Sportschannel Los Angeles

Jack Buck, who will announce Sunday's NFC championship game and the following Sunday's Super Bowl for CBS Radio, was talking with a group of reporters on a conference call Wednesday morning when the prospect of war was brought up. "If there is no war, the outcome of these games is 100% important," Buck said. "But if we go to war, that goes down to about 2%." When war came later in the day, Buck's words spoke volumes.

Many of the top executives in cable television gathered this week for the 25th Western Cable Show at the Anaheim Convention Center. This is the place to be if you want to get wired into what's new in cable and pay-cable television. The three-day convention ends today. The big news in Los Angeles, at least in sports, is the closing of SportsChannel Los Angeles at the end of the month. The question is, what's next in cable for the Dodgers, Angels and Clippers?

SportsChannel Los Angeles, which has struggled as a pay service, is going to change the way it does business. General Manager Lynn Woodard said Thursday that SportsChannel, beginning April 1, will become a basic service, like Prime Ticket, except for selected "premium" events--Dodgers, Angels and the Stanley Cup finals. All other SportsChannel programming, including regular-season NHL games, college basketball and Santa Anita races and replays, will be available to all cable subscribers.

While the NBA is enjoying prime-time coverage on NBC, the NHL's Stanley Cup finals are tucked away on a pay-cable network. So the NHL's showcase event is going to a limited audience. SportsChannel is carrying the Stanley Cup finals, but hockey fans without cable are out of luck, even if they wouldn't mind paying. So are those whose cable company doesn't offer SportsChannel, such as Cencom and Paragon. Meanwhile, major league baseball has disappeared from network television.

Cable television showed tremendous growth during the 1980s. ESPN, the little network that could, went from slo-pitch softball to NFL football and major league baseball. Turner Broadcasting became a major player as well, and regional sports networks, such as Prime Ticket, started popping up around the nation. This has all been a boon for the public. Sports viewing went from a weekend activity to an everyday ritual.

Brent Musburger couldn't leave well enough alone. After his final CBS telecast, Musburger showed class when he simply said thanks and told viewers, "See you down the road." But Musburger's ego got the best of him. He had to go on other networks and attack his former bosses, claiming they had a vendetta against him. Musburger said he was simply being honest. In his mind, there had to be a reason that CBS chose not to renew his contract. I'm Brent Musburger!

Ken Wilson, the Angels' new television announcer, almost joined the club in 1977 after getting job offers from both the Angels and the Seattle Mariners, then an expansion club, on the same day. The Mariners won out, and Wilson, now 43, spent five seasons with them, then three with the Cincinnati Reds and the last six with the St. Louis Cardinals before signing to do Angel play-by-play for both KTLA and SportsChannel.

At least, Notre Dame knows a bad deal when it sees one. Notre Dame didn't bolt from the College Football Assn. television package simply for the sake of money. It went out on its own and signed with NBC because it saw the flaws in what ABC was planning to do with college football, beginning in 1991. The problem is, ABC ended up with more college football than it can handle. Already in place was a contract with the Pacific 10 and Big Ten conferences.

CBS' postseason opener Thursday night was a lot better than ESPN's regular-season finale Wednesday night. CBS didn't really miss anything in covering Pittsburgh's exciting 4-3 victory over Cincinnati in Game 1 of the National League championship series, which is more than you can say about ESPN in covering Boston's American League East-clinching victory over the Chicago White Sox.