MEDIA HAS FINAL SAY IN NAME GAME.

Byline: TOM HOFFARTH Media

No matter how Arte Moreno front-loads the name of his Orange County-based baseball team, the back end on whether the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim will stick this coming season will ultimately be determined by how much the local and national media want to make it happen.

And from the media response so far, Moreno might be putting up billboards around town seeking help from a damage-control expert.

The New York Times, for example, began an editorial in Thursday's edition: ``Sometimes an idea comes along that is so stupid, all you can do is stand back, give it some room, and stare: THE LOS ANGELES ANGELS OF ANAHEIM.''

It concluded: ``We have to ask, though, what team name in Southern California isn't nuts? The names `Lakers' and `Dodgers' once made sense in Minnesota, land of lakes, and in Brooklyn, land of trolleys, but not in the land of Mickey and Goofy. Don't get us started on the Mighty Ducks.''

Associated Press columnist Tim Dahlberg wrote: ``The Angels have always been an afterthought in Southern California anyhow. They moved to Anaheim only after founding owner Gene Autry refused the demand by Long Beach officials to name the team the Long Beach Angels in exchange for a new stadium. In between, the team changed names more than some Hollywood porn stars.''

Orange County Register sports columnist Mark Whicker adds: ``Before we get into the logic or illogic of all this, lets not miss the central problem with the new name. Translated, it's `The Angels Angels of Anaheim.'''

When presented to the masses, the logical part of Moreno's plan to accessorize his team with a new geographical designation seems to be that it will generate more local and national TV revenue from rights holders. But even that makes less dollars and sense.

Fox Sports Net, which does the bulk of the Angels' games on cable, will partner one more year with KCAL Channel 9 before the Angels need to find a new over-the-air carrier. Moreno's front office is already searching for a new broadcast rights holder from a local TV landscape that isn't going to be very accommodating since the only real viable options, KTLA Channel 5 and KTTV Channel 11, are tied into WB and Fox prime-time programming. Is KDOC Channel 56 going to be the new well of money for Moreno?

Several network executives familiar with TV negotiations both locally and nationally but wishing to speak off the record because of pending litigation see no great financial impact in this name change.

To TV advertisers, the Angels have always been sold, locally and nationally, as a team in a Southern California market. The analogy is that the Los Angeles Clippers never will draw the same kind of ad revenue for their games even if their TV ratings were equal to the Los Angeles Lakers because of their track record and image. The Lakers and Dodgers can weather bad seasons with advertisers that the Clippers and Angels can't.

Nationally, Fox or ESPN don't expect any kind of ad rate change just because of the ``new'' L.A. team, either. Even if the networks did receive more ad revenue for the national telecasts, the money would go to the league to be divided up equally, so it would not directly impact the Angels.

As for how the team will be presented nationally, history shows the media gets the last say. And they aren't even sure what to make of this yet.

Steve Hirdt, an executive with the Elias Sports Bureau in New York that acts as the main research and statistical information clearing house for Major League Baseball, said his company will hold off for a while in deciding how the Angels are listed in the official standings.

``We haven't given it a moment of serious thought yet,'' said Hirdt, who was leaving Thursday to work on stats for ABC's coverage of Saturday's AFC wild-card game between the Los Angeles Chargers of San Diego and the New York Jets of East Rutherford, N.J.

``With all the lawsuits we hear, we don't even know yet if the name will be shortened or lengthened by then,'' said Hirdt. ``How the team name appears in the standings is really up to the newspaper editors and broadcasters. The First Amendment still applies. We're just going to have to wait with baited breath.''

The Associated Press also says it has not determined a policy yet for referring to the Angels as Los Angeles or Anaheim.

The way the media has reacted to naming rights on stadiums or to sponsorship of college football games is the only real way to gauge how this may play out. So far, if an arena or facility or bowl game is given a corporate name from the start, it usually is referred to that in print, TV and radio. But once that established name is changed without the team or bowl actually moving, it takes a lot to get the media, and the public, to switch.

There's not much precedent in a team changing its geographic designation to help boost its financial resources. The NBA's Kansas City-Omaha Kings used the two city names because it split playing its home games in each place for two seasons in the 1970s before the franchise moved to Sacramento.

In 2003, Bank One paid an undisclosed amount (reported to be more than $30 million) to have the Chicago Bears attach their name as a ``presenting partner'' for the next 12 years. The team was supposed to make use of the phrase, ``Bears football presented by Bank One'' in radio and newspaper stories, but team president Ted Phillips said at the time of the contract that the team ``did not and never will sell the rights of our team name ... or change how the team is referred to in any fashion locally or nationally.''

