuesday’s show--a little less gruesome but almost as amazing--include ice canoe races on the St. Lawrence River in Quebec and a run up the stairs of the Empire State Building.

The show is on opposite Game 3 of the World Series, so set the VCR. You will be amazed.

TV-Radio Notes

There is plenty of Pacific 10 football on television Saturday. ABC offers the Pac-10 game of the year to date, Washington at Cal, at 12:30. Then Prime Ticket has Stanford-USC at 3:30 p.m. and UCLA-Oregon State at 7 p.m. . . . Because KNX is carrying the World Series, KBLA (1580) will carry the USC game. The game will also be on XTRA, which is part of the Stanford network.

St. Louis pitcher Joe Magrane, the latest in a series of guest analysts on Channel 2’s pregame and postgame shows during the baseball playoffs, is a broadcasting natural. . . . Steve Garvey will be a World Series guest analyst on Prime Ticket’s “Press Box,” beginning Sunday. . . . “Sportsbeat,” the informative and entertaining half-hour radio show with Larry Kahn and former USC lineman Mike Lamb, is no longer being carried by KORG, which was sold recently. The same thing happened to “Sportsbeat” when it was on KFOX-FM. Lamb said other stations have expressed interest in picking it up.

Occidental football games, beginning with Saturday night’s game with Cal Lutheran, will be broadcast on KIEV, thanks to Oxy students Mark Teitelman and David Louchheim, who are also the announcers. They sold enough advertising to get the games on radio.