FOX IN HENCOOP?; NETWORK OWNS DODGERS: BOUND TO BE SUSPICIONS.

Byline: TOM HOFFARTH The Media

Of course, Fox has an agenda.

It covers major-league baseball. It also has assumed full ownership of the Piazza-less Dodgers.

That's why the Dodgers-Cincinnati Reds game is one of four regional contests included in the ``Game of the Week'' over-the-air package that starts up its third season Saturday (1 p.m.) over all of these fine Fox stations.

Which would obviously mean the network agenda is . . .

``We have one agenda at Fox,'' executive producer Ed Goren said Thursday from the new corporate offices in Century City, ``and that's to see baseball continue to grow in ratings and make the sport work on network TV.''

The Company Line.

Sure, we buy it. Give us some more to chew on.

``Hell, maybe it's sacrilegious,'' Goren continued, quickly and convincingly, ``but I'm not convinced the Dodgers in the World Series may be best for Fox Sports. Atlanta isn't bad. The Chicago Cubs? If you told me tomorrow we'd have a World Series with the Yankees and the Cubs, you think I'd be disappointed?''

Uh . . . yes?

Anyway, Goren has stopped pretending to listen to those who are convinced there's a conspiracy brewing among all the Fox entities to put the Dodgers in the best possible media light. Goren will give pat answers about how the Dodgers ``are just one of 30 teams'' and ``I feel no different about the Dodgers than I do the Times of London,'' which is another of Rupert Murdoch's toys in his box.

For the record, the Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals are slated to make the most regular-season appearances on the 18-week schedule - both with nine. That's just one more than Baltimore, Seattle, Atlanta and the Chicago Cubs and two more than the New York Yankees and Mets. (And the Dodgers-Reds game with John Rooney and Jeff Torborg isn't the main event of the four-game coverage Saturday; it's to the Boston-New York game that Joe Buck and Tim McCarver have been dispatched.).

Realistically, Goren understands people look at Fox under a microscope, monitor every move with its Dodgers coverage. People have to, considering how ESPN has twisted things with its coverage of the corporate partner Angels, how TBS or any other Time Warner company covers the Atlanta Braves, how any Tribune company covers the Chicago Cubs.

``Put it this way,'' said Goren, the son of a respected sportswriter. ``If we covered (the Dodgers) Opening Day - which we don't - I could not have Joe Buck acting as master of ceremonies at Dodger Stadium.''

Memo to ESPN's Chris Berman: Apparently, someone else noticed.

There was a time, Goren said, when he was apprehensive about covering baseball with the Fox-Dodgers ownership hanging over his head. When breaking into another game with a highlight from a Dodgers game made him think twice - could he justify it if someone complained?

``I'm beyond that,'' he said.

``We are Fox Sports and what others do is their business, right or wrong,'' he said. ``That's fine. Maybe I'm wrong. This is what I believe. This is what I have to live with.''

BLAH, BLAH, BLAH . . .

USC alumnus Fred Lynn will do the color for the moribund Sean McDonough on CBS' coverage of the College World Series, coincidentally for the USC-LSU contest game on Saturday (10:30 a.m.), then for the title game next week. USC's radio coverage on KPLS-AM (830) will use Justin Dedeaux on play-by-play with his father, legendary former USC coach Rod Dedeaux, on color until Larry Kahn arrives in Omaha, Neb., to pick up the play-by-play broadcast on Monday. . . .

Irv Kaze's weekly KIEV-AM (870) sports show tonight (6 p.m.) features a discussion with Daily News executive sports editor Doug Jacobs, L.A. Times sports editor Bill Dwyre, Riverside-Press Enterprise sports editor John Garrett and Orange County Register sports editor Greg Gibson. . . .

SOUND BYTES

By Tom Hoffarth E-mail: sptmediaaol.com

WHAT SMOKES

Give Dick Ebersol and Ted Turner credit for any kind of hook-line-and-stinker publicity they generate by this farcical rival-to-the-NFL league seemingly hand-sewn together by sweatshop workers at General Electric (NBC) and Time-Warner (TNT) for fall '99. The NFL-denied Ebersol and Turner will take their ball and go to their own playground. And then televise it. But then do we have to listen to these rebels explain in the summer of 2000 why the league quietly had to go back into production for ``re-tooling.'' The only way it'll work: Ebersol's guys hire female players and call it the WNFL.

Keith Olbermann's weekly baseball essays for Sports Illustrated. For those scoring at home (or if you're alone), you can just hear the former ESPN ``SportsCenter'' and KCBS Channel 2 anchor's booming voice of reason as you read some historical perspective that SI tends to overlook.

How I spent my Disney summer, or is this what the corporate bosses really think of my work?: Mighty Ducks TV play-by-play man Chris Madsen got to do a pre-fab roller-hockey tournament for ESPN2 that airs next week, while Mighty Ducks TV analyst Brian Hayward interviewed President Clinton between periods of an NHL playoff game for ESPN last Monday.

President Clinton, on watching hockey: ``It's much more exciting in person, even than on television - no offense to ESPN.'' None taken. Even by the glo-puck guys at Fox.

WHAT CHOKES

Sorry you missed Roy ``Mr. Cubic Zirconium'' Firestone's guest spot earlier this morning on QVC (4-6 a.m.) when he tried to generate compulsive interest from insomniacs for his newest sports-according-to-me video called ``Roy Firestone's Greatest Moments in Sports,'' as well as a remainders sale of his 1993 pseudo-bio ``Up Close.'' Although ``a portion'' of the proceeds from Roy's appearance are to go to the Rod Carew Pediatric Cancer Center at Children's Hospital in Orange, it would have been more efficient for viewers to contribute directly to the hospital (in their own names), let Roy sleep in and have QVC use that valuable time to push such recycled collectibles as Sally Struthers Thighmasters, Zig Ziglar motivational tapes or the 22-gallon sea-monkey aquariums.

If there's an ounce of intellectual life left at USC, it won't give into its new XTRA-AM (690) partners and accept Lee ``Touchdown Trojans'' Hamilton as the new play-by-play man on football and basketball. And fast. The school is just now going through resumes and audition tapes, but Hamilton's persistence (and the promise to talk up Trojans football on his 3-7 p.m. weekday show) has lulled the school into believing he's the man. An arrangement that would allow athletic director Mike Garrett's favorite choice, Tom Kelly, to simulcast games for Fox Sports West and the radio station appears to as real as Hamilton's high-speed sports wire.

WHAT SMOKED ON LOCAL TV

The top 10 Nielsen-rated sports events (with their share numbers) on Los Angeles television between May 21-27:

Event Date Station Rt/Sh.x

Chicago-Indiana Gm. 4 May 25 Ch. 4 12.4/29

Lakers-Utah Gm. 4 May 24 Ch. 4 12.0/33

Chicago-Indiana Gm. 5 May 27 Ch. 4 11.4/20

Lakers-Utah Gm. 3 May 23 Ch. 4 9.7/17

Chicago-Indiana Gm. 3 May 23 Ch. 4 7.9/25

Indianapolis 500 May 24 Ch. 7 5.3/17

Dodgers-Arizona May 23 Ch. 5 4.2/8

Dodgers-Arizona May 22 Ch. 5 4.1/7

Motorola auto race May 23 Ch. 7 1.7/5

LPGA Skins Game May 24 Ch. 7 1.6/4

x-Each rating point represents 50,092 TV homes in Los Angeles; the share is the percentage of all the TV sets in use at that time.

CAPTION(S):

2 Boxes

Box: (1) SOUND BYTES (See Text)

(2) WHAT SMOKED ON LOCAL TV (See Text)