There are plenty of instances where the media was directly involved in determining team names, although mostly it affected nicknames.

In the new book, ``Yankees To Fighting Irish: What's Behind Your Favorite Team's Name'' ($14.95, Taylor Trade), author Michael Leo Donovan cites dozens of instances where influential newspaper men in particular were behind naming pro and college teams in the early part of the last century.

The USC Trojans, for example, came about after Los Angeles Times sports editor Owen Bird was asked in 1912 by USC president Dr. George Bovard to come up with something better than nicknames such as the Methodists or Wesleyans that were being used. Bird did a story prior to a USC-Stanford football game calling them Trojans because of the team's fighting spirit.

Another Times writer, stringer Bill Henry, was covering an Arizona-Occidental football game in 1914 and noted the visiting team were playing like ``wild cats,'' which got back to the students at the Tucson campus and they adopted it as their name.

The Chicago Cubs were originally called the White Stockings in the late 1800s, but at various times, the four Chicago newspapers used all kinds of nicknames before a Chicago Daily News columnist referred to the team's newest players as Cubs. Sports editor Fred Rayner liked it so much he decided that would be the name.

Ironically, there was the time when the New York Dodgers of Brooklyn (not their real name) were struggling so much in the 1930s that New York Daily News writer Jimmy Powers proposed a name change to give them a fresh start. He appealed to the readers, who submitted 7,000 responses. Narrowing it down to a top 10, Powers asked the team's players to pick.

They decided on the Aces. But the citizens of Brooklyn wouldn't buy into it.

Wonder if Arte the Marketing Ace coulda sold the borough on that one back then.

SOUND BYTES

WHAT SMOKES

--Because there's little chance the Professional Poker Association (if there is one) will demand the series be canceled after the first season because of how it smears its good name, ESPN's latest drama, ``Tilt,'' has a chance not only to survive but do so based on the merits of an edgy script and decent acting. Michael Madsen, as Don ``The Matador'' Everest, fits perfectly into this dark Vegas gambling setting of revenge, backstabbing and crooked dealings, pulling from his performances from ``Reservoir Dogs'' and the ``Kill Bill'' movies. It definitely helps set the tone by having Brian Koppelman and David Levien, who co-wrote ``Rounders'' and ``Knockaround Guys,'' on board here as the creators, executive producers and directors for this series. As the title implies (``tilt'' in poker terms means a crazy behavior that results from losing), there's plenty of degenerative storylines to draw upon - as well as cross promotion for ESPN's coverage of the now popular World Poker Tour. Look for ESPN poker analyst Norman Chad doing cameo shots as the TV interviewer that's definitely meant to be product placement. But also beware of the lack of a strong parental warning, particularly for the first episode. About 15 minutes into the hour-long debut show, heading into the first commercial break, Madsen's character receives a sexual favor from a Vegas paid performer in an R-rated scene that has no place for family viewing during the dinner hour. The series carries a TV-MA (mature audiences only) rating, but ESPN, so locked into East Coast viewing habits that it blatantly disregards anyone this side of the Bristol, Conn., satellite dish farm, will air this first episode in the awkward Pacific Time slot of 6 p.m. Thursday, with repeats at 7 p.m., 9 p.m. and midnight, plus 10:30 p.m. on ESPN2.

WHAT CHOKES

--In part for his ability to milk the networks for billions more dollars in rights fees and successfully get the new NFL Network rolling in its first year, NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue reclaimed the No. 1 spot in The Sporting News' annual ``Power 100'' list of the biggest bigwigs in sports, a position he held in 2001. Meanwhile, George Bodenheimer, the head of ABC Sports and ESPN, dropped to the No. 5 slot (maybe because Tagliabue got him to pull the plug on ``Playmakers'' or ``Monday Night Football'' ratings dropped to an all-time low of 11.5 this season?), but he remained the highest-ranked media member in a list that's actually more of a top 40 that breaks down after that into smaller lists based on job titles. Other media people in the top 40 include Fox Sports chairman David Hill at No. 8 (up from 10th a year ago and once grouped at No. 1 with Rupert Murdoch in 1998); NBC Sports chair Dick Ebersol at No. 9 (up from 24th and once No. 1 in 1996); ESPN programming wunderkind Mark Shapiro at No. 18 (down from 15); Fox Sports executive producer Ed Goren at No. 22 (down from 18); NFL Network boss Steve Bornstein at No. 25 (part of the best of the rest last year) and CBS Sports chief Sean McManus at a less-than-impressive No. 31 (up from 37). At No. 38, it's Janet Jackson's right breast, because of how it affected the way some networks went to five-second delays.

By Tom Hoffarth

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SOUND BYTES (see text)