DON'T GO DUMBING IT DOWN.

Byline: Tom Hoffarth Media

Joe Morgan, whose media resume includes authorship of ``Baseball for Dummies,'' hates to think he'll have to dumb down his commentary just because it's World Series time. Sure, a few more casual fans out there in TV land will stumble upon the network's coverage while flipping around for ``Freaks and Geeks'' and suddenly feel like, well, idiots.

So be it.

``I think first and foremost, your job is to do the game,'' Morgan said Thursday. ``There's a medium in there some place where you make sure the casual fan isn't bombarded with things he's not concerned about.''

PC answer. But if conventional broadcast wisdom is simply to pacify the masses, we're not interested in NBC's coverage of the World Series, which starts Saturday in Atlanta between the Braves and Yankees. Especially not after the way Morgan and Bob Costas schooled the audience during the just-completed NLCS, breaking down the thinking between the Mets' and Braves' strategists to enhance an already high-quality visual broadcast.

NBC's thinking should continue to be: Do the game as if the viewers already know something and eventually - hopefully - raise their level of intelligence.

With Morgan and Costas, that shouldn't be a problem.

``I don't buy into the notion that if it happened five minutes ago, people have already forgotten about it,'' said Costas, often criticized for being too much a baseball purist with historical references dropped into his play-by-play. ``There are things you can fill in during lulls in the action that will enhance the drama and set the context. It's good for casual and non-casual viewer.''

Since Bob Uecker bowed out of the NBC postseason booth a few years back, some have complained that the network broadcasts have lost some fun, that it's become too literal with Morgan and Costas' high-level banter.

Then came the NLCS, when some of the lefty-righty pitching and hitting moves made by Bobby Valentine and Bobby Cox needed some subtext. Morgan and Costas fit right in. Someone like Uecker would have just gotten in the way.

The problem will be if the Yankees-Braves series doesn't supply the same kind of drama, and Costas and Morgan are forced to rely on their humor to get the audience through a blowout.

Costas may already be warming up his lounge act. When asked on a media conference call about how he changes to accommodate the casual viewer, he replied: ``My question has always been: If the casual fan is in jeans lounging around watching the game, maybe even wearing a cardigan, does it mean the serious fan puts on a tux to watch the game?''

No, but it also doesn't mean the broadcasters should provide a straitjacket.

Not-so-high anxiety: The upper levels of the new Staples Center may not be the best place to see or hear a Bruce Springsteen concert, but as Bob Miller noted on the Kings' opening telecast from the new downtown arena Wednesday, the view from above makes for better hockey watching, especially when compared to sightlines at the Forum.

For the broadcast, four booths for TV and radio have been built along the west sideline, planted just above the three-tiered skybox level, about 60 feet up from the floor.

``At the Forum, we had a lower angle, and in situations where there'd be a scramble around net, a lot of times players would screen me from a view of the puck,'' said Miller. ``But now we're looking down on it, and it's a lot better.''

Fox provided the Kings with their largest single home telecast ever Wednesday, using 13 cameras (up from about eight) and a multitude of tape machines.

Guilty pleasures: OK, so the action is scripted. But if the man behind the mike doesn't know what's going to happen and calls it that way, can he at least maintain his status as legit sportscaster?

Making no apologies for his latest assignment, longtime L.A. radio and TV sportsguy Rory Markas has been calling the action for the second season of ``WSL RollerJam'' (usually back-to-back one-hour episodes Fridays at 9 p.m. on The Nashville Network).

``I do it just as if I was calling a game,'' said the USC radio play-by-play man who recently finished taping the 40-show season in Las Vegas and Orlando, Fla. ``I stayed out of the meetings so I wouldn't know what was going on. You just take it for what it is. It's been a lot of fun and I was able to work in some funny lines that I normally couldn't do.''

Markas purposely avoided sneaking in the famed ``Whoa Nellie,'' Dick Lane's signature call when he did Roller Derby for TV in the '50s. But maybe he could have used it during matches that included the California Quakes, which feature the three-female team called ``The Bod Squad.'' One of the three is the blonde, pony-tailed Jamie Connimack, who, like Markas, is a Calabasas High alum.

Another show of this genre that has been using ``real'' sportscasters is the syndicated ``Battle Dome'' (locally on KCOP-Channel 13, Sundays at 9 p.m.), which takes ``American Gladiators'' to another level (whether better or worse is your decision). On the play call is Steve Albert, who's doing the blow-by-bite call of Saturday's Mike Tyson-Orlin Norris bout for Showtime. Scott Ferrall, the gravel-voice, syndicated-radio sports-talk host who left to work games for the NHL's Atlanta Thrashers, pops up on color.

Two weeks ago, Randy Rosenbloom did the ``Heroes of Wrestling'' from Bay St. Louis, Miss., a national pay-per-view event that included stars from the '80s such as King Kong Bundy, George ``The Animal'' Steele and the Iron Sheik. But even for $19.95, a lack of buyers will likely keep this one-time event from becoming a regular series.

``I thought the show would do better with there (being) such an interest in wrestling now, but the fans (at the event) were only into it at times,'' said Rosenbloom, who will soon go to another extreme on the intelligence scale when he does the Harvard-Yale football game for DirecTV next month.

