Sports in the Morning Proves to Be a Tough Sell in L.A.

Turns out Robert W. Morgan was right. Sports talk in the morning does not work in Los Angeles.

Not even Jim Lampley, as bright and smooth as they come, could pull it off.

His latest Arbitron rating in persons 25-54 was a minuscule 0.6. XTRA, with Chet Forte and Steve Hartman in the mornings, had a 0.4 in Los Angeles.

Morgan had a 3.5 rating in persons 12-plus for his non-sports morning show before he left KMPC for KRTH last July. At KRTH, he has a 4.3 for persons age 25-54.

Lampley, who has a full platter with NBC and HBO anyway, bowed out at KMPC last Friday.

He said it was his idea to leave the station, but it was probably one of those deals in which management was saying, “Gee, we hate to see you go,” while breathing a sigh of relief.

Now the station is negotiating to pick up Don Imus’ non-sports talk show from New York’s WFAN. Imus does a Howard Stern-type show, only with more class and less crass.

The hitch might be the asking price, which could be as high as $1 million per year.

Imus makes $3 million per year at WFAN, and word is he wants $1 million to syndicate his show in Los Angeles.

Bill Ward, KMPC’s general manager, is out of town on vacation and Len Weiner, the program director, declined to comment on the Imus negotiations.

But the money might keep the Imus deal from going through, no matter how much Weiner, formerly of WFAN, would like to see it happen.

Add KMPC: Morgan left a voice-mail message Thursday, saying that the rumor about his coming back to KMPC to replace Lampley was not true.

If you hadn’t heard that one, you’re not alone. It was strictly a Morgan creation.

“We’d love to have Robert W. back,” said Weiner, tongue in cheek.

On Thursday morning, fill-in hosts Chris Roberts and Jack Snow were talking with reporter Larry Kahn from Florida when Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda, standing nearby, grabbed the phone and stole the show.

Maybe KMPC should recruit Lasorda to do the morning show.

“We’d love to have Tommy,” said Weiner, who wasn’t kidding this time.

Another 99-loss season and Lasorda might consider a career change. Maybe he is the one who could make sports in the morning work.

Last weekend, CBS’ Greg Gumbel was in Norway to announce ski jumping.

This weekend, he and partner Digger Phelps are in Tucson to announce NCAA West Regional games, including the one tonight at 7:40 between UCLA and Iowa State.

On April 17, Gumbel will make his debut as CBS’ No. 2 baseball play-by-play announcer. He will be back on “NFL Today” this fall, and in February will serve as the prime-time host of the 1994 Winter Olympics at Lillehammer, Norway.

Gumbel also does a daily sports wrap-up show for CBS radio, “Sportstime,” and works Cleveland Cavalier telecasts on WOIO.

Gumbel was taken aback not long ago when, on vacation at Montego Bay in Jamaica, a woman approached and said, “I really like you on the Cavs.”

Not exactly what you think of first when you think of Gumbel, an announcer for all seasons.

CBS got off to a fairly good start with its NCAA tournament coverage Thursday, although the picture was lost from the St. John’s-Texas Tech game for a couple of minutes.

No problem. The network merely switched to Kansas-Ball State to fill the void before going back to St. John’s-Texas Tech when it became available.

What was worse, the 5 p.m. coverage, for some reason, began with 6 minutes 40 seconds to play in the first half of the Purdue-Rhode Island game. The start of the scheduled Arizona-Santa Clara game was preempted.

Such things didn’t happen when ESPN provided round-the-clock coverage of the first round.

The good thing now is, Dick Vitale isn’t on CBS.

Larry Farmer, who has been staying with his in-laws in Woodland Hills since returning from Kuwait in January, will go back to the Middle East to continue coaching as soon as he is finished with his work with CBS during the NCAA tournament.

“I’ve got to get back there as soon as possible to get a team ready for a tournament in Hong Kong,” said Farmer, who plans to bring a team to Los Angeles next August to train.

TV-Radio Notes

KMPC and XTRA both did good jobs Thursday of providing continuous updates from the NCAA tournament, plus some abbreviated game coverage, such as the final 50 seconds of the Illinois-Cal State Long Beach game. The two all-sports stations begin offering full coverage via CBS radio this weekend. KMPC will have doubleheaders beginning at 10:50 a.m. Saturday and Sunday, and XTRA will have single games both days beginning at the same time. . . . CBS’ coverage of the tournament draw last Sunday got an 8.8 national Nielsen rating, highest since CBS started televising it in 1982. In Los Angeles, the selection show got a 2.3, a 2.7 the first quarter hour, a 1.8 the last. Tells you something about interest in college basketball here.

