CBS’ Packer Opens a New Can of Worms

It’s NCAA tournament time, so it must be time for another tirade by Billy Packer.

A year ago, in an interview with The Times, Packer, CBS’ lead college basketball commentator, went after CBS news mainstay “60 Minutes” because it had dared cast a negative image on his beloved sport.

He was especially upset about a segment on Jerry Tarkanian and his criminal-laden Fresno State program. Eight of Fresno State’s 10 scholarship players missed games during the 1997-98 season because they were suspended, ineligible, in rehabilitation or had quit. Four were convicted felons.

This year, Packer’s targets were the NBA and Dennis Rodman. In a conference call with reporters, he said, “The NBA is all about promoting individuals, star power and four or five power teams. It’s all about entertainment and not the game of basketball.

“You never get to even see most of the teams in the NBA. All you ever see are the Lakers and Utah.”

Of Rodman, he said, “I saw four pictures of him and 10 stories on him in USA Today, and that was before he had even scored one field goal. All you read about are his 18 earrings, his 14 tattoos, who he is married to and his sexual innuendoes, because that drives the ratings. That’s not about basketball, that’s about the disaster of the game.”

Star power prompted NBC to switch its main NBA game Sunday. It will now be the New Jersey Nets at Miami, since the Nets have acquired Stephon Marbury from Minnesota.

Amazingly, the Lakers are not on NBC this weekend.

A DIRECT HIT--ALMOST

The one-year experiment in which DirecTV, for a fee, is supplying early-round NCAA tournament games not on CBS is a good thing--if you have DirecTV.

Problem is, a lot of people do not. And those people yearn for the days when ESPN shared the early-round coverage with CBS.

But even a DirecTV subscriber, a Maryland alum who lives in Marina del Rey, had a complaint.

The alum, who bought the $39 DirecTV package, wanted to see all of Thursday’s Maryland-Valparaiso game. It wasn’t available on DirecTV because CBS was showing that game here. And CBS chose to leave that game for a closer one between Oklahoma State and Syracuse.

“I bought the package because I wanted to see the Maryland games--from start to finish,” he said. “I was deprived of that.”

A REAL HEAVYWEIGHT

Basketball dominates the weekend fare, but the big event is Saturday night’s $49.95 pay-per-view fight between Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis at Madison Square Garden. Finally, a legitimate heavyweight championship fight.

It is being distributed by TVKO, the pay-per-view arm of HBO. The undercard starts at 6 p.m., with the main event to start between 8 and 8:30. There are two live undercard fights. A third, Oxnard’s Fernando Vargas against England’s Howard Clarke, will be taped and shown either before or after the main event, depending on the length of the two live fights.

“This is the biggest fight, going in, we’ve had here at HBO and TVKO since the Mike Tyson-Michael Spinks fight in 1988, and this one should last longer than 90 seconds,” said HBO-TVKO executive producer Ross Greenburg. “This is our Super Bowl, and we’re treating it accordingly.”

The announcing team includes Jim Lampley, George Foreman and Larry Merchant at ringside, James Brown and Roy Jones Jr. serving as co-hosts, Nick Charles handling locker-room interviews and Harold Lederman the unofficial scorer.

Former Channel 7 sportscaster Rick Lozano, who handled the locker-room interviews at the Oscar De La Hoya-Ike Quartey fight in Las Vegas, will be used on future West Coast fights, a spokesman said.

LAMPLEY SHINES

When you think of Lampley, you think of a versatile announcer who did a variety of jobs for ABC in the 1970s and ‘80s, from sideline reporting to play by play to Olympic host. He has done local news for Channel 2, and talk radio.

But boxing blow-by-blow may be what Lampley does best. In his 11 years at HBO, he has become one of the best ever. Not only does he have a keen eye and a sharp delivery, he carries Foreman, who rarely has anything meaningful to say, and he endures Merchant, who unfailingly says something or shows a bias that irritates viewers.

