NHL Fans Pay Price for Lack of Deal

While the NBA is enjoying prime-time coverage on NBC, the NHL’s Stanley Cup finals are tucked away on a pay-cable network.

So the NHL’s showcase event is going to a limited audience. SportsChannel is carrying the Stanley Cup finals, but hockey fans without cable are out of luck, even if they wouldn’t mind paying.

So are those whose cable company doesn’t offer SportsChannel, such as Cencom and Paragon.

Meanwhile, major league baseball has disappeared from network television. CBS’ last major league telecast was May 2. The next one will be June 13.

It’s no wonder pro basketball is growing in popularity, while baseball and hockey are going in the other direction.

Baseball’s black mark: Author Curt Smith calls this five-week stretch baseball’s “black hole.”

Smith, senior speech writer for President Bush, is one of the most outspoken critics of how CBS has done away with the traditional “Game of the Week.”

He devotes a chapter to the subject in an updated edition of his 1987 book, “Voices of the Game,” the acclaimed chronicle of baseball broadcasting from 1921 to the present.

Smith claims that CBS has sold baseball down the river.

“People without cable don’t get enough baseball and people with cable get too much,” Smith said.

CBS hasn’t totally forgotten baseball. The network will televise Saturday’s Pepperdine-Wichita State game in the College World Series at 10 a.m., with Greg Gumbel and Jim Kaat reporting.

And the NCAA championship game will be carried by CBS a week from Saturday, also at 10 a.m.

Televising college baseball isn’t simply a noble gesture by CBS. The College World Series was originally offered to the network as part of a package that included basketball’s Final Four.

In other words, CBS had to take the College World Series and other NCAA championship events if it wanted basketball.

CBS has been carrying the College World Series championship game since 1988, and added a first-round game last year.

Nothing wrong with putting college baseball on network television, but why not pair the college games with major league games and offer them as doubleheaders? That apparently would make too much sense.

Radio wars: It’s one thing for the folks at KMPC to be taking shots at their rivals at XTRA. It’s another for them to be fighting among themselves.

The inmates seem to have taken over the KMPC asylum.

Robert W. (Don’t Call Me Bob) Morgan and Jim Lampley have been going at it this week, and it’s hardly been just fun and games.

It started when Lampley dared to criticize Morgan. Chest-thumping has reached epidemic proportions at KMPC ever since it switched to its sports format last month, but Lampley thought Morgan had gone too far when he inserted part of a Daryl Gates interview into a promo that he played over and over.

Gates told Morgan that he was thinking of him when he personally arrested one of the suspects in the Reginald Denny beating.

Of the promo, Lampley said, on the air: “That burns my cookies,” a comment more than a little out of character for someone as well-spoken as Lampley.

On the next edition of what some facetiously call the “Bob in the Morning” show, Morgan lobbed grenades from all angles, even attacking Lampley personally.

It’s easy to tell by Lampley’s on-air demeanor that Morgan’s antics are getting on his nerves.

And talk about unprofessional. Maybe KMPC management views the feud as a publicity gimmick, but more than anything it cheapens the station’s reputation.

What’s next? Morgan taking on Jim Healy?

Naw. Morgan is afraid of Healy, and rightfully so. Healy would chew him up.

Radio ratings: The way Morgan carries on, doing whatever he pleases, you’d figure his ratings are so high he is untouchable. And in some ways, that’s true.

The last Arbitron rating book showed that an average of 67,400 listeners, 12 and over, tune into Morgan during any quarter-hour increment. The station average is 40,600.

But Morgan’s audience dropped considerably from the previous rating period, as did KMPC’s as a whole.

KMPC’s overall share of the listening audience dropped from a 2.8 to a 2.4 from the fall rating period to the winter rating period, which ran from Jan. 9 through April 1.

Radio ratings, unlike television ratings, are not immediately accessible. The current rating period runs from April 2 through June 24, with results due out in late July.

To get radio ratings, Arbitron finds people who are willing to keep a diary for one week of the stations they listen to, and when. Arbitron used 4,880 people to sample the L.A. market during the last rating period.

Add ratings: San Diego-based XTRA, which also does a lot of chest-thumping, trails KMPC considerably in audience size. It’s quarter-hour average in Los Angeles during the last rating period was 7,400. In San Diego, it was 6,400.

As former KABC “Sportstalk” host Ed (Superfan) Bieler once said when attacking the ratings of then-rival Joe McDonnell at KFI: “You could yell off the end of a pier and get more listeners than that.”

XTRA does best between 3 and 7 p.m., when Lee Hamilton is on. During the last rating period, Hamilton’s listening audience averaged 15,700 in Los Angeles, 12,300 in San Diego.

But KMPC, featuring Scott St. James and Healy during that time period, drew 48,600 L.A. listeners.

Hamilton prefers to point to the demographic category of men 25-54. In that group, Hamilton’s L.A. listening audience averaged 12,900, compared to 9,500 for KMPC.

However, in the same age bracket, men and women, Hamilton’s audience is still 12,900, but KMPC’s grows to 16,400.

Oops Dept.: The Indianapolis 500 had a great finish, but ABC botched it.

Director Don Ohlmeyer, working as a free-lancer, made the wrong call at the end of the race, switching cameras when he shouldn’t have.

The traditional shot is the one of the starter waving the checkered flag as the winning car crosses the finish line.

But this year Ohlmeyer should have stayed with the camera that showed runner-up Scott Goodyear trying to pass winner Al Unser Jr.

Had it not been for announcer Paul Page, viewers wouldn’t have known who won. They sure couldn’t see it.

Making matters worse, ABC went to an interview with Unser’s car owner, Rick Galles, before showing any replays of the exciting finish.

TV-Radio Notes

There is a possibly there will be no NBA basketball this weekend, if the Chicago Bulls wrap up their series with the Cleveland Cavaliers tonight. The NBA finals won’t start until Wednesday. . . . If Chicago and Cleveland play a Game 7 Sunday, it is now scheduled to start at 3:30 p.m. . . . Magic Johnson will join Marv Albert and Mike Fratello at courtside for the NBA finals. He may go to Chicago if there is a Game 7 Sunday, although that was undetermined Thursday night. . . . At this juncture in the NBA playoffs, NBC’s average rating is up 10% from a year ago--6.2 to 6.8--and Wednesday night’s Chicago-Cleveland game drew an impressive 12.2 national rating.

John McEnroe makes his debut as a tennis commentator for NBC this weekend at the French Open. . . . Now that Dick Enberg’s NBA obligations are finished, he will join Bud Collins, Chris Evert and McEnroe in Paris on Sunday. . . . Credit ESPN commentator Mary Carillo for the most memorable shot during the first week of the French Open. She could see the tension building during the Derrick Rostagno-Karel Novacek match and thought something might happen at the end. So an ESPN camera was there when Novacek delivered a forearm to Rostagno’s chest.

Fred Lynn makes his debut as an ESPN baseball commentator on tonight’s Cal State Fullerton-Florida State game in the College World Series. The tape-delayed telecast will be shown at 11:30 p.m. . . . Lynn Woodard, general manager of SportsChannel Los Angeles the last 2 1/2 years, will resign next week. She is marrying Stewart Blair, the chairman of United Artists theaters, in September and the couple will live in Denver. John Mohr, president of SportsChannel’s regional networks, will take over until a permanent general manager is named.