CBS Will Be Hitting on All Cylinders for the Daytona 500

Although CBS still has the Masters, the Final Four, tennis’ U.S. Open, one more Winter Olympics and has gotten back into college football in a big way, it is no longer in the Super Bowl business.

But on Sunday, CBS will give the Daytona 500 Super Bowl-type treatment.

The network will use 29 cameras of various sizes and shapes to cover Sunday’s race. Nine will be mounted in cars, there will be something called the CBS FlyingCam in a helicopter and there will be a blimp camera. In all, the cameras will provide 60 angles.

“I’m going to have to sprout eyes on the sides of my head to check all of the angles,” director Bob Fishman said.

Also, CBS had Tanya Tucker, a stock car racing enthusiast, record a theme song and video called “Let’s Go Racing” that will be used as the opening for Sunday’s telecast as well as for the network’s 12 other stock car races this year.

The announcing team includes Ken Squier, Ned Jarrett, Mike Joy, David Hobbs and Dick Berggren, plus guest analyst Buddy Baker, whose winning average speed of 177.6 mph in 1980 still stands as the Daytona 500 record.

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The best thing to happen to television since the VCR is DirecTV, and it continues to get better.

This month, DirecTV, a division of the Hughes Corp., which provides programming for 18-inch satellite dish systems, began offering a “Sports Choice” package that includes the Golf Channel, three relatively new channels and 18 regional sports networks such as Prime Sports.

On March 1, DirecTV will begin charging $12 a month for the package. Before, the Golf Channel alone was $6.95.

The Golf Channel has golf-related programming 24 hours a day--tournaments, golf news, features, instructional programming and more.

The three other channels in the package are the Classic Sports Network, Outdoor Life and Speedvision.

The Classic Sports Network offers, well, classic sports.

On Saturday from 7 to 9 p.m., Game 6 of the 1980 NBA finals will be shown. That’s when rookie Magic Johnson, playing center in place of injured Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, scored 42 points, grabbed 15 rebounds and led the Lakers to a title-clinching victory over the Philadelphia 76ers.

The Lakers’ title series against the 76ers in 1982 will be revisited in a one-hour special tonight at 8.

Outdoor Life, launched in about 1 million cable households last July, and Speedvision, launched in the same homes last month, are part of a joint project involving major cable operators Cox Cable, Comcast and Continental Cablevision.

Heading the project is Roger Werner, the respected former president of ESPN and later Prime Sports.

Werner says Speedvision, still in need of a little tweaking, won’t be at full speed until next month. The network deals with motor sports as well as such things as recreational aviation and boating.

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All parties are saying it was Joe Montana’s decision to leave NBC, but his hit-and-miss schedule and his unwillingness to utter a critical word might have made it a mutual parting.

Montana’s Pollyanna outlook reached new heights when he failed to criticize the Kansas City Chiefs and his friend Steve Bono after their playoff loss to the Indianapolis Colts.

Although TNT officials are saying the dumping of Warren Moon is not connected to his spousal-abuse case, it no doubt played a role. Spousal abuse is no longer viewed as a minor offense. TNT did the right thing in letting Moon go.

TV-Radio Notes

NBC and the PGA announced contract extensions Thursday that will keep the Ryder Cup and the Seniors’ Championship on NBC through 2005. . . . The second part of HBO’s outstanding documentary, the “Journey of the African-American Athlete,” will be shown Monday at 10 p.m. Part 2 covers 1950 to the present. . . . A good warmup for the Daytona 500 on CBS Sunday at 9 a.m. will be the Nashville Network’s “RaceDay” program at 8:30 a.m. The nighttime edition of the TNN show at 8 o’clock will recap the race.

Kurt Rambis, new special correspondent for “NBA Inside Stuff,” talks about his experiences last weekend in San Antonio, site of the All-Star game, on Saturday’s show, which will be on Channel 4 at 10 a.m. . . . Rhythm and blues singer Monica will perform live in the studio on TNT’s “Inside the NBA” next Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.

Rick Barry, the guest on “Innerview with Ann Liguori” on Prime Sports next Tuesday at 6 p.m., talked with Liguori during the taping about why he has never been offered a coaching job in the NBA. “It’s an injustice,” he said. “I’m supposed to be this outspoken, terrible ogre that no one gets along with, that everyone, including my boys, hate me. I’ve changed, I’ve matured, I’ve grown. But people have this perception of me and don’t even know me.”

Irv Kaze will feature decision-makers Fred Claire, Jerry West and longtime Ram executive Jack Faulkner on his KIEV show tonight at 6. . . . Following Kaze’s show at 7 p.m. will be Pepperdine-UCLA baseball, with Chris Roberts and John Dolak announcing. It is the first of six UCLA baseball games that will be carried by KIEV this season.

Congratulations to recent Golden Mike Award winners Rory Markas and Mike Cunningham. Often awards are frivolous, but these are not. Markas won for an in-depth radio documentary he did last October for KNX in which he took a balanced look at whipping in horse racing. It came to the forefront recently with the five-day suspension of jockey Corey Nakatani for excessive whipping. Cunningham, a sports producer for Channel 4, won for a feature he did on Lyle Phelps, the father of a backup quarterback at Irvine High. A few weeks before he died of colon cancer in December 1994, Phelps got to watch his son, Ryan, start against Newport Harbor. This was a significant story because Lyle Phelps agreed to appear on camera to get the message out about the importance of regular checkups. Cunningham also won part of another Golden Mike, as Channel 4’s 11 p.m. sports segment was named best in Los Angeles.

Ken Wilson, who was not invited back as the Angels’ television play-by-play announcer, has been hired as the television voice of the Oakland Athletics. . . . Minor league assignments: The Rancho Cucamonga Quakes have hired Michael Curto as their radio announcer. He replaced Joe Castello, who took a triple-A job with the Syracuse Chiefs. . . . Former Southern California broadcaster Ronnie Wald has been named voice of the Visalia Oaks. The games will be carried by Porterville’s KTIP, owned by former Oakland A’s announcer Monte Moore.