Guess You Had to Be There to See Dodgers

In just about any other city, if a local baseball team were involved in a pennant race, as are the Dodgers, every game would be televised.

The Baltimore Orioles will end up with 151 of their 162 games on local television, counting over-the-air and cable. The New York Yankees’ total is 150.

Twenty of the 28 teams televise at least 100 games locally. Seven more do 50 to 100. Only one, the Dodgers, schedules fewer than 50 regular-season local telecasts.

Why? Basically, it’s economics, one factor being able to sell enough advertising to justify televising additional games. “We could handle a few more games, maybe 52-55,” said Channel 5 General Manager Greg Nathanson. “But we’re pretty limited too. There are a lot of 4:30 games, which don’t work for us, and ESPN takes Wednesday nights and Fox takes Saturday afternoons.”

Another problem is the Dodgers don’t draw good ratings unless they’re in playoff contention.

That’s L.A. for you. Look at the poor Angels. They’re out of it, and Channel 9, obligated to televise all 50 of the games that were scheduled before the start of the season, is stuck with minuscule ratings.

The Dodgers and flagship station Channel 5 scheduled 46 regular-season telecasts last season and 46 again this season. If they originally scheduled, say, 100, and the Dodgers fell out of contention, Channel 5’s sales people wouldn’t be very happy.

The way it is now, Dodger fans aren’t very happy.

What makes things doubly bad is the Dodgers are one of only a handful of teams without a supplemental cable package.

At least the Dodgers are making some progress. Before the Dodgers went from Channel 11 to Channel 5 two years ago, no home games were televised. Ten were scheduled this season.

And next season, there will be 52 Dodger games on Channel 5, plus an additional 40 on Tele-TV, a not-yet-launched digital microwave service. But for now, Dodger fans are concerned about this season.

The good news, according to the Dodgers’ director of broadcasting, Brent Shyer, and Channel 5’s executive producer of sports, Joe Quasarano, is that an effort will be made to add telecasts if the Dodgers and San Diego Padres continue to battle it out in the National League West.

Adding a baseball telecast creates all kinds of problems, mainly because other programming, and its commercials, must be preempted. But it can be done.

The next Dodger telecast won’t be until next Tuesday from Colorado, but there’s a possibility that 10 of the Dodgers’ last 12 regular-season games will be televised. Four are already scheduled for Channel 5, including one home game Sept. 24, and the station might add three more home games--Sept. 26, 27 and 29 against the Padres--if there’s still a race.

Fox will show the Sept. 21 game from San Diego, which has been rescheduled from 8 p.m. to 1 p.m. at Fox’s request.

Channel 5 will now show the Dodgers and Padres on Sunday, Sept. 22, instead of Saturday, as previously scheduled.

And then Fox will probably show the Padres and Dodgers from Dodger Stadium on the next Saturday, Sept. 28.

ESPN figures to show the San Francisco Giants and Dodgers from Dodger Stadium on Wednesday, Sept. 25, provided the game is a sellout. The sellout rule takes effect the final three weeks of the season, and that is why ESPN did not show the Dodger game Wednesday in L.A.

But all rules are off for the final day of the season. So ESPN could show the season finale against San Diego on Sept. 29, sellout or not, and so could Channel 5.

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The ABC college football game to be shown here Saturday at 12:30 p.m. is Brigham Young at Washington, while most of the country gets Michigan at Colorado.

Why wouldn’t L.A. get the more desirable game?

It’s called regionalization.

“In doing college football for more than 30 years, we’ve learned fans like to see games from their region,” ABC spokesman Mark Mandel said. “And since Washington is a Pac-10 school, and Los Angeles is Pac-10 country, it gets Washington-BYU, even though we are aware some people would prefer Michigan-Colorado.”

Said Channel 7 program director Connie Borge: “We’ve had only one complaint so far.”

With Michigan-Colorado available on pay-per-view, might ABC be intentionally trying to drive up pay-per-view sales?

