Dolphins’ Bandwagon Apparently Picks Up a Load in L.A.

The Dallas Cowboys may be “America’s Team,” but the Miami Dolphins appear to be Los Angeles’ team.

There were a lot of complaints last week when NBC chose to give Los Angeles the Raiders’ game at Washington on Sunday instead of Miami’s game at New England.

Turned out the Dolphins’ 20-3 victory was sort of a dud, but that is beside the point.

L.A. apparently wanted to see the Dolphins, and KABC radio’s Steve Edwards and Eric Tracy can offer proof of that.

Edwards and Tracy, proclaiming L.A. fans free agents, last week asked listeners of their “Sportstalk” call-in show to vote on which NFL team they would like to align themselves with. Tracy also called teams, inviting them to put in bids for fans.

The Dolphins were the runaway winner on two fronts.

Eddie Jones, executive vice president and general manager of the Dolphins, was the most convincing team spokesman. He offered KABC listeners a suite at Joe Robbie Stadium for the Dolphins’ Monday night game against San Francisco on Nov. 20. The station’s promotion department will determine how to pick the listeners who will go to the game.

And of 294 listeners who called--a pretty good response for a three-hour show--78 voted for the Dolphins. Next was New England with 32 votes, then San Francisco with 25, San Diego with 24, Denver with 16, Cleveland with 15, Dallas with 11, the Raiders with eight and the Rams with seven.

So, NBC, if you think Los Angeles wants a steady diet of Raider games, think again.

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L.A.’s team will be on ABC Monday night, when the Dolphins play host to the Pittsburgh Steelers.

ABC’s Al Michaels, informed of the KABC poll, was skeptical.

“Sounds like the election that got [former president Manuel] Noriega elected in Panama a few years ago,” he said. “Really, I’m pretty surprised. San Francisco or Cleveland, OK. But Miami? I’ve never seen any kind of swell for the Dolphins around here.”

Michaels lives in Brentwood.

NBC’s Phil Simms, when told of Miami’s popularity in Los Angeles, said, “Wow, no kidding. Well, I guess I can see that. There’s a lot to like about the Dolphins this year. And they’ve got a popular coach and a popular quarterback.”

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NBC, for the third week in a row, will show a Raider game in Los Angeles. But since the Raiders are playing the Kansas City Chiefs, it’s legitimate.

For the second week in a row, NBC gets to show a doubleheader. The second game Sunday is New England at San Francisco, and NBC has its No. 1 announcing team of Dick Enberg, Paul Maguire and Simms working this game.

The lone game on Fox is the St. Louis Rams at Carolina at 10 a.m. Originally, Fox was going to show Washington at Denver at 1 p.m., but switched to the Rams.

Fox doesn’t plan to show a lot of Ram games here, but with the 49ers on NBC and the Cowboys’ game against Minnesota on TNT, Fox was left without any marquee games.

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All this talk about which NFL games the networks should show means nothing to anyone who has a satellite dish and the NFL Sunday Ticket pay package, which delivers every game.

The package is available through big dishes, which cost more but also offer more, and 18-inch dishes, which now cost about $600, plus $200 or so for installation. The cost of the NFL package is an additional $139.

Satellite dish systems also offer a full menu of ABC’s pay-per-view college games. Cable subscribers are sometimes frustrated when their systems don’t offer the games, or offer only one. The cost of the full college package is $9.95 a week.

DirecTV had a glitch in its NFL package Sunday. At 12:40 p.m., with the early games nearing conclusion, all the pictures went out for about 10 minutes.

Marketing chief Tom Bracken said DirecTV’s antenna momentarily lost track of the satellite beaming the signals.

“We have ensured that it won’t happen again by putting up a backup antenna,” he said.

TV-Radio Notes

Marv Albert and son Kenny will be going head to head Sunday, with Marv and partner Cris Collinsworth announcing the Raider-Chief game on NBC and Kenny and Anthony Munoz working the Ram-Panther game for Fox. . . . Kenny Albert has been hired by Madison Square Garden network to announce New York Ranger games, filling in when his father, who also does the Knicks, is not available. . . . Bob Costas and Bob Uecker will be the announcers on tonight’s “Baseball Night in America” Angel-Kansas City telecast on Channel 4. . . . Because of an Angel conflict on KMPC (710) Saturday night, KFI (640) will carry the USC-Houston game at 7, and also the pregame show at 6:30. But Brian Golden’s “Trojan Talk” show will be on KMPC, from 5:30-6:30 p.m.

The USA network reports its ratings for the U.S. Open were up 15% from last year, and CBS, although final ratings won’t be available until today, said Nielsen’s “fast ratings” indicated an increase of 13% from last year and 31% from 1993. . . . Andre Agassi will be profiled on CBS’ “60 Minutes” Sunday.

KWNK (760), which formerly carried XTRA’s signal, is now carrying programming from Chicago’s One-on-One sports network. Host of the 5-9 p.m. show is Ted Green, a former Times sportswriter. . . . Haven’t heard one favorable thing about Scott Ferrall, the loud, obnoxious host on XTRA from 8-11 p.m. Rick Schwartz, now on from 11 p.m.-2 a.m., is sorely missed. . . . Schwartz did a fine job in his debut on a new weekly NFL gig on Prime Sport’s “Press Box.” Schwartz’s segment was on Wednesday night this week but will usually be on Tuesday nights.

Don King has been accused of many things, but never of being stupid. Taking Mike Tyson’s next fight to Fox means a smaller payday, but probably bigger ones down the road. Also, it takes some heat off King in case his latest pay-per-view show on Saturday night, featuring Julio Cesar Chavez against someone named David Kamau, turns out to be a bust, as King promotions often do.