Events for the freaks and geeks aren't looked down upon by broadcasters such as Rosenbloom. Of course, they pay bills, but they also provide an event in which to work on your play-by-play skills and one that might evolve into a fringe-sport cult following.

``You can't be headstrong these days and think everything is football, baseball and basketball,'' said the North Hollywood resident, whose career highlight is doing beach volleyball for NBC during the '96 Summer Olympics. ``Times have changed. You've got to be willing to do these and take some risks.''

SOUND BYTES

By Tom Hoffarth E-mail: sptmediaaol.com

WHAT SMOKES

Vin Scully will do the intros for the fan-selected MasterCard Major League Baseball All-Century team announced Sunday in Atlanta at about 4:30 p.m. on NBC, before its coverage of the second game of the World Series. USA Home Entertainment and MLB Productions will release a video ($19.95) of the All-Century team next week.

Long before Saturday's Game 1, NBC has two specials produced in conjunction with The Sporting News: The 25 greatest moments of baseball is an hour-long show starting at 11 a.m., followed by the magazine's 100-man All-Century team show at noon. Both are narrated by Bob Costas.

ESPN Classic's annual ``Classic World Series,'' which takes a memorable Game 1 through 7 and shows them during the World Series off days, begins today at 3:30 p.m. with the '88 World Series game between the Dodgers and Oakland Athletics. Don't recall why this game was famous, but we've been told by a local sports-talk host that it has something to do with Kirk Gibson milking a home-run trot.

In the Oct. 25 issue of Business Week, NFL commish Paul Tagliabue was asked during a Q-and-A with the magazine's editors if he has any reservations about this NBC-Turner rival league that's been discussed. ``I take it seriously because television has grown to the point where there's a huge vaccum cleaner for programming and it's continuing to grow.'' Read between the lines: Tagliabue's vaccum cleaner analogy really means that the new league, if it even gets past the planning stages, will most likely, you know. . . .

WHAT CHOKES

Stay tuned to NBC after each World Series game for a chance to win $1 million

In what's been called in a KNBC press release as a ``revolutionary new concept in postgame shows,'' Fred Roggin will host (as well as handle the role of executive producer) something called ``Instant Replay With Fred Roggin,'' where you have the chance to win $1 million! After he's done with that usually boring postgame analysis and highlights, he'll allow viewers to phone in or, in some cases, go on-line to answer questions about the just concluded game as well as other baseball questions for valuable prizes as well as a chance to win $1 million! At the end of the half-hour show, two lucky contestants will try to match a four-digit number and if they do, they'll win $1 million! (We can just hear Roggin saying to the caller: ``I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10,000 . . .''). Oh, by the way, if Fred doesn't show the disclaimer to you - that $1 mil is actually a 25-year insured annuity. You'd have an easier time winning and collecting from the state lottery, you saps.

Newsweek magazine's Oct. 25 issue with Muhammad Ali on the cover to promote a feature called ``Voices of the Century - America's greatest sluggers, hoopster and sports superstars in their own words.'' Nice idea, poor execution. This, by the way, is the issue that gained ridiculous publicity when some reporters took seriously Ali's claim that he was going to ``shock the earth'' and train for an exhibition fight at Madison Square Garden. Ali later admitted he was joking but amazed he could still stir up news based on saying something preposterous. In today's media, you can't be surprised this happens.

WHAT SMOKED ON LOCAL TV

The top 10 Nielsen-rated sports events (with their share numbers) on L.A. television from Oct. 14-20:

Event Date Station Rt/Sh. x

NLCS Game 6: N.Y. Mets at Atlanta 10/19 KNBC 16.0/26

NLCS Game 5: Atlanta at N.Y. Mets10/17 KNBC 12.2/26

NFL: Dallas at N.Y. Giants 10/18 KABC  11.3/18

ALCS Game 5: N.Y. Yankees at Boston 10/18 KTTV 9.5/16

NLCS Game 3: Atlanta at N.Y. Mets 10/15 KNBC 8.9/18

ALCS Game 2: Boston at N.Y. Yankees 10/14 KTTV 8.8/15

NLCS Game 4: Atlanta at N.Y. Mets 10/16KNBC 8.5/17

NFL: Carolina at San Francisco 10/16 KTTV 8.4/19

ALCS Game 4: N.Y. Yankees at Boston 10/16 KTTV 7.9/14

NFL: Oakland at Buffalo 10/16 KCBS 7.2/18

Note: The ALCS Game 3 matchup of Pedro Martinez vs. Roger Clemens on KTTV 10/16 did a 6.9 rating/18 share, which trailed NBC's coverage that same day with some overlap of the second half of USC at Notre Dame (7.1/20).

x One rating point equals 51,350 TV homes in Los Angeles; a share is the percentage of all the TV sets in use at that time. A rating from a cable channel covers the entire market even though cable is in 63 percent of the homes in L.A.

CAPTION(S):

2 boxes

Box: (1) SOUND BYTES (see text)

(2) WHAT SMOKED ON LOCAL TV (see text)