Proposed Deal Is a Setback for Fans of National Pastime

Things are getting interesting.

Baseball announced last weekend that it had reached an agreement, pending approval from owners, on a six-year television contract with ABC and NBC.

On Thursday, CBS made a counteroffer, seeking to continue televising baseball in the manner it has for three years, only at less cost.

The CBS offer, presented to owners at a meeting in Rosemont, Ill., was put together because of obvious flaws in the ABC-NBC deal.

The main problem with the ABC-NBC deal is that a proposed new round of playoff games and league championship series would only be shown regionally.

What that means is that viewers would not be able to see all the playoff games.

During the proposed best-of-five first round, four games would start at the same time, but only one would be shown in any particular market.

The only way Los Angeles would get two games would be if both the Dodgers and Angels were involved. Then the NBC or ABC station would show one of the games, and the other would be farmed out to an independent.

The plan is to bounce around from game to game.

It’s one thing for CBS to do this during the early rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament; it’s another when you’re talking about postseason baseball.

Under the current format, all league championship series games are shown, usually one game in the afternoon, the other at night.

But under the new plan, there would be no day games. And there would be more bouncing around from game to game during the first five games in each league.

If both league championship series go beyond five games, the starting times would be staggered, but only by 1 1/2 hours.

Viewers now get as many as 14 league championship series games, but under the new plan, the most any market would get would be seven games, plus parts of two more.

There is also some fear--in Congress and elsewhere--that this plan is the foundation for putting postseason games on pay-per-view, although baseball insists pay-per-view is not in its plans.

The worst part of the plan is, simply, regional playoff telecasts.

Imagine the NFL showing playoff games regionally, rather than nationally.

Dick Ebersol, president of NBC Sports, defends the NBC-ABC deal, saying that ratings for the league championship series have declined from an average of 15.6 for 13 games in 1985 to an average of 10.2 for 13 games in 1992, making changes necessary.

Ebersol also points out that the entire playoffs will be on over-the-air television, rather than some games being farmed out to cable, which still doesn’t reach 40% of the country.

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The Saturday Game of the Week, left wounded by CBS, would be killed off in the ABC-NBC deal.

The Game of the Week became an American tradition. It was the greatest marketing tool baseball ever had.

Youngsters, in particular, awaited Saturday baseball with great anticipation. They grew up with announcers such as Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese in the ‘50s and Curt Gowdy and Tony Kubek in the ‘60s, and continued to watch when it was Joe Garagiola and Kubek in the ‘70s and Vin Scully and Garagiola in the ‘80s.

During the first three years CBS had baseball, when the Game of the Week became the occasional Game of the Week, the average rating dropped from 5.1 to 3.4. So far this season, the average is 3.1.

A lack of continuity, no doubt, contributed to the ratings decline.

“Baseball didn’t kill the Game of the Week, the fans killed it by not watching,” is what the baseball and television people are using as an excuse.

However, if the Game of the Week were restored to where it was--on at the same time every week--it would at least have a chance to make a comeback, particularly if baseball went to work on its image problems. And maybe youngsters again would look forward to Saturday baseball.

But no. Now the ABC-NBC deal calls for regular-season baseball in prime time, a proven loser even during baseball’s healthier years.

And there would be only 12 network telecasts, down from the current 16, and none before the All-Star break.

Talk about destroying interest.

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The baseball people say this plan will create excitement. But how do you create excitement by taking games, especially playoff games, off national television?

They also say baseball needs to restore its popularity with young people. Then why put regular-season games on at 8 p.m., as proposed, in both the Eastern and Western time zones? Saturday morning is when kids watch television.

Also, the prime-time regular-season network telecasts will be shown on a regional basis, meaning that 14 games could be sent to various regions on one night.

What it means for Los Angeles is, we will get either an Angel or Dodger game. Big deal. Channel 5 will televise 50 of each this season; and Prime Ticket, beginning June 2, will show an additional 20 Angel games. A few more Dodger and Angel games on a network station means little.

If you are a New York Yankee fan or Boston Red Sox fan living in Los Angeles, too bad. You won’t see much of them, except when they’re on cable or when they play the Angels.

