Clippers Wait Till Late but Finally Get a Good Ticket

With the Clippers, it’s always an adventure.

The team made a deal with Prime Ticket this week, but just as with the signing of Bo Kimble last weekend, the negotiations took some unusual turns along the way.

In late July, John Severino, Prime Ticket president, sent a memo to Bob Steele, chief negotiator for the Clippers, saying essentially, thanks but no thanks.

Severino said at the time that the Clippers’ asking price was too high and the likelihood of any deal was almost nil. The Clippers wanted more money than the $95,000 a game Prime Ticket was paying the Lakers.

Channel 5, trying to make a new deal beginning with the 1991-92 season, also found the Clippers’ asking price too high. The team instead made a five-year deal with Channel 13, which will pay an average of $112,703 per regular-season game.

The Clippers said it was a case of Channel 13 being the more aggressive bidder.

The Clippers, though, were still without a cable deal for this season until this week.

SportsChannel was up for renewal, and had the right to match any offer from Prime Ticket. But SportsChannel announced Tuesday there would be no deal.

“The level of the rights fee being asked made absolutely no sense,” said John Mohr, the president of SportsChannel America’s regional networks.

Mohr and Lynn Woodard, the general manager of SportsChannel Los Angeles, said surveys taken among both SportsChannel subscribers and non-SportsChannel cable subscribers showed interest in the Clippers to be moderate at best, and did not justify a substantial price increase.

“Almost all SportsChannel subscribers said they would continue to subscribe whether we had the Clippers or not,” Woodard said.

Said Mohr: “Our survey shows the interest level in the Clippers is about on par with USC basketball.”

The Clippers ended up taking Prime Ticket’s offer of a one-year, non-exclusive deal that will pay about $70,000 a game. Prime Ticket will televise 20 to 30 games, both home and away, beginning with the season opener against Sacramento at the Sports Arena.

Add Clippers: SportsChannel’s claim that lack of interest in the Clippers is what killed the deal is only partially accurate.

SportsChannel made two lucrative offers, one for $13 million over four years, another for $33 million over 10 years.

But the Clippers, among other things, preferred the exposure Prime Ticket offers.

“We want as many of our fans to see our games as possible,” Steele said.

Another factor, the key one according to Steele, was the non-exclusive aspect of the Prime Ticket offer.

“Severino made a brilliant move,” Steele said.

What Severino did was make an offer SportsChannel simply couldn’t match. If it did, cable subscribers would be paying a monthly fee for games on SportsChannel, while getting games on Prime Ticket as part of their basic service. That just wouldn’t work.

SportsChannel not only lost the Clippers, it also lost its right-to-match advantage when a long-term exclusive deal is negotiated next year.

Severino had all the bases covered.

Add Prime Ticket: What Los Angeles has needed for years is a half-hour local sports news show that is on at a decent hour.

It’s finally here. “Prime Ticket Press Box” makes its debut Tuesday, after coverage of the Lakers’ charity game against Israel’s top team, Maccabi Tel Aviv, at the Forum. This night was selected for the debut because of the Laker telecast and also because of the World Series opener.

Press Box will be on every night but Saturday, either at 10 p.m. or after a Laker, King or Clipper telecast.

The show would seem to have at least two things going for it, namely highly respected producers Sol Steinberg and Tom Reilly.

Steinberg was the senior sports producer at Channel 4 for four years, and before that worked with George Michael on his syndicated “Sports Machine,” in New York at the NBC network and at WABC.

Reilly was a producer for ESPN’s “SportsCenter” for eight years.

Prime Ticket wasn’t able to land a marquee-value anchor, such as CBS’ Pat O’Brien, who was on the top of the list. But the lineup is a respectable one.

The anchormen are Larry Burnett, who was with ESPN for 4 1/2 years; Alan Massengale of Miami, who earlier worked for ESPN, and Glen Walker of Buffalo. Randi Hall, who had brief stints at Channel 7 and Channel 9 and most recently worked on the “Sports Machine,” will be a feature reporter.

