Mariotti Quits His Radio Job

One of the best and most topical sports talk-show hosts, Jay Mariotti, quit his job with the Sporting News radio network Thursday.

Mariotti, heard on KMPC (1540) in Los Angeles from 7-11 a.m., called it a mutual parting.

“My contract was up this summer and I wasn’t going to continue after that, so we just decided to end it now,” he said.

Chris Brennan, the president of the Chicago-based Sporting News network, also called it a mutual parting.

“Jay put in seven good years, and it was just time to break away,” he said.

Mariotti, 42, also a sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, said one factor was the work involved in holding down two jobs. He took some time off last year to be with his wife while she recovered from breast cancer, and although she is fine now, he said he wants to spend more time with her and his two daughters. But he didn’t rule out getting back into local radio in Chicago.

He complained that his national show was not marketed or promoted very well in Chicago, nor did he like his time slot there.

“I had a bigger audience in L.A. than in Chicago,” he said.

Mariotti’s partner, Jim Litke, a sportswriter for the Associated Press, is also leaving the morning show, but Brennan said Litke may still be involved with the network in some capacity.

Brennan said that, for now, guest hosts would work the morning show.

On Feb. 1, the Sporting News network lost late-night host Bob Kemp, who abruptly resigned after 10 years with the network. Kemp called his resignation “a retirement” and is now living in Phoenix.

Double Duty

Rory Markas is a good example of the ups and downs in broadcasting.

In 1995, the San Fernando Valley native who attended Chatsworth High and Cal State Northridge lost his television job with the Milwaukee Brewers and a month later lost his job as a sports anchor with KCBS, Channel 2. In 1998, he lost his job as the radio voice of the Clippers.

Now, in the category of when it rains it pours, Markas has two jobs that had him hopping. He just completed his fourth season as the radio voice of USC basketball and is beginning his first as one of the Angels’ two new radio announcers.

He was in Sacramento Thursday night, announcing USC’s overtime loss to North Carolina Wilmington. He’ll take an early flight today to Tucson, where the Angels play a spring training game against the Chicago White Sox.

The Angels, who released Mario Impemba from his contract so he could return home to Detroit, accommodated Markas as well, allowing him to fulfill his USC duties. That meant the other new Angel announcer, Terry Smith, who came from the New York Yankees’ triple-A club in Columbus, Ohio, had to handle some of the Angel radio broadcasts heard on KLAC (570) by himself.

“I think I’m going to owe Terry a dinner,” Markas said.

The Other Half

Because USC basketball until recently was overshadowed by just about everything else, Markas’ radio partner, Jim Hefner, has never gotten the recognition he deserves.

Hefner has been doing radio or television analysis on USC basketball off and on since 1980, following a 13-year stint as an assistant coach under Bob Boyd.

Hefner has also been an associate athletic director at USC, worked with John Jackson on Forum boxing, and has been involved with basketball camps.

His first broadcasting job was with ON TV and he later also worked for Prime Ticket. He worked with Larry Kahn on radio before teaming up with Markas.

Hefner’s commentary is crisp, insightful and balanced. His interview with former UCLA coach Gene Bartow before USC played host to the Bruins at the Forum this season was excellent. Bartow opened up about just how unprepared psychologically he was for handling the pressure of following John Wooden.

Hefner resigned from coaching after Boyd’s last year, but says that was a coincidence. He was planning to get out of coaching anyway. His daughter, Brook, now 24, had just been born and he wanted to spend more time at home.

“With the recruiting and everything else, coaching just takes too much of your time,” Hefner said.

Complaint Dept.

Daniel Siegel, an attorney with CMG Worldwide, a West Hollywood marketing and management firm representing Al Joyner and the estate of Florence Griffith Joyner, filed a complaint with ESPN after a Griffith Joyner “SportsCentury” was shown last month.

The firm said ESPN had led Al Joyner to believe the show would be a celebration of his late wife’s career but instead much of the show was a rehash of accusations pertaining to drugs. The firm also asked that the show not be shown again, although ESPN Classic had it on last Friday.

The firm finally got a response this week from an ESPN lawyer saying the show was fair and balanced.

The feeling here is, the drug rumors can’t be ignored, but negativity doesn’t always mean good journalism.

More Complaints

Channel 2 angered basketball viewers last Saturday when it cut away from the Ohio State-Illinois Big Ten tournament semifinal with four minutes left to show four minutes of commercials before going to the Pacific 10 championship game.

And tennis fans weren’t too happy with ESPN for delaying Wednesday’s Pete Sampras-Albert Costa match in the Pacific Life Open until 11 p.m. The coverage on ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC today through Sunday will be live. Sunday’s men’s final will be on ABC at 10:30 a.m.

Short Waves

In the category of preferential treatment, Fox Sports Net has produced a half-hour Angel preview and a one-hour Dodger preview. The debut showing of the Angel preview will be Saturday at 9:30 p.m., and the first airing of the Dodger preview will be Sunday at 5 p.m. Wonder if Fox’s ownership of the Dodgers has anything to do with the length of the shows? Or is it that there is simply more interest in the Dodgers?

Mark Rolfing, who has worked as a golf reporter and commentator for NBC, ESPN, ABC and CNBC over the last 15 years, makes his debut as the new host of the Golf Channel’s “Golf Talk Live” on Monday. Rolfing’s first guest will be Johnny Miller. The show is on at 5 and 8 p.m....Reminder: Today’s second round of the Bay Hill golf coverage on USA will be shown on cable, delayed, at 4 p.m., but because DirecTV uses the East Coast feed, it will be on live at 1 p.m.

The CBS announcers working the NCAA tournament games at Pittsburgh, where UCLA plays Mississippi tonight, are Verne Lundquist and former Seton Hall coach Bill Raftery. The sideline reporter is Lesley Visser.... DirecTV subscribers who didn’t get to see the games they wanted to see Thursday can still pay $49 for a package of games through the third round or pay $19.95 for an individual game.

Recommended viewing: This week’s edition of “Beyond the Glory” on Fox Sports Net Sunday at 8 p.m. deals with a complex topic: Reggie Smith .... Lisa Leslie is featured on “Sports Biography” on Oxygen today at 5 p.m.

The Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach on April 14, live from 12:30-3 p.m., will be the first CART race televised by

Fox .... TWI’s Barry Frank

has negotiated a deal for CBS

and NBC to carry seven bull-riding events, beginning in October.

In Closing

With enough promotion, almost anything is going to get a good rating. Maybe that explains why “A Season on the Brink” got a national cable rating of 3.45 on ESPN. Couple that with the .55 the slightly toned-down version got on ESPN2, and the rating was a 4.0. ESPN estimates more than 5 million people watched the made-for-TV movie.

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