At Least, Some People Will Be Able to Hear Indy 500 Broadcast

Good news, bad news: Sunday’s Indianapolis 500 will be carried live by two radio stations in the Los Angeles Basin, but not everyone will be able to hear the race.

The two stations are KNAC-fm 105.5 in Long Beach and KWNK 670 in Simi Valley. KNAC, which carries the Long Beach Grand Prix, can be heard throughout most of Los Angeles and part of Orange County. KWNK’s signal covers only the Western part of the San Fernando Valley and part of West Los Angeles.

Until Thursday, KGRB 900, and its sister station, KBOB-fm 98.3, located in West Covina, were scheduled to carry the race. But General Manager Bob Burdette, who says KGRB covers the L.A. basin, the San Gabriel Valley and the Riverside-San Bernardino area, reversed himself because of a scheduling conflict.

He said he is committed to carry a soccer game from Argentina at 11:30 a.m., before the Indy race would be over.

“I’m embarrassed and very sorry I will not be able to carry the race,” Burdette said.

The only other Southern California stations that will broadcast the race will be KVEN 1450 in Ventura and KOWN 1450 in Escondido. No San Diego station will carry it.

Pre-race coverage will begin at 8 a.m. PDT, with the race set for 9.

KLAC, which had broadcast the race for many years, has dropped it.

Add Indy: Once again, television coverage of the race will be tape-delayed, beginning at 9 p.m. PDT, 12 hours after the start. Indianapolis officials have never permitted a live telecast. They figure it would hurt the live gate, since the race attracts fans from throughout the country.

Jim McKay and Sam Posey will call the race for ABC. Jackie Stewart has been dropped from the ABC team. However, ABC did use Stewart on the Monaco Grand Prix, which was taped last weekend and will be shown on “Wide World of Sports” Saturday.

Among the 26 cameras ABC will employ at Indy will be the much ballyhooed remote-control skycam. It will be used to cover the pit area and should provide some interesting close-ups.

Regular-season baseball will return to network radio Saturday after an absence of 25 years, and with it will come the rebirth of an old but good idea--the use of local announcers.

CBS radio will broadcast two games each Saturday through the end of the season, with additional midweek games scheduled as pennant races heat up.

One of the first two games Saturday is the Dodgers at New York, which won’t be carried by CBS affiliate KNX since it is on KABC. But the other CBS game, Detroit at Seattle at 7 p.m., will be broadcast by KNX.

The announcers will be Lindsey Nelson and Jerry Coleman, but during the home half of the fifth inning, CBS will invite Mariner radio announcers Dave Niehaus, formerly with the Angels, and Rick Rizzs to take over the mike. Inviting the home team’s announcers to work the bottom half of the fifth will be a regular feature.

CBS’s other regular announcers include Brent Musburger, John Rooney, Johnny Bench, Curt Gowdy, Dick Stockton, Bill White and Ted Robinson. It’s an impressive lineup, and giving listeners a chance to hear announcers they’ve probably never heard makes the package even more attractive.

It’s an idea that NBC, as well as the Dodgers and Angels, should consider.

Speaking of good ideas, CBS-TV and the NBA finally came up with one. After subjecting viewers to late-night telecasts--or, worse yet, no telecasts at all--they did the right thing by shuffling the schedule so that cable superstation WTBS could carry the Boston-Philadelphia game live last Wednesday night.

That meant Los Angeles viewers--at least those with cable--got both deciding games of the NBA conference championship series, since Channel 2 carried the Lakers-Denver game live at 8:30 p.m. Originally, CBS was going to carry the Celtics and 76ers and show it in only the Eastern half of the country.

For once, NBA fans got a break.

Bad idea: The fans and the players are ready for the NBA championship series between the Lakers and the Boston Celtics to begin. Interest is at a peak. But because CBS wants to stretch out the schedule, Game 1 won’t be played until Monday at noon, and Game 2 not until Thursday at 6 p.m.

Fantasies: Ever wonder what it would be like to face a major league pitcher? Greg Fendley, 33, of Flagstaff, Ariz., recently got that chance, squaring off against the Dodgers’ Tom Brennan. Of course, the way Brennan has been pitching lately, some might argue he’s not a major league pitcher.

You’d probably have a tough time convincing Fendley.

Fendley’s effort, and many more like it, will be televised Saturday as part of NBC’s “SportsWorld” show. Announcer Len Berman and NBC producer David Hoffman selected six lucky fans to live out their fantasies from among 20,000 or so mailed applications.

How did Fendley get selected? “I made a videotape and sent it in,” he said. “I was pretty sure if I went to that much trouble, I’d be picked.”

Other fantasies on the show include a 55-year-old man playing tennis against Chris Evert Lloyd, a woman driving the Indy pace car, and the Cincinnati Bengals’ Cris Collinsworth meeting the girl of his dreams, model Donna Rubbert.

One request that didn’t make it came from a female Dodger fan. She wanted to be hit by a pitch thrown by Bob Welch. Berman filed that one in the Pain Dept. and forgot about it.

Notes Dodgervision has picked up two important cable companies--Rogers and Group W. The two, which cover the South Bay area, southeast Los Angeles and part of Orange County, represent 200,000 cable subscribers. Next Wednesday night’s game against the Philadelphia Phillies, in which Fernando Valenzuela is scheduled to pitch, will be offered to Rogers and Group W subscribers free of charge. . . . ABC’s first Monday night baseball telecast of the season will be the Dodgers-New York Mets game June 3 at Dodger Stadium. The announcers will be Al Michaels and Jim Palmer. Howard Cosell will join the Michaels-Palmer team beginning June 17. Don Drysdale and Tim McCarver will work regional ABC telecasts. . . . Monday night’s fight between Larry Holmes and Carl (The Truth) Williams on Channel 4 got an L.A. Nielsen rating of 16.8, and Wednesday night’s playoff game between the Lakers and Denver Nuggets on Channel 2 got a 17.7. . . . Channel 2 will televise a special, “Laker Showtime ‘85: A Championship Season,” Monday at 7:30 p.m. The show, with host Jim Hill, will be rebroadcast the following Saturday at 5 p.m. . . . USC quarterback Sean Salisbury, a sports information/broadcasting major, will begin working in the sports department at Channel 5 next week as a summer intern. . . . CBS has dropped former Dallas Cowboy Drew Pearson as a football commentator. . . . A new show, “PlayBall,” is now being shown Saturdays at 10 a.m. on Channel 56. The half-hour show, with the Angels’ Bobby Grich or the Dodgers’ Steve Sax as host, depending on which team is in town, is repeated at 8:30 p.m. Saturdays. . . . Dick Enberg has signed a new long-term contract with NBC. . . . A reminder: ESPN will televise Monday’s Jersey Derby, with Kentucky Derby winner Spend a Buck. The 90-minute coverage will start at 12:30 p.m. . . . Cal State Long Beach announced Thursday that KNAC-fm will carry its football games next fall.