Parting Shots From KCBS’ Olbermann : Television: Before the brash, witty sportscaster leaves L.A. for ESPN and Bristol, Conn., he zings his ex-employer and local TV sports reporting.

Normally, New Year’s Day, with its football bowl games, would be one of the highlights of sportscaster Keith Olbermann’s work schedule.

But not this year.

He’s blowing town.

Goodby, KCBS Channel 2. Hello, ESPN--the sports cable network that is based in Bristol, Conn. Olbermann’s contract with KCBS officially ended Saturday night when the station didn’t pick up his option.

But just about everybody in local TV news knew that Olbermann--a brash, literate, 32-year-old who had a meteoric rise in Los Angeles; you either loved or hated him--was on his way out for at least half a year.

He’ll be making considerably less at ESPN than the $550,000 a year that KCBS paid him. But for Olbermann, “The money is not the issue. It is plenty fine (at ESPN).” In an interview with The Times, the controversial, satirical sportscaster took a parting shot at KCBS management:

“Thank goodness they didn’t renew (the contract). I can go work for a real broadcasting operation that has a future.”

At his best, first at KTLA Channel 5 and then KCBS, Olbermann brought a kind of Steve Allen-Groucho Marx lunacy and wit to his reports. But his critics seemed to think that the opinionated newsman was more akin to Attila the Hun, given to arrogance and excesses.

“I don’t think there ever was a question of (KCBS) picking up the option on the contract,” said Olbermann, predicting that many of the sky-high salaries in local TV will be brought to Earth in the next few years because of the “economic climate.”

The steps leading to his departure were a “nightmare,” he added, saying he was alternately advised: “Yes, we do want you back. No, we don’t want you back. Yes, this is informal notice you’re not coming back. No, we’ve changed our mind. Yes, the consultants are here--they like you. No, they hate you. The research is great about you. The research stinks. Back and forth.

“But what it came down to was: I didn’t think there was any reasonable amount of money they could come up with that would pay me enough to give the kind of sports that they wanted. They want something that could probably best be described as ‘anything except sports.’ Just as local television news has degenerated into anything except news, they wanted that from sports.”

In a sense, Olbermann admitted, he probably contributed to the trend in local TV sports coverage--away from straight reporting of scores and events--when he arrived from a Boston station in 1985 and brought his off-the-wall style to KTLA.

Olbermann was, of course, hardly the first sportscaster to veer off from the straight and narrow, and his reporting was sometimes called into question. But recalling his immediate approach here, he said with adamant pride:

“We left out, ‘Oh, let’s show an extra six home runs. Let’s forget the labor implications or the drug story or the humanity stories, and let’s show extra home runs.’ I think what has happened since then has been the next stage of that, a perversion of it, in which you clean out all the sports news and just show silliness.”

Although Olbermann made his big bucks at KCBS, he clearly reserves his fondest memories for KTLA and KNX Radio, where he received far less money. When he left KTLA in 1988, he was, he says, earning $72,000 a year. Shortly after joining KCBS that year, his salary jumped to “seven times what I was making. It was pretty astounding.”

But KTLA, he said, “was a lot more fun.” KTLA anchor Hal Fishman “is deeply concerned about that newscast,” said Olbermann. “Every moment that it’s on the air, he wants it to be good. He wants to put out an environment that, ‘This is what we want and I’m encouraging you, and you did a great job.’ ”

The major change when he joined KCBS, said Olbermann, “was that I went from one broadcast a day (at KTLA) to sometimes as many as five or six. And the one thing I will admire a Fred Roggin or a Jim Hill for is stamina. It took me a long time to handle this kind of schedule. I was getting sick constantly and I was rushing to get the work done.”

Nonetheless, he did have some pleasant surprises at KCBS. While the larger, constantly changing staff at the CBS station ruled out the intimacy of the smaller KTLA team, he found cooperation from anchors Tritia Toyota and Chris Conangla.

“If they were not absolutely certain what my lead story was going to be and how best to introduce me with it, they would be specific and say, ‘Tell me what to say,’ ” Olbermann said. “I don’t think there were very smooth transitions except with those people, and to some degree with Michael Tuck.

“But Tritia’s the best. Tritia Toyota came to me after the first show I did with her and said, ‘I never saw your work before. This is a good hire.’ And she maintained that attitude with me through this entire experience. She’s a sweet, genuine person.”

However, Olbermann knows that many viewers didn’t think he was so sweet.

“Any time you give an opinion on something, you are risking alienating people,” he said. “A lot of people who are used to sanitized, neutralized television will immediately hear something they don’t like.”

Which may be why he has a special fondness for KNX, where his commentaries will continue to run for a while: “They have not only never asked me to see the script in advance, they never even ask for the topic. The trust and giving of responsibility to me is the greatest compliment I’ve ever gotten in my career.”

But what about TV viewers who offer the perfectly legitimate argument that what they want most of all from a sports report are the scores and details of the day’s events? Why is local TV turning the other way?

“It’s a very simple reason,” Olbermann said. “If you believe the research data,” he added, the percentage of viewers who are genuinely interested in local TV sports reports is not high--and is being further diminished by cable competition.

“Sports fans are an incredibly vociferous minority--and an incredibly powerful and money-spending minority,” he said. But because of the lack of interest by other viewers, “management looks for material that is further and further away from the mainstream definition of sports. So you get screaming contests, best-legs competition, sportscasters with opinions and attitudes. Anything but the scores.”

Consider, Olbermann said, the plight of TV’s 11 p.m. sports reports:

“By 11 o’clock in L.A., we have already seen each of the independent stations give sportscasts. At 8 o’clock, CNN is on for half an hour. At 8:30, ESPN is on for an hour. At 10 o’clock, Prime Ticket is on for half an hour. And then we’re on at 11:28 with three or four minutes of sports. How in the world can we presume that there is a large body of sports fans who are interested in the scores?

“We’re selling them hot dogs--and they’ve already had three steaks.”