After Leaving ABC, Lampley Is Able to Put It All Together

Last summer, things were looking rather bleak for Jim Lampley. He was forced out at ABC and joined the ranks of the unemployed.

He even joked about caddying, a job he’d had as a teen-ager in North Carolina.

But Lampley, 39, is doing a little better than that. With HBO signing him this week as a boxing and tennis announcer, his annual income is now slightly more than $1.1 million, or about $350,000 more than he was making at ABC.

According to a source, he earns $700,000 from Channel 2, another $150,000 from the CBS network, and his new two-year deal with HBO pays $260,000 a year. He recently dropped a $110,000-a-year job with New York radio station WFAN.

Rick Monday has been demoted from weeknight sports anchorman at Channel 11 to weekend anchorman and reporter, with Rick Garcia taking over Monday’s former spot.

Monday got the word last Tuesday and was interviewed by KRLA’s Charlie Tuna Wednesday.

Monday told The Times that Channel 11 broke its contract with him by demoting him to weekends. “I will decline to do the weekend sports,” he said. “I plan to work the ‘Dodger Central’ show on Sunday, but beyond that I can’t say what is going to happen.”

Barry Tompkins, the announcer Lampley replaced at HBO, said he had two years remaining on his contract, which the pay-cable network bought up.

“They came to me and said they were interested in hiring Jim,” Tompkins said. “That’s the way it works in this business. I’m not bitter. I had a great nine years at HBO.”

Tompkins is hardly down. For one thing, he will marry San Francisco Examiner sports columnist Joan Ryan May 14.

And he’s still busy. He anchored Channel 13’s Los Angeles Marathon coverage last weekend, and this weekend he’ll announce the Pacific 10 basketball tournament for Raycom Productions. He’ll be paired with Dan Belluomini, the former University of San Francisco coach, who is an underrated college basketball commentator.

Belluomini worked with Ted Robinson on the Loyola Marymount-Santa Clara game on ESPN last Monday, and the announcing was as good as the Lions’ offense. What was particularly interesting was learning that Loyola was holding the ball an average of only 5.2 seconds before shooting.

USC and UCLA haven’t done much to generate interest in college basketball in Southern California, but Loyola, heading for the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. tournament, has done its part. The runnin’ Lions put on quite a show.

Add Raycom: Channel 2, which carried the Raycom Pac-10 package this season, will carry one tournament semifinal at 3 p.m. Saturday and the final at about 1:30 p.m. Sunday, after the Big East tournament final. The Pac-10 game will be delayed about a half-hour.

In most West Coast cities outside Los Angeles, the Pac-10 final will be on ABC. In Los Angeles, ABC is offering the Big Eight final.

Following the Pac-10 final on Channel 2 Sunday, CBS will televise the NCAA tournament pairings announcement. The show will be on about 3:30, a delay of an hour. It will be live at 2:30 on other West Coast CBS stations.

More on salaries: Lampley is making $1.1 million-plus, and Jim Hill is earning in the $700,000 range for ABC and Channel 7, while Channel 4’s Fred Roggin, according to a source, is in the middle of a three-year deal that pays an average of $350,000 a year.

“I’m not going to tell you my salary, but, no, I’m not making what those guys are making,” Roggin said. “But I signed a contract and I believe in honoring contracts.

“Also, I signed before Hill and Lampley made their deals. At the time, I was ecstatic with my contract. It was for more money than I ever dreamed of making.

“My philosophy is, like in golf, you play your own ball. You don’t worry about what other people are making.”

Another ex-feud: Bud Furillo and Jim Healy have buried the hatchet, and now comes word that Furillo and Rick Talley are buddies. When these two sportswriters-turned-broadcasters worked together at KABC radio, they often had words and once got into an actual fight.

Talley later publicly rapped Furillo on several occasions.

But all is now forgotten. Furillo and Talley are a team again and have hired an agent to find a radio station that’s interested in carrying their proposed show.

“I’ve always respected Rick’s ability,” Furillo said. “What happened between us happened years ago.”

Add radio: The Raiders are switching flagship stations, going from KRLA to KFI, Healy reported Thursday.

Last add radio: Sportscaster Ed Arnold, beginning Monday, will be on the afternoon Jim Lange show instead of the morning Robert W. Morgan show.

TV-Radio Notes

There will be 32 college basketball games on television the next three days. . . . The 10 finalists for the Los Angeles Athletic Club’s John Wooden Award will be announced Sunday during halftime of the Atlantic Coast Conference title game, which NBC will televise, beginning at 10 a.m. The Wooden winner will be announced April 6 in Los Angeles. . . . During halftime of the Big Eight final Sunday, ABC will unveil its top 10 collegiate dunkers. The network invited every Division I school to submit tapes of three entries, and those were narrowed to 50. Then Dick Vitale, Cheryl Miller and Joe B. Hall selected the top 10. . . . Channel 2 has put together an entertaining feature on Walt Hazzard, which will be shown during “The Coaches” show Saturday at 5:30 p.m.

Spectacor’s new regional pay-cable service will televise the Freeway Series game at Anaheim April 3. Also scheduled to be televised will be the Dodgers’ first two home games April 4 and 5 against San Francisco and the Angels’ first three home games April 8, 9 and 10 against Oakland. . . . Although Spectacor has not announced its broadcasting teams, Joel Meyers and Joe Torre apparently are set as the Angel announcers. Don Drysdale probably will be one of the Dodger announcers, with his partner coming from a long list of candidates, including Rick Monday, Steve Garvey, Wes Parker, Al Downing, Geoff Witcher and Joe Buttitta.

Drysdale surely would welcome the Spectacor activity. He is working less than he thought he would on the Dodgers’ regular radio and TV broadcasts. The format: Vin Scully, when he is there for radio games, does seven innings, and Drysdale and Ross Porter do the other two on alternate games. When Scully is not there, Drysdale does the first three innings and the last three, with Porter handling the middle three. On television days, Scully does the first three and last three and the middle three on radio. Porter does the first three and last three on radio, and Drysdale does the middle three on television. On television days when Scully has an NBC commitment, Drysdale does the first three and the last three and Porter does the middle three. They switch for radio.

Lynn Swann was one of the few standouts for ABC at Calgary while announcing bobsledding. The former USC and Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver was well prepared and informative. Now he is covering a different kind of sled race, the Iditarod dog-sled race. He spent his 36th birthday last Monday camping out along the Rhon River in Alaska. Highlights of the race will be shown on “Wide World of Sports” March 26. . . . Small World Dept.: CBS used to televise the Iditarod, and one of the announcers assigned to the race was another ex-Steeler, Terry Bradshaw. . . . Pete Arbogast, the Clippers’ backup radio announcer, has been cited by the California Associated Press for best play-by-play work in 1987. He was honored for his work of the ClippersBoston Celtics broadcast Dec. 26. . . . Arbogast and Jamaal Wilkes will announce Saturday night’s Southern California Regional Division I high school title game for KDAY (1580).