On-the-Air JordanA television series starring the biggest...

On-the-Air Jordan

A television series starring the biggest name in basketball sounds like a slam dunk.

Only one problem: The star is retiring from the game. Scheduled for launch in January is “Showtime at Michael Jordan’s Restaurant,” a half-hour series set at Jordan’s Chicago eatery.

The program has been about one year in the planning, with a deal made final last spring when Jordan’s Chicago Bulls won a third consecutive National Basketball Assn. title.

Robert Wexler, who is selling the program to stations, said that he anticipated Jordan’s startling announcement last week, suggesting that he and others associated with the show had been warned.

Wexler concedes that he is disappointed but said Jordan now has more time to devote to the show. And the publicity surrounding Jordan’s retirement hasn’t hurt, generating about 200 inquiries from television stations about the program.

The series, which Wexler hopes will air in January, will include segments on Jordan, international sports and personalities in sports and entertainment.

“It’s like ‘Entertainment Tonight’ and ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous’ with the focus on Michael Jordan in his restaurant,” Wexler says.

All Bets Are Off

Los Angeles businessman Sherman Mazur, once one of the nation’s rising stars in real estate during the high-flying 1980s, is expected to be sentenced next month after pleading guilty to seven criminal counts in one of the nation’s biggest tax and bankruptcy fraud cases.

According to a sworn declaration filed in Mazur’s voluminous federal case, FBI agent Michael Switlyk tells of how Mazur was once so confident he could beat the rap that during a search of his offices he “offered to make a bet with me that I would never be able to figure the documents out that we had seized.”

Switlyk didn’t take the bet, having been instructed not to talk to Mazur. But it would have been a pretty good one, given that Mazur now faces 31 years in prison.

Hardly a Dead Business

Call it the career opportunity of the 1990s.

The Rhinebeck, N.Y.-based Trends Journal, which charts business and social trends, is predicting that baby boomers will become preoccupied with arranging their own funerals starting in 1996 as the early boomers start turning 50.

The institute says its analysis shows that “funeral planning will become as common as career planning, family planning, college planning, financial planing and planned retirements.” It also predicts more New Age rituals will replace traditional funerals, wakes and memorial services.

Briefly . . .

Growth industry: A new organization called The Workplace Violence Research Institute has been formed. . . . SALD is the stock ticker symbol for the Northern California restaurant chain Fresh Choice. . . . Illegal tender: A San Diego-area company is selling for $3.50 each packs of $3 bills with President Clinton’s picture on them.