ESPN May Have Best Shows of Century

ESPN calls its “SportsCentury” project the most extensive documentary series in its 19-year history. That may be an understatement. It may be the most ambitious undertaking ever in sports television.

The century’s top 50 athletes, as picked by a panel of experts, will be profiled in 49 shows, beginning today at a special time of 5 p.m. (and repeated at 7:30) with a half-hour profile of No. 50, Chris Evert.

Subsequent shows will be shown on Fridays at 7:30, with athletes No. 1 and 2 featured in a two-hour show on ABC Dec. 26.

The series involves much more than the half-hour profiles and the two-hour finale on ABC. There are four specials of 90 minutes or two hours on ABC, beginning with the “Greatest Games of the Century” on April 11, with Al Michaels serving as host. The other specials are: “Greatest Coaches of the Century” on May 15, “Most Influential People of the Century” on May 23 and “Greatest Dynasties of the Century” on June 5.

There will also be six two-hour special editions of “SportsCenter.” The first one, devoted to the years 1900-49, will be on today at 5:30 p.m., with Jim McKay, Dave Anderson, Dick Schaap, Jack Whitaker and Curt Gowdy. Subsequent special editions will deal with each decade leading up to the current one.

Athletes Nos. 51-100 have already been named and are being featured in “Classic Moment” vignettes that began running last September. Among them are Rafer Johnson (No. 53), Pete Rose (56), Elgin Baylor (58), Billie Jean King (59), Jerry West (62), Bob Mathias (78), Joe Namath (88) and Sam Snead (99).

A panel of 48 journalists, historians, observers and administrators picked the top 100, based on athletic ability alone. The panel included McKay, Roone Arledge, Anita DeFrantz, Melvin Durslag, Dick Enberg, Bud Greenspan, and the late Jim Murray and Shirley Povich.

ESPN set up a separate division in Westport, Conn., south of ESPN’s headquarters in Bristol, and has had a staff of 35 working on the project since November 1997. “We have lived and breathed this project,” coordinating producer Mark Shapiro said.

You might recall Rod Laver was doing an interview for the project last July in Century City when he suffered a stroke. Interviews with Murray, Povich, Florence Griffith Joyner, Don Dunphy and Jack Brickhouse were the last they did before they died.

RATINGS GAME

Here’s more on the rivalry between ESPN’s “SportsCenter” and Fox Sports Net’s “Fox Sports News.” The Fox people point out that the ratings for their show, from 10 to midnight, went up 22%, from a .4 average to a .5 the second week of the Keith Olbermann era. They say the average for the 11 p.m. edition of “SportsCenter” has dropped 31%, from a 1.3 to a .9, since the end of the NFL regular season.

In Los Angeles, “Fox Sports News,” from 10-11 p.m., which averaged a .2 in December, has doubled since Olbermann came aboard Jan. 5. And with the return of the NBA, ratings should continue to increase.

Ratings aren’t the only reason Fox paid $1 million to buy out Olbermann’s contract with MSNBC and gave him a salary in the $900,000 range. Since his arrival, Fox has made deals with four sponsors--three beer companies and an Internet service--worth about $10 million.

Olbermann may be the bigger name, but Chris Myers, the other “Fox Sports News” newcomer, is also paying dividends. The contacts he made while doing “Up Close” for ESPN have proved valuable. Myers was able to call Dennis Rodman on his cell phone to learn he wasn’t really retiring from basketball, just thinking about taking a year off. ESPNEWS, meanwhile, had Rodman going to the New York Knicks.

The next day Rodman decided he would play after all. He might come up with something else tonight when he appears on Jay Leno’s show.

SHORT WAVES

CBS’ “60 Minutes” will have a segment on the Salt Lake City Olympic scandal Sunday night. Haven’t seen much on NBC. Could it be because NBC has all the Olympics through 2008? “Not at all,” NBC spokesman Ed Markey said. . . . Showtime will show a replay of the Mike Tyson-Francois Botha fight Saturday at 10 p.m. as part of a free preview weekend, meaning it will be available to all cable subscribers. . . . NBC will show the taped world professional figure skating championships tonight and Saturday night at 9. Included in tonight’s show is a fascinating feature on Russian ice dancers Alexander “Sasha” Zhulin and Maya Usova, a former husband-and-wife team. They continued to skate together even though Zhulin was having an affair with a rival, Pasha Grishuk. Usova now has a new partner, Evgeny Platov, Grishuk’s former partner. And Zhulin and Grishuk are now partners.

