‘Hacksaw’ Is Spared From Unkindest Cut

Sports talk radio, as is the case with broadcasting in general, can be a tough, cold business. If a consultant or program director who has to substantiate his or her existence decides your approach doesn’t reach that highly desired 18-to-34 age group, you’re gone.

Clear Channel, which owns XTRA Sports 570, announced this week that Lee “Hacksaw” Hamilton would no longer be the host of the station’s afternoon drive-time show. Beginning Sept. 6 in the 4-7 p.m. time slot, it will be Matt “Money” Smith and Joe Grande, who come from FM stations KROQ and Power 106, respectively.

Usually when something like this happens, the former host disappears, never to be heard from again.

But Don Martin, XTRA’s general manger and program director, took a different approach. Instead of firing Hamilton, he reassigned him.

“When Money and Joe became available to us, we were faced with a situation much like a football team that has three starting wide receivers,” Martin said. “You have to move one of them around. So that’s why we moved Hacksaw into a quarterback role.”

Hamilton, given a new three-year contract, will be heard at all hours. He will do reports and commentaries on the morning and midday shows. His popular 15-minute “Hamilton Headlines” will be the lead-in for the new afternoon drive-time show. And he will have a four-hour show on Saturdays and Sundays.

“We think that putting Hacksaw on all day will help our station,” Martin said. “This is not a demotion, it is an elevation. He becomes our Jim Healy.”

That may be a bit of an overstatement, but Martin went out of his way to save face for Hamilton and do the right thing. Had Martin simply given him his walking papers, it would have been devastating to Hamilton. His job is his life.

“Some people work to live, I live to work,” Hamilton said.

The way XTRA has handled this situation is in contrast to the way KSPN unceremoniously dumped Doug Krikorian two months ago. One day, Krikorian, Joe McDonnell’s longtime partner, was on the air. The next day he wasn’t.

“If they wanted to fire me, that’s OK. I can understand that,” Krikorian said. “But now I’m persona non grata. I used to be on a lot of the ESPN network shows like Colin Cowherd’s or Bob Valvano’s. But not anymore, and I don’t know what I did to deserve to be cut off totally.”

As for Hamilton, sure, he rubs some listeners the wrong way. And among the millions of words he has spoken on the air over the years, certainly there are some he’d like to take back.

He has been portrayed as a racist for saying, among other things, that a particular ESPN announcer, who happened to be white, probably kept his job “because he is African American.”

Four years ago, Hamilton was forced to resign from a radio play-by-play job with the Minnesota Vikings before he ever started because of pressure from a local chapter of the NAACP.

Hamilton certainly isn’t perfect. But few are as dedicated to their craft or show up as well-prepared.

If Hamilton had been fired outright after almost 20 years of loyal service, it could have been said he deserved better. But that is not the case here.

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Short Waves

The Dodgers will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the franchise’s first World Series championship on Sunday, and FSN West 2 will offer a special telecast of the game against Houston that day. It will start off in black and white with only two camera angles and gradually improve to current-day standards.

The latest on the NHL’s new national television contract with Outdoor Life Network is that OLN will not have an exclusive night until the 2006-07 season. It appears now that this season there will be no restrictions on King and Mighty Duck local telecasts on FSN West and FSN West 2.

King announcer Bob Miller’s wife, Judy, who is battling Guillain-Barre syndrome, was released from Northridge Hospital Medical Center on Thursday. In fact, she answered the phone when a reporter called the Miller household. But she still faces a tough recovery period of six months to a year.

Matt Pinto, the Clippers’ new play-by-play announcer who will work on radio broadcasts when Ralph Lawler and Michael Smith are doing TV, comes from the Dallas Mavericks with a solid reputation. Norm Nixon, who worked alongside Mel Proctor on radio last season, is not expected to return. So the Clippers may have Pinto work alone.

Patrick O’Neal, who did a nice job of filling in for Jeanne Zelasko on Fox’s baseball coverage last Saturday, will be back this Saturday. Zelasko, who is married to Channel 7’s Curt Sandoval, gave birth to the couple’s second child, Isabella Grace Sandoval, on Aug. 15. They also have a son, Trevor.

The Angel game Saturday at Tampa Bay will not be televised because the 3:15 p.m. PDT start time falls within Fox’s exclusive window.

Another example of the magnitude of fantasy football: Fox will televise a one-hour special devoted to the phenomenon on Sunday at 3 p.m. Terry Bradshaw, James Brown, Howie Long, Jimmy Johnson and Troy Aikman will be on the show.

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In Closing

Bud Tucker, the longtime Southern California sports columnist and sports talk show host who died Wednesday at age 80, was a lovable Buddy Hackett look-alike whose wit and biting humor always brought a laugh.

For example, he once told a young sportswriter, who was wearing a new plaid sports jacket he was quite proud of: “Nice jacket. Where did you get the material for it, from a Holiday Inn bedspread?”