Two Minus Two Equals More for NFL Fans

A Raider move back to Oakland would be nothing to rejoice about, but it would be a plus for Los Angeles television viewers.

No teams would mean more telecasts.

Gone with the Raiders would be blackouts and doubleheader restrictions.

Fox and NBC, which take turns showing doubleheaders to most of the nation on alternate weekends, are restricted to single telecasts in a market where an NFL game is being played. The NFL’s antiquated thinking is that the policy helps protect the live gate.

So when either the Rams or Raiders were home on any given NFL Sunday, which was usually the case, Los Angeles got cheated out of one telecast.

When the Rams moved, it meant L.A. would get that extra telecast at least half the time. Now if the Raiders move, too, L.A. will get that extra telecast every Sunday.

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The Raiders’ new flagship radio station, KLSX-FM, plans to carry Raider broadcasts no matter where the team is, said Bob Moore, the station’s general manager. And radio announcers Joel Meyers and newcomer David Humm, who work for rights-holder Nederlander Sports Marketing, will keep their jobs, move or no move, according to Meyers.

With Pasadena’s KMAX-FM planning to carry San Francisco 49er broadcasts, both Bay Area teams would have L.A. stations next season.

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Fight furor: Are you willing to pay between $45.95 and $54.95 to watch Mike Tyson’s comeback fight against Peter McNeeley on Aug. 19?

Well, even if you are, you might not have the opportunity. Two major national cable conglomerates, Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI) and Sammons Communications, have announced their systems will not offer the fight, nor will DirecTV.

The companies believe the price is too high and are also turned off by the split being sought by Showtime Entertainment Television (SET) and promoter Don King, rumored to be as much as 70-30. Usually, it’s around 50-50.

“This is greed beyond reality,” one New York cable operator said.

DirecTV spokesman Tom Backen said: “The price sets a bad precedent. What are they going to charge when Tyson fights a legitimate opponent? We have to look out for our consumers’ best interest.”

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Seen on Prime Sports’ “Press Box” Monday was NBC footage showing O.J. Simpson wearing gloves when he was a sideline reporter at the 1991 AFC championship game between Buffalo and the Raiders. The gloves were similar to the ones Simpson struggled with in court last week. The day after the footage was shown, a representative of the district attorney’s office showed up at Prime Sports and retrieved it.

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Early bird specials: HBO’s Wimbledon coverage next week, Monday through Friday, will be shown live at 6 a.m. each day. In this case, delayed coverage might be better.

Martina Navratilova, retired from singles competition, will join the HBO broadcast team when she’s not playing doubles with Steffi Graf.

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Very special: The California Special Olympics will be held today through Sunday at UCLA, and Prime Sports will tape the event for showing July 30 at 8 p.m.

But Prime Sports is doing more than that. It recently raised $181,000 for Special Olympics at its second benefit golf tournament at Lakeside in Toluca Lake and this week began an advertising campaign for Special Olympics.

The Special Olympics World Games will be held at the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Conn., July 1-9, and NBC will show the opening ceremonies as part of a prime-time special July 5.

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TV-Radio Notes

NBC, covering its first major golf tournament since 1965, did a sensational job on the U.S. Open last weekend. Sunday’s national rating, a 5.6, was better than the 4.8 ABC got for the final round last year. . . . ESPN and ESPN2 will use 29 commentators to cover the weeklong “Extreme Games,” an ESPN creation that begins Saturday at various Rhode Island sites. ESPN will have 25 hours of coverage, ESPN2 20 1/2. Events include street luge, bungee jumping, sky surfing and kite skiing. The games will be shown in 150 countries. . . . The NBA expansion draft will be on NBC Saturday at 1:30 p.m. and the regular NBA draft will be on TNT Wednesday at 4:30. The draft will be previewed on TNT Tuesday at 5 p.m.

XTRA program director Howard Freedman reports talk-show host Chet Forte, recovering from triple-bypass surgery, is doing well. Freedman said Forte expects to go home from the hospital this weekend and may be back on the air as soon as mid-July. . . . A postcard arrived from former Channel 9 and KMPC sportscaster Scott St. James, who sort of disappeared after the sale of KMPC last year. St. James reports he can be seen in a Pepsi commercial, is starring in an infomercial and will play a bad guy in a movie, “Atomic Blue.” He is also doing sports on the weekends on Arrow radio (93.1-FM) and recently began doing postgame Angel talk on the weekends for KMPC.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, recently inducted into basketball’s Hall of Fame, gets another honor July 8. He’ll be the featured honoree, receiving a lifetime achievement award, at the fourth Jim Thorpe Pro Sports Awards show, to be televised in prime time on ABC from the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles. Previous winners include Muhammad Ali, Joe DiMaggio and Hank Aaron.

Al Bernstein will do the blow-by-blow for the pay-per-view telecast of Saturday night’s Roy Jones Jr.-Vinny Pazienza fight after his wife, Connie Rocco, and her sister Cathy, sing the national anthem. . . . Paragon Cable of Torrance and a few other cable companies in outlying areas are not showing Prime Sports’ Angel telecasts this season. The companies didn’t want to ante up the surcharge sought by Prime, which amounts to a few cents a month per subscriber.

It was mentioned here last week that KMAX has its own horse racing show, “Thoroughbred Los Angeles” Saturdays and Sundays, 9-10 a.m. Well, XTRA also has a horse racing show, “Trackside With Roger Stein,” which is on Saturdays and Sundays, 8-9 a.m. Stein, a trainer, broadcasts from his barn on the backstretch at Hollywood Park. Even though he is on the inside, Stein isn’t reluctant to criticize his industry.