Bob Chandler Hired by KCBS as Co-Host of ‘2 on the Town’

Former USC, Buffalo Bill and Raider wide receiver Bob Chandler has been hired by KCBS, Channel 2, as permanent co-host of the popular “2 on the Town” show with Melody Rogers.

Chandler, currently a sports reporter for Channel 7, is expected to start his new job sometime next week. The show hasn’t had a permanent co-host with Rogers since Steve Edwards left in June, 1984.

Chandler played 12 seasons in the NFL, eight with Buffalo and four with the Raiders. He retired before to the 1983 season due to a knee injury that caused him to miss most of the 1982 season.

The Dodgers have added games in New York against the Mets Aug. 26 and 27 to their television schedule to make up for the two telecasts, involving the Atlanta Braves, that were lost because of this week’s strike.

Now, all 11 games of the Dodgers’ next trip, beginning next Friday in San Francisco, will be televised.

Battle of New York: The choice television viewers in New York were faced with last Sunday was between Dwight Gooden pitching for the Mets against the Chicago Cubs, and former Met Tom Seaver, now with the Chicago White Sox, going for his 300th career victory against the Yankees.

Although the Mets usually outdraw the Yankees 2 to 1 on television, last Sunday’s Yankee telecast got a 9.2 Nielsen rating in New York and the Met telecast got an 8.0.

The Ram exhibition opener against the Houston Oilers Saturday night will not be televised, but Channel 56 in Anaheim is trying to work out a deal that would allow it to broadcast the team’s three remaining exhibition games.

The Raider opener against the San Francisco 49ers Saturday night will be televised at 11:30 p.m. on Channel 4 and repeated on Sunday at 12:30 p.m. Tom Harmon was scheduled to do the play-by-play, but he is recovering from an aneurysm in the kidney area and is unavailable. As of Thursday, packager Bob Speck was not sure who would fill in for Harmon.

Joe Namath shows promise as a football commentator. In his debut on ABC last Saturday, he was informative when it came to things like weaknesses in defensive alignments. But he needs to do more preparation.

He often bungled names. On one pass play, he got the receiver and defender confused, which wasn’t so bad, but then in correcting himself he said the receiver was Byron Johnson of the New York Giants. Actually, the receiver was Byron Williams. When Joe Morris of the Giants scored a couple of plays later, Namath called him Joe Morrison.

Boxing-football doubleheader: Well, sort of. Saturday night’s Jose Luis Ramirez-Hector (Macho) Camacho fight at Las Vegas will be televised live at 7 p.m., followed at 8:30 by a new comedy series, “First and Ten.”

The show is about a woman who wins ownership of a professional football team in a divorce settlement. It stars Delta Burke, who plays Diane (Filthy Rich) Barrow.

Former Minnesota Viking quarterback Fran Tarkenton guest stars as a sportscaster. Rick Moser, a former Pittsburgh Steeler running back, is one of the regular stars and also the football consultant. In more minor roles are two former UCLA players, quarterback Steve Bono and center Dave Baran, and two former USC players, linebacker Jack Del Rio and kicker Steve Jordan.

Add fight: The Ramirez-Camacho fight, which is for the World Boxing Council lightweight title, is being broadcast nationally on radio, but only in Spanish. KSKQ (1540) in Los Angeles, formerly KZLA, and KEMO (860) in Tijuana are among the nine Spanish-language stations in California carrying the fight.

The announcers will be New York baseball announcer Jose Valdivielso, a shortstop with the old Washington Senators, and former welterweight champion Carlos Palomino of Los Angeles.

Promoter Don King plans to broadcast the Sept. 21 Larry Holmes-Michael Spinks fight on both English and Spanish-language radio stations. HBO also will televise the fight.

Surveys: In a survey conducted by Record a Call, a Los Angeles-based manufacturer of telephone answering machines, some of the nation’s TV-radio columnist were asked to name the top sportscasters in each sport. Vin Scully and Dick Enberg were the big winners, Scully earning the most votes for baseball and golf, Enberg for football and tennis. Chick Hearn was voted No. 1 in basketball, which is quite a feat since it was a national survey. NBC’s Marv Albert was selected as the best boxing announcer, and USA cable network’s Dan Kelly was the top vote-getter in hockey.

In a survey conducted by NBC to determine the nation’s most popular baseball teams, the New York Yankees were No. 1, followed, in order, by the Dodgers, the New York Mets, the Chicago Cubs and the Atlanta Braves. All but the Dodgers appear nationally on cable TV via superstations. The Yankees’ superstation, WPIX, is not carried by any Los Angeles system.

Notes Past and present sportscasters and sportswriters will be the subject of NBC’s “SportsWorld” show Sunday on Channel 4 at 3:30 p.m. The segment, called “The Great Communicators of Sports,” features sportscasters Red Barber, Mel Allen, Vin Scully, Harry Caray, Chick Hearn, Jim McKay, Howard Cosell, Lindsey Nelson and more. Times columnist Jim Murray is among the sportswriters featured. . . . ABC has announced it will televise Barry McGuigan’s title fight against Bernard Taylor live from London on Sept. 28. McGuigan is the World Boxing Assn.’s featherweight champion.

ESPN will carry five Thursday night college football games this fall, involving mostly teams from the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. The games: Oct. 3, Cal State Fullerton at San Jose State; Oct. 31, New Mexico State at Nevada Las Vegas; Nov. 7, San Jose State at Cal State Long Beach; Nov. 14, South Carolina State at Grambling, and Nov. 21, Wichita State at Fresno State. . . . Dodgervision, which is televising the Dodgers’ game against Cincinnati Saturday night, also will cover the preliminary game, the Hollywood Stars vs. L.A. Sportscasters and Sportswriters, beginning at 6:20 p.m.

Angel pitchers Ron Romanick and Kirk McCaskill were at NBC in Burbank last Tuesday for the filming of the soap opera “Day of Our Lives,” in which they both have small parts. The segment they’re in will be televised Aug. 21. . . . Beginning this weekend, Channel 5 will have a one-hour pro wrestling show every Saturday at 8 a.m. The shows will originate from the Olympic Auditorium beginning in late September or early October. . . . Add wrestling: ESPN announced Thursday that, starting Aug. 27, there will be 1 1/2 hours of wrestling followed by one hour of roller derby every Tuesday night, beginning at 5.

Pete Arbogast, sports director at radio station KDAY, is coordinating a contest to find the student sportscaster of the year for the Southern California Sports Broadcasters Assn. Every high school, junior college and college in the five-county Southern California area will be invited to submit entries. . . . One of the most sports-oriented radio stations in Southern California is Riverside’s KPRO. Besides carrying the Angels, Rams, Lakers and UCLA, it has a sports talk show seven nights a week. Mike Goldman is the host of the 6-to-9 weeknight shows, and Eric Nelson is the host on the 4-to-7 weekend shows. The station also has its own Angel pregame show, “Inside Pitch,” with Nelson, Goldman and Bill Robertson. . . . Pepperdine has announced that its basketball games next season will be carried by radio station KWNK instead of KGIL.