CBS Stays the Same, Gets Polls in One

Golf viewers, by and large, are a conservative lot, uncomfortable with change.

That may help explain why CBS usually places so high in polls on golf coverage.

ABC replaced Jim McKay with Brent Musburger a few years back. It dumped Dave Marr for Steve Melnyk. This year it added Peter Jacobsen.

NBC tried Bryant Gumbel. This year, it replaced Charlie Jones with Jim Lampley.

Pat Summerall is in his 25th year of golf for CBS. Ken Venturi is in his 26th. Gary McCord, who has been around for eight years, is considered a newcomer.

And then there is producer Frank Chirkinian. He is in his 35th year.

Chirkinian has won four Emmys and a Peabody for golf coverage.

A Peabody in television, awarded by the University of Georgia, is the equivalent of a Pulitzer in the newspaper business. Only six have been given for sports in the 52 years of the award’s existence, and Chirkinian has two of them. He also won a Peabody for his work on Alpine skiing at the 1960 Winter Olympics at Squaw Valley.

Chirkinian, who is at Riviera this week overseeing coverage of the Nissan L.A. Open, had this to say about golf: “I think continuity provides viewers with a certain comfort level. I think viewers were comfortable with Charlie Jones. He worked very well with Johnny Miller.

“Nothing against Jim Lampley. He may do fine. But I don’t understand why you’d make a change just for the sake of change. I mean, why change?”

Don’t feel too sorry for Jones. As is the trend these days, NBC gave him a non-exclusive contract, enabling him to hire out elsewhere.

He has since signed on as the television voice of the Colorado Rockies, and his agent, Martin Mandel of San Francisco, says other offers have been coming in.

“The hard part is working out a schedule and determining what Charlie can do and what he can’t,” Mandel said.

Add golf: In a poll of 15,000 readers in the December issue of Golf Digest, 56% said if they had to choose one network to cover golf, it would be CBS. ESPN got 18% of the votes, NBC 12% and ABC 7%.

McCord was voted best host or hole announcer (53%), followed by Summerall (17%), Ben Wright (11%) and Jim Nantz (7%). It was almost a clean sweep for CBS. Peter Kostis, who works for both the USA network and CBS, and Vin Scully, who works as a free-lancer, were the only others getting votes.

The one non-CBS winner was NBC’s Johnny Miller, who beat out Venturi for best analyst, 45% to 39%.

A poll in the January issue of Golf Illustrated also showed CBS first, with Summerall, Venturi (tied with Miller) and McCord winning top individual honors.

Speaking of changes just for the sake of change, one might wonder why KABC radio has replaced Al Downing with Rick Monday as No. 2 man behind Ross Porter on “Dodgertalk.”

Nothing wrong with Monday, but then, there was nothing wrong with Downing.

Downing has done fine work over the years. He seemed to be able to straddle the line between being too soft and too hard.

He was somewhat of a Dodger apologist, but he wasn’t a house man. He could be critical, but never enough to upset team and station management.

The problem, Downing said, was that KABC, because of the economy, asked him to take a 48% pay cut, even though he made only $52,000 last season.

Downing said he eventually agreed to take $45,000, but the station’s final offer was $40.000.

“We were only $5,000 apart,” Downing said. “That tells me they really didn’t want me. I just wish someone had told me that so I could have gone out and looked for something else.”

Said George Green, KABC’s general manager: “Al Downing was our first choice. We wanted to re-sign him and made every effort to do so.

“We made 42 calls to him. Everyone from Peter O’Malley to our programming people called. If it was anyone else, we would have cut off negotiations a lot sooner.

“Al is a great guy. He’s just a bad business person. He is not responsive to what is going on in our economy these days.

“Not everyone is Michael Jackson, and I’m not talking about our Michael Jackson. I’m talking about the other one.”

Wait a minute. That Michael Jackson makes $50 million a year. Downing is in the $50,000-a-year category.

Added Green: “We were very fortunate that someone the caliber of Rick Monday was available. I think he is going to be terrific.”

Versatile Eric Tracy, a loyal soldier, was overlooked again.

“If Monday hadn’t been available, Eric would have gotten the job,” Green said. “We like Eric a lot and think he does a great job for us.”

TV-Radio Notes

Ohio State’s overtime victory over Indiana on ESPN Tuesday night was possibly the best college basketball game of the year. The downside was Dick Vitale, who never shuts up. He detracts from the excitement, rather than enhancing it. . . . Vitale and Jim Valvano, if he’s up to it, will join Brent Musburger for the UCLA-Duke game on ABC Sunday at 1 p.m.

Sunday’s Clipper-Laker game at the Forum, originally scheduled for 12:15 p.m. for NBC, has been switched to 7:30 and will be televised by Channel 13 and Prime Ticket. NBC instead will televise San Antonio-Orlando as the second game of a doubleheader. It will be Shaquille O’Neal’s fourth consecutive appearance on NBC, counting last Sunday’s All-Star game. . . . ESPN will devote an entire “Outside the Lines” program to O’Neal on Sunday at 5 p.m.

Recommended viewing: ESPN’s first “EPSY” awards show next Thursday at 6 p.m. . . . A new show, “NBA Off the Court,” makes its debut on the Black Entertainment Network Saturday at 5 p.m. Karl Malone, Earl Monroe, Magic Johnson and David Robinson will be among those featured. Ahmad Rashad is the host. The show will be repeated at 8:30 p.m. Saturday.

It was probably only a joke, but Peter Vecsey, who works for USA Today as well as NBC, did not endear himself to his fellow sportswriters when, during last Sunday’s All-Star pregame show, he bragged about missing media day. He said to Michael Jordan, who was fined $10,000 for missing media day: “What is it, both of us don’t want to hang around writers or don’t care what writers have to say?” . . . The 14.3 national rating for the All-Star game is an all-time high. NBC’s first All-Star game three years ago got a 7.8. . . . Charles Barkley, who worked with TNT on its “All-Star Saturday” show, might someday have a future in broadcasting. Besides being honest, he’s pretty glib.

A young announcer with a bright future is USC graduate David Kelly. Kelly recently won two Associated Press statewide awards for both play-by-play and reporting. Kelly, the son of former Cleveland Brown running back Leroy Kelly, is covering high school and junior college sports in Tulare County for radio station KTIP in Porterville. Kelly won his AP awards in the Class II category. Class I winners included KFWB’s Randy Kerdoon (a first for best sports segment and a second in the best sports story category) and Pete Arbogast (best play-by-play). It was Arbogast’s fifth AP award.

KMPC’s Scott St. James, an aspiring actor, landed a role in a movie called “Murder by Numbers.” St. James plays a serial killer. St. James also has been hired as the main announcer for the pay-per-view motorcycle jumping duel between daredevils Robbie Knievel and Eddie Kidd on March 12 at Panama City Beach, Fla. Los Angeles sports-talk host Peter Vent will serve as a field reporter. . . . Early indications are that last Saturday’s pay-per-view boxing card featuring Julio Cesar Chavez and Greg Haugen got about a 3.5% buy rate. The entire card will be shown Saturday at 10 p.m. on Showtime.