Energetic James Brown handled the announcement on CBS and found the road to the NCAA a little bumpy. He called the Pittsburgh Panthers the Pittsburgh Pirates and announced New Mexico State instead of New Mexico in the West Regional against George Washington. “Apparently I was moving a little faster here than I ever did on the basketball floor,” said Brown, who played at Harvard.

Touching all the network bases: Don Ohlmeyer, who recently was named the West Coast president of NBC, this week sold the sports holdings of Ohlmeyer Communications to ESPN. But the production company remains intact, with Howard Katz continuing as president, and will continue to produce most of the Indy car racing, the Skins Game golf and direct the Indy 500 on ABC. . . . The Atlanta 500, postponed because of the storm last Sunday, will be run Saturday and televised by ABC at 10 a.m. . . . ESPN will televise the ARCA Western Auto Shootout from College Station, Tex., Sunday, delayed at 9 p.m. This will be ESPN’s first non-Winston Cup coverage of the NASCAR Western West Series. . . . ESPN begins its exhibition baseball coverage Saturday at 10 a.m. with the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. ESPN will experiment with “basecams,” wireless cameras embedded in first and second base. They were first used by CBS during last year’s All-Star game.

In their debut on Channel 5, the Dodgers had a 5.3 rating last Sunday, making it the day’s second highest-rated daytime sporting event in Los Angeles, behind NBC’s Chicago Bulls-Detroit Pistons game, which had a 6.2. The Lakers-Atlanta Hawks later Sunday had a 4.5. . . . Jon Miller and Joe Morgan return for the fourth year as commentators on ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball” beginning April 11 with Cincinnati at St. Louis. On the Wednesday telecasts, Chris Berman will work with former major league catcher Buck Martinez, who was an analyst on the backup game last year. ESPN has three new announcers this season, Joel Meyers and Dave Sims doing play-by-play, and Fred Lynn as an alternate game analyst.

Prime Ticket has yet to name its announcers for its 20-game Angel package, which begins June 2, but the team is pushing for the Channel 5 team of Ken Wilson and Ken Brett. Prime Ticket made an offer to Al Michaels, who was interested, but no deal was made. . . . Joe Garagiola has been hired by the San Diego Cable Sports network to work 10 Saturday night home games, filling in when Jerry Coleman is off on CBS radio assignments. . . . The Pepsi All-Star softball game, taped in Palm Springs on Feb. 6, will be shown on NBC Sunday at 11:30 a.m. The Dodgers’ Eric Karros is among the players.

The feature race today at Santa Anita has been named in honor of Tony Femino, KMPC’s fast-rising late-night host. . . . XTRA’s Chet Forte and Steve Hartman will join forces with their newest colleague, NFL Hall of Famer Jim Brown, Sunday from 5 to 8 p.m. Forte and Hartman, plus Brown, who has a Sunday night show on XTRA, will broadcast live from Hollywood Park, where a City of Hope benefit, organized by the Kings, will take place. . . . The pay-per-view motorcycle jump-off last Friday between Robbie Knievel and England’s Eddie Kidd at Panama City Beach, Fla., was stormed out. It is tentatively rescheduled for July 9. . . . Another crazy pay-per-view event is the Toughman World Championships, scheduled for March 27 in Atlantic City, N.J. This is simply a bunch of thugs trying to determine who is the toughest.

A fan, Steve Zych of Culver City, got to announce the first two minutes of the second quarter of Thursday night’s Clipper-Miami Heat game on KMPC. Zych won a Clipper Fantasy Sweepstakes promotion. . . . An often overlooked announcer is Al Epstein, who is finishing his eighth season on Pepperdine basketball. He will call the Waves’ NIT game against UC Santa Barbara tonight at 7:30.

Jody Patrovsky, formerly of ESPN, has been hired to produce the “Santa Anita Tonight” shows aired Mondays and Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on Channel 56. Patrovsky replaces Alan Buchdahl, who resigned. Also, KNX’s Bill Seward is now being used more as the host instead of Gil Stratton. . . . TNT and Prime Network will jointly televise the U.S. Olympic Festival over the next three years. For the festival at San Antonio July 24-Aug. 1, TNT will televise 10 hours, Prime Network 20 hours.