“We’d be out of our minds to even think of that,” Mandel said. “Our main objective is to get over-the-air ratings, and we do that by putting the most appropriate games in each market.”

TV-Radio Notes

Terry Donahue did OK as a rookie commentator on the Fiesta Bowl last January, considering his lack of experience. He did better than OK on UCLA-Tennessee last Saturday, showing much improvement. . . . Prime Sports has decided to show Arizona-Illinois on Saturday night rather than UCLA’s home opener against Northeast Louisiana. The Bruin game will be shown Sunday at 10 a.m. . . . USC’s home opener against Oregon State will be shown live on Prime Sports at 3:30 p.m. Saturday. Barry Tompkins and Danny White announce, with Andre Aldridge working the sidelines. . . . Los Angeles’ Randy Rosenbloom has been named the voice of BYU football and basketball for local telecasts. He also will continue doing syndicated games for Radio Sports Creations, such as Saturday’s Alabama-Mississippi game, which is being carried by KWNK (670) at 9:30 a.m.

Prime Sports, formerly Prime Ticket, undergoes another name change Nov. 1 when it becomes Fox Sports West as the result of a merger with the Fox network. Also, “Press Box” will go off the air for about two weeks and return as “Fox Sports News” on Nov. 1. “It will be totally different,” said David Hill, president of Fox Sports. “It will have a new look, a new set, new production and new people. At least some new people.”

Hill and Ed Goren, the executive producer of Fox Sports, are so far quite pleased with Ronnie Lott, Jimmy Johnson’s replacement on Fox’s NFL pregame show. Lott, a real student of the game, last Sunday got off a pretty good shot at the Raiders, with whom he spent two seasons. “They need more discipline,” Lott said. “They need to go see the Wizard of Oz. They don’t have any heart, they don’t have any courage, and they don’t have any wisdom.”

Ben Crenshaw will join CBS Sports as an analyst on about 10 golf events next year and this weekend will serve as a studio analyst during the Presidents Cup. Bill Macatee is host of the weekend coverage. . . . Saturday night’s Forum boxing card, featuring Marco Antonio Barrera against Jesse Magana, will be tape-delayed and shown at 11:30 p.m. on HBO but can be seen live at 8:30 at bars and restaurants via a closed-circuit telecast distributed by Event Entertainment. . . . Co-promoting tonight’s ESPN boxing card at Des Moines, Iowa, with Bob Arum is former Angel pitcher Dean Chance. . . . If anybody cares, the Mike Tyson-Bruce Seldon fiasco will be on Showtime Saturday at 8 p.m. . . . Recommended viewing: Lifetime will show an excellent documentary on the U.S. Olympic women’s basketball team tonight at 8. . . . For Saturday’s Cincinnati-San Diego baseball telecast, Fox will try a three-man announcing team, with Bob Brenly joining Joe Buck and Tim McCarver.

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What Los Angeles Is Watching

A sampling of L.A. Nielsen ratings for sports programs Sept. 7-9.

SATURDAY

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Event Ch. Rating Share College football: UCLA-Tennessee 2 7.2 15 Tennis: U.S. Open (noon-4 p.m.) 2 6.9 18 Tennis: U.S. Open (8 a.m.-noon) 2 5.8 14 College football: USC-Illinois 7 4.7 12 College football: Utah-Stanford 7 3.0 7 SportsWorld: NFL running back challenge 4 2.4 6 Baseball: Angels-Minnesota 9 2.0 4 Baseball: San Diego-St. Louis 11 1.7 4

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SUNDAY

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Event Ch. Rating Share NFL: St. Louis-San Francisco 11 12.1 28 NFL: Oakland-Kansas City 4 11.7 29 Tennis: U.S. Open 2 5.8 13 NFL: Chicago-Washington 11 4.0 10 Baseball: Angels-Minnesota 9 1.5 4 Soccer: San Jose-Colorado 34 .8 2

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MONDAY

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Event Ch. Rating Share NFL: Philadelphia-Green Bay 7 15.2 25 Baseball: Angels-Cleveland 9 2.4 5

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