The Lakers may be the new marquee team in the NBA. NBC will show them 11 times, more than any other NBA team. . . . Channel 5 sports producer Kevin Grigsby put together two excellent features, one on the end of the NBA lockout, the other on Michael Jordan. They were on the Channel 5 news last weekend and will be repeated this weekend. . . . Channel 9’s “Final Quarter” sports segments with Alan Massengale recently won a local Golden Mike Award.

RADIO DAZE

Even though KXTA 1150 and San Diego’s XTRA 690 are sister stations, a rivalry exists. XTRA’s Lee Hamilton points out that the latest Arbitron rating book, for last fall, shows that his share of the L.A. audience in the category of men 25-54 was a 2.0, compared to an 0.7 for KXTA. And KXTA supposedly got a boost from Dodger games.

“Roy Laughlin [KXTA general manager] said when they first went to the sports-talk format that no one in L.A. wants to listen to Lee Hamilton,” Hamilton said. “Well, there’s your proof that he was wrong.”

XTRA’s “Loose Cannons,” Steve Hartman and Bill Werndl, beat Vic “the Brick” Jacobs, 2.7 to 0.8. Overall in men 25-54, XTRA won, 2.0 to 0.8, and, in San Diego, XTRA had a 5.5 share, fourth best in the market.

IN CLOSING

Fox Sports Net, which bought local cable ads for “Fox Sports News” to run on ESPN channels during “SportsCenter,” has struck again. Fox Sports Net spent more than $2 million to become a major sponsor of the New York Yacht Club’s Young America yacht in the 2000 America’s Cup, an ESPN event. “We’ll have our logo on the sail, or maybe a big picture of Keith Olbermann, and ESPN will have to show it,” Fox spokesman Vince Wladika said.

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What Los Angeles Is Watching

A sampling of L.A. Nielsen ratings for Jan. 16-17, including sports on cable networks:

SATURDAY

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Over-the-air Channel Rating Share Skiing: Ford Downhill Series 4 2.1 6 College basketball: Indiana at Purdue 2 1.6 5 College basketball: Syracuse at Georgetown 2 1.1 4 College basketball: Oregon at Washington 7 1.1 3 College basketball: Oklahoma at Cincinnati 2 1.0 3

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Cable Network Rating Share College football: East-West Shrine Game ESPN 1.1 3 Golf: Sony Hawaiian Open ESPN 0.8 2 Hockey: Pittsburgh at Kings FSW 0.8 1 College basketball: Stanford at UCLA FX 0.7 1 College football: All-Star Gridiron Classic ESPN2 0.5 1 College basketball: Tulsa at Nevada Las Vegas FSW2 0.3 0 College basketball: California at USC FSW2 0.2 0 Horse racing: Santa Anita Live FSW2 0.2 0 College basketball: North Carolina- North Carolina State ESPN 0.1 0 College basketball: Arizona at New Mexico ESPN2 0.1 0 Golf: LPGA HealthSouth Inaugural ESPN2 0.1 0

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SUNDAY

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Over-the-air Channel Rating Share Pro football: Atlanta at Minnesota 11 24.1 51 Pro football: New York Jets at Denver 2 23.6 48 Figure skating: Battle of the Sexes 2 1.3 3

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Cable Network Rating Share Golf: Sony Hawaiian Open ESPN 1.1 2 Golf: LPGA HealthSouth Inaugural ESPN 0.2 0 Auto racing: NASCAR Winter Heat Southwest Tour ESPN2 0.2 0 Horse racing: Santa Anita Live FSW2 0.1 0 College hockey: Michigan State at Bowling Green FSW2 0.1 0

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Note: Each rating point represents 50,092 L.A. households. Cable ratings reflect the entire market, even though cable is in only 63% of L.A. households.