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One more problem with the proposed ABC-NBC deal: With baseball taking charge of covering itself, there would be no middleman to protect the integrity and look of the telecasts. Would a topic that puts baseball in a bad light ever be dealt with on a baseball telecast? Probably not.

And with baseball in charge of selling advertising, would decals and billboards pop up everywhere? Baseball could start to look like auto racing.

This proposed deal has few redeeming qualities. It’s bad for baseball, and it’s bad for television viewers.

At the owners’ meeting in Rosemont on Thursday, no vote was taken on either television proposal. There was word that some major-market teams, such as the Blue Jays and Yankees, were against the ABC-NBC deal.

But maybe baseball, continually losing popularity, can’t expect anything better.

TV-Radio Notes

KMPC, plagued with sagging ratings, probably will be sold sometime soon. A possible buyer is the Noble Broadcast Group, which owns XTRA. Noble has offered $15-$20 million. If Noble buys KMPC, it probably would remain a sports station, but with mostly new people. Jim Healy, a longtime ratings winner, would figure to be one carryover. . . . KMPC came close to shuffling its lineup this week, moving Scott St. James and Brian Golden to mornings, Fred Wallin to midday, Tony Femino to nights and Paola Boivin to weekends. But apparently, because of the impending sale, all moves were put on hold. . . . From former KMPC morning host Robert W. Morgan: “I guess things are tough over there. I saw Joe McDonnell and Doug Krikorian sitting outside the studio with a sign, ‘Will argue for money.’ ”

Give Al Davis credit. According to one source, the Raider owner made an honest effort to talk longtime radio announcer Bill King into returning, and made him an attractive offer. But King politely declined. King reportedly has no problem with Davis but wasn’t too happy with the new radio rights holder, Nederlander Sports Marketing, which made him a salary offer of less than half of what he was making. . . . Channel 9 would like to use King on its Raider exhibition telecasts, which is a pretty good idea.

Joel Meyers has been doing the Raider exhibition telecasts, and he is rumored to be a candidate to replace King on radio. But it is doubtful that Meyers, who has network experience, would accept a $50,000 salary, which is what King originally was offered. Versatile Randy Rosenbloom is a more likely replacement for King at that salary. . . . Former KABC radio talk-show host Ira Fistel, a baseball whiz, makes his debut on XTRA Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. . . . There were a lot of happy people around Prime Ticket this week after it was learned the cable network received 10 Emmy nominations, five for “Press Box.”

Recommended viewing: Channel 9 has consecutive sports specials Saturday night, beginning at 9 p.m., and each is outstanding. The first one is a locally produced show, “The Big Business of Sports Endorsements,” with Gary Cruz, Mark Steines and Tom Murray reporting. The second, at 10, is a nationally syndicated Barbara Walters-type show in which Marv Albert interviews “Bad Boys” Charles Barkley, Rob Dibble and Mike Ditka. You will probably come away liking these three better than you did. . . . In an unusual interview that will be on Prime Ticket’s “Angel Clubhouse” Sunday at 9:30 p.m. and Monday at 7:30 p.m., Jack Snow asks J.T. Snow about his relationship with his father. Jack, of course, is J.T.’s father.

Next Wednesday’s Dodger game against Cincinnati will be broadcast in four languages--five if you count Drysdalese . Besides KABC’s English version and KWKW’s Spanish version, KBLA (1580) will carry the game in Korean and KAZN (1300) will carry it in Chinese, a first for American baseball. . . . Anyone listening to the eighth inning from Chicago on Wednesday got a taste of Drysdalese .

When Eric Karros doubled and Mike Piazza advanced from first to third, Don Drysdale’s call went something like this: “There’s a looper down the right-field line. That could be trouble. Piazza doesn’t see the ball. He doesn’t know what happened. He doesn’t know what happened. Whoa. He rounded second. I don’t know if anyone saw it. Piazza lost the ball. Did the Cubs see it? Piazza had no idea what happened. He rounded the bag and came back on the grass. The Cubs didn’t see it. We have it on a replay, but the cameras are in the outfield. Now the Cubs are coming out of the dugout. I think we’ll have an appeal. Whoa. I guess no one saw it.” Fortunately, Drysdale had to catch a plane to New York for a Hall of Fame dinner, so Ross Porter came on in the bottom of the eighth and recapped for listeners.