CALIENDO'S COMEDY ISN'T ALL PRETTY.

Byline: TOM HOFFARTH

Don't get the wrong impression about Frank Caliendo.

As long as he can find enough material to create comedy bits for his two-minute picks-and-prodding segments on Fox's NFL Sunday pregame show, Caliendo will be there to impersonate and generate substance for as long as the network thinks he's funny enough to keep on the payroll.

It's just that some weeks, comedy isn't pretty. And he wonders, as his fourth season with Fox comes near the end, whether he'll have enough juice to hit the tackling dummies -- no offense, Bradshaw -- in the years to come.

``Honestly, I've been thinking a lot about that lately,'' Caliendo said Thursday while in the makeup chair at the Fox Studio lot in Century City, where he taped Sunday's segment doing both David Letterman and Paul Shaffer for a Top 10 list of ``Signs You Know Nothing About the NFL.''

``Something always happens, or we find new ways to say the same jokes,'' Caliendo went on. ``But if you force it too much, the audience can feel it. I wonder if, instead of 20 shows a year, maybe we should cut back and just do eight great ones when something comes up.

``I still get a great kick out of it; it's the show that's the most fun to watch on Sundays. And my Sundays would be empty without it.

``But I think I'm a realist. There's a creative process how trying to keep it fresh. Even Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld (after nine seasons and 180-plus episodes of `Seinfeld') finally said, `How can we do more?'''

As makeup man Wade Daily draws a gap on Caliendo's two-front teeth, it's by coincidence that he'll will make an appearance Monday on ``Late Show'' with Letterman -- his fourth guest spot this year. The plan is for him to do an entire segment in his John Madden persona, something he's done already once by the host's request and pulled it off nicely.

Between that, stand-up comedy gigs, corporate appearances, three regular radio show spots a week and developing TV pilots for TBS and Fox Sports Net, the 32-year-old Caliendo says he's amazed he even remembers spending time at his Phoenix home with his wife, Michele, 2 1/2-year old son Joey and six-month old daughter Juliette.

Although Caliendo says he used to need up to 10hours a week developing his Fox segments with segment producer Bill Richards and comedy writers Jeff Cesario and Scott Long, he was able to wrap up Thursday in about five hours, starting with a haircut to get the Letterman `do down and ending with having a fake rubber bald head suctioned off after he was done playing Shaffer.

Aside from those two, Caliendo has gotten plenty of milage out of the voices rolling around in his head: President Bush, Leno, DeNiro, Nicholson, Pacino, Dr.Phil -- manipulating them into whatever goofy setups to antagonize the NFL or his studio cohorts.

The weekly game predictions (actually consensus picks from the crew) haven't been too far off: He's 31-27 for the season, a year after picking 65percent winners and going 8-1 in the playoffs.

Since the introduction of Jimmy Kimmel into the pregame show in 1998, Fox has separated itself from those shows at CBS and ESPN because of its comedy inserts, and has remained the highest-rated of the three for the past eight seasons.

Yet, after four years of grinding 'em out, how many more punchlines can Caliendo and crew make about Terry Bradshaw's intelligence, Howie Long's flattop or Jimmy Johnson's hair product choices?

``The funny part will be if Frank eventually goes, the critics who four years ago said how awful it was to have him on the show will wonder how we're going to replace him,'' said Scott Ackerson, the ``NFL on Fox'' pregame show producer.

``Frank has a lot of things going on in the equation for himself. We want to keep this going as long as it's good and it works.''

Adds Caliendo: ``We've watched it evolve over the last four years and we have it down on how to write, shoot and make it funny, even if it's not great. It's tough flushing out comedy with sports, and, in this case, always about football. But when something works great, that really keeps you going.''

Tiger's event marks end of ABC's golf telecasts

Rain or shine, the long goodbye continues for ABC Sports' golf coverage this weekend. This time, it's for real.

Because Disney's bean counters decided more than a year ago that ABC and ESPN would be more prudent to get out of the PGA Tour business, the organization last January signed long-term deals for 2007 and beyond with CBS, NBC and the Golf Channel. ABC's final going-away party lands in Thousand Oaks for the last two rounds (noon - 3 p.m.) of Tiger Woods' Target World Challenge at Sherwood Country Club.

``It's going to be tough on Sunday afternoon when we're with the leaders going up the 18th fairway,'' said Brant Packer, ABC's golf producer. ``We started this season at the Bob Hope (tournament in January at Palm Desert and La Quinta) holding our heads high, and our goal was to go out this season and win an Emmy and kick some butt, and that's as good as we can do.

``We've not having our production level go down. This has been the most upbeat crew to be around; it's kind of the opposite of what I'd expect.''

Packer, the 32-year-old son of CBS college basketball analyst Billy Packer, took charge of the ABC golf telecasts when Mark Loomis defected to the NFL Network to do their live games. Packer ended up working on 12 of the 20 ABC shows.

Starting next year, the two Disney-owned networks will only two of golf's four majors, not covered by the PGA Tour's TV deal. ABC has the last two days of the British Open through 2009; ESPN has the first twodays of the U.S. Open through 2008.

Packer said the first ``real'' goodbye was when play-by-play man Mike Tirico left the broadcast team after the Deutsche Bank Classic outside of Boston on Labor Day weekend to concentrate on ESPN's ``Monday Night Football.'' In early November, after the Tour Championship in Atlanta, the main production crew dispersed.

Packer said the toughest farewell will be to course reporter Judy Rankin, who fought back from breast cancer during the season to rejoin the team. She'll be joined by Andy North and Bob Rosburg (the later brought back after years of absence from the network just for this event), while Terry Gannon, Ian Baker-Finch and Billy Ray Brown finish the broadcast team that started with the USA Network coverage Thursday and continues today.

CAPTION(S):

photo, 2 boxes

Photo:

Fox's Frank Caliendo gets into Paul Shaffer mode on Thursday as makeup artist Wade Daily watches.

David Sprague/Staff Photographer

Box:

(1) WHAT SMOKES

(2) WHAT CHOKES