Lampley did boxing for ABC for about a year and a half, from 1986 until he left in the summer of 1987. He called Mike Tyson’s first network fight, against Jesse Ferguson in 1986. He was hired in 1988 by HBO, and his first fight was Tyson-Tony Tubbs in March in Tokyo. Three months later he did Tyson-Spinks. His most memorable fight was Buster Douglas’ knockout of Tyson in 1991, also in Toyko.

“It’s like anything else, the more you do something the better you get at it,” Lampley said of his blow-by-blow work. “It’s been a gradual process where over the years I see the fights better. It’s less and less of a blur.

“When I was with ABC, I’d do about 30 different sports a year, from the traditional sports to the ultra-marathons. Now I can concentrate on boxing, calling 60 fights a year, 90 if you count rehearsal fights.”

IN CLOSING

The Clippers and KXTA (1150) are business partners, with the team buying the time, at $4,000 a game, for the station to carry its games. And the Clippers aren’t too pleased with their business partner’s latest publicity stunt. A station employee had been living atop a billboard, vowing to stay there until the team won.

“The whole thing has been fraught with bad taste,” a Clipper executive said. “And handled very badly from a partnership standpoint.”

The Clippers handled the situation themselves with a victory Thursday night.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

What Los Angeles Is Watching

A sampling of L.A. Nielsen ratings for March 6-7, including sports on cable networks: SATURDAY

*--*

Over-the-air Channel Rating Share Figure skating: ISU Grand Prix Final 7 5.3 10 Figure skating: Four Continents Championship 4 5.0 9 Gymnastics: Visa American Cup 7 4.3 11 College basketball: UCLA at Arizona 7 3.0 9 Speedskating: World Sprint Championships 7 3.0 8 Golf: PGA Doral-Ryder Open 4 2.6 8 Horse racing: Santa Anita Handicap 11 2.1 6 Boxing: Nestor Garza vs. Carlos Barreto 34 2.1 6 College basketball: UNC Charlotte-Louisville 2 2.0 6 College basketball: Wisconsin-Michigan State 2 1.9 6 College basketball: Illinois-Ohio State 2 1.2 3 Pro basketball: Clippers at San Antonio 9 1.2 2

*--*

*--*

Cable Network Rating Share Boxing: Laurent Boudouani-David Reid HBO 2.3 4 College basketball: Duke-North Carolina St. ESPN 0.6 2 Hockey: Calgary at Kings FSW 0.6 1 Auto racing: NASCAR Winston Cup Happy Hour ESPN2 0.6 1 College basketball: California-Oregon FSW 0.5 1 College basketball: Rhode Island-Temple ESPN 0.5 1 College basketball: North Carolina-Maryland ESPN 0.4 1 College basketball: Utah-New Mexico ESPN 0.4 1 Prep basketball: Artesia-Long Beach Poly FSW2 0.3 1

*--*

SUNDAY

*--*

Over-the-air Channel Rating Share Pro basketball: Lakers-Utah 4 15.7 33 Pro basketball: Miami-Indiana 4 4.5 12 Golf: PGA Doral-Ryder Open 4 3.9 10 Baseball: New York Mets-Dodgers 5 3.7 10 Figure skating: ISU Grand Prix Final 7 3.4 8 Auto racing: NASCAR Winston Cup Las Vegas 400 7 3.2 8 NCAA men’s tournament pairings (3:30-4) 2 1.3 3 College basketball: Kentucky-Arkansas 2 1.0 3 Hockey: Colorado-Pittsburgh 11 0.9 2

*--*

*--*

Cable Network Rating Share College basketball: Duke-North Carolina ESPN 0.9 2 Hockey: Detroit-Mighty Ducks ESPN 0.9 2 College basketball: Kansas-Oklahoma State ESPN 0.6 2 NCAA men’s tournament pairings (3:30-5) ESPN 0.6 1 NCAA women’s tournament pairings ESPN 0.4 1 Tennis: ATP Franklin Templeton Classic FSW 0.4 1 Prep basketball: Mater Dei-Glendora (tape) FSW2 0.2 0

*--*

WEEKDAY RATINGS: Tuesday--Lakers-Clippers, Channel 9, 9.7/15.

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.