Special Olympics’ New Home

Tired of the Kobe Bryant case? Disenchanted with baseball? In need of something uplifting to watch on television?

On Saturday at 4 p.m., Channel 2 will televise a show packed with all kinds of hugs and smiles and emotions.

It’s a one-hour special on the Southern California Special Olympics competition held at Long Beach State in June. Sister station Channel 9 will air the same show Sunday at 3 p.m.

Leyna Nguyen and James Worthy are co-hosts.

For the last nine years, Fox Sports Net televised the local Special Olympics competition. With the switch to Channel 2 and Channel 9, the event is now on broadcast television for the first time.

Channel 2-Channel 9 also inherited the annual charity golf tournament held at Lakeside Golf Club in Toluca Lake. The tournament raises about $200,000 each year.

This year’s event, the first one with Channel 2-Channel 9 as the host, was held July 28, and one participant, advertising executive Sam Felipe, won $50,000 with a hole in one on the 170-yard third hole.

Janet Schulman, Southern California Special Olympics president, said her organization is grateful to Fox Sports Net for its nine years of support, but the move to Channel 2-Channel 9 made sense for several reasons.

She said one advantage is that more people will be able see the special on the Long Beach competition, which involves about 11,000 athletes from 11 counties.

Another plus is that Special Olympics has been reunited with some of the people who spearheaded the charity golf tournament and the television special as a package deal back when Fox Sports Net was Prime Ticket.

Those people include Channel 2-Channel 9 General Manager Don Corsini, Station Manager Pat McClenahan and advertising chief Mike Kincaid. They’re all former Prime Ticket/Fox Sports Net executives. Also, producer Mark Shah, who made the switch over to Channel 2-Channel 9 recently and was involved in past Special Olympics shows, oversaw production of this year’s special.

McClenahan, who was the head of production at Prime Ticket and Fox Sports Net until 1997, is the key figure. He is the father of a special-needs child -- his 16-year-old daughter Kelly has cerebral palsy -- and for the last four years he has served as the chairman of the board of Southern California Special Olympics.

“Besides Pat’s personal commitment to Special Olympics, he also has a professional commitment,” Schulman said. “With that professional commitment comes enormous resources that are available to Special Olympics.”

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Another Charity

ESPN and the late Jim Valvano created the V Foundation for Cancer Research in 1993, the year the former North Carolina State basketball coach died of cancer. He was working for ESPN at the time.

Since then, the foundation that was conceived by a small group of Valvano’s family, friends and colleagues has raised more than $30 million, with 85 cents of every dollar raised designated for cancer research.

This weekend a number of ESPN on-air personalties, along with Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski and other celebrities, will take part in a wine celebration and golf tournament in Napa Valley that benefits the V Foundation. The 5-year-old event annually raises more than $2 million.

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Sign of the Times

NBC Chairman Bob Wright, noting at a recent business conference that his company’s earnings will increase 18% this year and its operating cash flow by 30%, said, “A good deal of that strength has come from the fact that we have exited from a lot of sports.”

NBC has become a leader in the new way of televising sports, forming partnerships with sports leagues and entities to guard against financial losses.

NBC’s partnership with the Arena Football League is one example, and this week the network announced that it and Fox Sports Net had become minority shareholders in the AVP pro beach volleyball tour.

The network has to absorb a portion of the production and promotional costs, but basically the financial risks are minimal. And if there are profits, everybody wins.

“The traditional way of doing business, where a network pays a rights fee and then sells 30-second commercial spots, is disappearing,” AVP Commissioner Leonard Armato said.

Armato said AVP sponsors get a package that, besides commercials, includes their products being fully integrated into the telecasts. He calls it brand integration.

“We try to achieve this without adversely affecting the integrity of the telecast,” he added.

NBC will televise three AVP tournaments, including this weekend’s Manhattan Beach Open and the following weekend’s event at Huntington Beach.

Chris Marlowe, who heads NBC’s announcing team that also includes Mike Dodd and Trace Worthington, said, “For beach volleyball players, the Manhattan Beach Open is Wimbledon and the Masters combined, played at Yankee Stadium.”

That could be overstating it just a bit.

Don’t be surprised if Karch Kiraly, who is competing at Manhattan Beach, ends up in the booth if he is available this weekend. NBC is interested in using Kiraly on the Athens Olympics next year.

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Mr. Versatility

Laker announcer Paul Sunderland, who got his start doing pro beach volleyball with Marlowe in the mid-1980s, spent two days this week as a tennis announcer. He worked the JPMorgan Chase Open at the Home Depot Center in Carson for the Tennis Channel on Tuesday and Wednesday.

In the past, Sunderland has done tennis for Fox Sports Net, and his 16-year-old son, Leif, is a nationally ranked junior player.

Sunderland next week will try his hand at acting, playing the role of a newscaster in an upcoming Kim Basinger film, “Cellular.” Then he and his wife, Maud-ann are off to South Africa to visit daughter Natasha, who has been studying there.

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Short Waves

TNT announced Thursday that it had hired Steve Kerr as an NBA analyst. Also, Doug Collins met with TNT executives Thursday about a lead analyst position. ABC-ESPN is also interested in Collins, who could possibly displace Bill Walton on ABC’s lead team if a deal can be worked out.... There will be plenty of NFL exhibition football on L.A. television this weekend. Channel 2 is televising Raider exhibition games, Channel 5 has the 49ers and Fox Sports Net 2 is carrying the Chargers. The Charger announcers are former UCLA defensive back Ron Pitts, who is now with Fox, and former UCLA radio commentator Billy Ray Smith.

The $300,000 Clement L. Hirsch Handicap at Del Mar on Sunday, featuring 2002 horse of the year Azeri, will be televised as part of TVG’s “Trackside Live” show that is carried on Fox Sports Net 2. The show begins at 4 p.m. and post time for the feature race is 5:35.... The season’s first Slamball competition on Spike TV Monday drew 2.3 million total viewers and an impressive cable rating of 2.4 among men 18-34. Slamball airs Mondays at 11 p.m.... Olympic documentarian Bud Greenspan was recently inducted into the International Scholar-Athlete Hall of Fame at the University of Rhode Island. Past inductees include former Sen. Bill Bradley, the late Arthur Ashe and the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron “Whizzer” White.

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Radio Daze

USC flagship station KMPC (1540), planning extensive pregame coverage this football season, has added former Nevada Las Vegas coach Harvey Hyde to its lineup. Among other things, Hyde, now a popular Las Vegas radio personality, will have a one-hour pregame show. Three of Hyde’s shows, including the first one Aug. 30, when the Trojans play at Auburn, will originate from the Landing Bar and Grill at Avalon on Catalina Island.

Fernando Vargas will be Johnny Ortiz’s on-site guest for his KMPC boxing show tonight at 7 at Commerce Casino. Such a big crowd is expected that Ortiz will do his show from the hotel’s grand ballroom.

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In Closing

A number of viewers were upset that TBS was forced to black out the Dodger games from Atlanta last Friday night and Sunday, even though the games weren’t televised by Channel 13 or Fox Sports Net 2.

Major League Baseball, under a rule that went into effect this season, requires the TBS blackouts in order to protect the local broadcasters, who pay for exclusive rights to a certain number of games. The belief is the TBS telecasts dilute the value of the local packages, and baseball wants to keep the local broadcasters happy.

Talk about ticky-tack. How about being more concerned with keeping fans happy?