Ratings game: Through five nights of postseason baseball, CBS is averaging a 13.2 national Nielsen rating. During the same period last year, NBC averaged a 14.6 for the playoffs on its way to an all-time low.

Critics are pointing at CBS’ hit-and-miss regular-season coverage as one reason for the drop in postseason ratings.

CBS justified its $1.08-billion price tag for four years of baseball by reasoning it would bring up ratings overall for the network. But, so far, it hasn’t worked out that way. On baseball nights for all its prime-time programming, CBS is averaging a 12.3, second to NBC’s 15.8 but slightly better than ABC’s 11.8.

It was a heavy price to pay for second place. Industry experts are saying that if the World Series goes only four games, CBS could lose as much as $80 million on baseball this season alone.

TV-Radio Notes

Overall, CBS’ baseball coverage has been been very good. But play-by-play announcer Jack Buck made a couple of mistakes this week. Buck, who likes to call plays before they are completed, said Game 5 between Pittsburgh and Cincinnati was tied as soon as the Reds’ Jeff Reed hit his ninth-inning grounder to Bobby Bonilla at third. Of course a brilliant double play ended the game, giving the Pirates a 3-2 victory.

Before Game 4, Buck got into a little trouble when, after hearing Bobby Vinton flub the “Star-Spangled Banner,” he said: “Well, when you’re Polish and live in Pittsburgh, you can do anything you want with the words,” That didn’t go over well with a Polish group in Pittsburgh. Buck told Pittsburgh radio station KDKA: “On the heels of the national anthem, I tried to pay a compliment to Bobby Vinton and it didn’t come out right. I was saying that if he messed it up, that’s OK because everybody loves him. And he did mess it up, didn’t he?”

You might wonder why CBS Radio has Johnny Bench, a Reds’ announcer, working the American League playoffs, and John Rooney, a Chicago White Sox announcer, working the National League. CBS spokeswoman Mindy Gansley said that since both Bench and Rooney would be working the World Series, this would give each exposure to the other league. Bench will be Vin Scully’s commentator and Rooney will be the pre- and postgame host. . . . CBS Radio’s Jim Hunter is no relation to Jim (Catfish) Hunter.

While postseason baseball was getting L.A. ratings of 11.1 and 11.4 for prime-time games Saturday and Sunday, “Monday Night Football” got a 17.0, the Kansas City Chiefs and Indianapolis Colts on Sunday a 13.3, and the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers an 11.9. The Raiders and Buffalo Bills got a 10.7 on Channel 9, but you have to factor in the people also watching on TNT. The national TNT rating was a 6.8.

With Bob Costas and the rest of NBC’s NBA crew in Barcelona to cover Saturday’s McDonald’s Open basketball final, Dick Enberg will be the host of Sunday’s “NFL Live.” . . . Let’s hope that NBC is through with the Victor Kiam-Lisa Olson story for a while. NBC, more than the other networks, has devoted too much air time to it. . . . With Enberg in the studio, partner Bill Walsh asked for the weekend off so he can visit his daughter at the University of Colorado. . . . Ram newcomer Marcus Dupree will be a guest on CNN’s NFL pregame show Sunday at 8:30 a.m.

Paul Albrecht, the Pittsburgh Steeler fan beaten unconscious during a Raider game at the Coliseum Sept. 23, will be interviewed on “Inside Edition” on Channel 7 tonight at 7. Says Albrecht: “We have received absolutely nothing from the Raider team or Al Davis. No cards, no letters, no flowers, no nothing.”

The pro football lineup Sunday: Cincinnati at Houston on NBC at 10 a.m., the New York Giants at Washington on CBS at 1 p.m., and the Rams at Chicago on Channel 9 and TNT at 4:30 p.m. . . . Los Angeles would probably also get San Francisco at Atlanta on CBS if the Raiders weren’t at home. . . . Last Saturday’s Notre Dame-Stanford game alone was worth the monthly fee for SportsChannel.