MISSION CONTROL FOR STAPLES; FUTURE HAS ARRIVED FOR TV PRODUCTION AT SPORTING VENUES.

Byline: Tom Hoffarth The Media

Maybe if NASA had access to the television production facilities at Staples Center, it would not only have found the Mars Probe, but images of the planet's south pole would be entertaining fans on the Diamondvision at halftime of the Lakers games.

OK, that's a stretch.

But then, maybe after seeing what's behind the curtain at the $14 million, 6,500-square-foot, dual-control rooms that are used this season for Lakers, Clippers and Kings home games, you'd understand that it pretty much makes the buzz-phrase ``state of the art'' fit better with a description of an eight-slice toaster.

``It's easily the No. 1 in-house facility in the country at this time,'' said Gary Garcia, Fox Sports Net's vice president of production.

``We're the envy of sports-TV production around the country,'' said Jeff Proctor, Fox Sports Net's executive producer.

``What we're doing with a regional broadcast is making it network quality with network resources,'' Kings producer Bob Borgen said.

Start by thinking of the 10-acre Staples Center not as a sporting venue but a highest-of-tech TV studio with 34 permanent camera positions in place. None of the 150,000 feet of fiber-optic cable is exposed - it's all built into the walls.

Just outside the building, on the second floor of Staples Center administrative offices on the corner of 11th and Figueroa, the production facility owned by Slingshot Productions and rented out to networks to use for any event inside is where it begins to looks like a mission-to-Mars control room.

In the main studio, a bank of some 60 TV screens fill one wall, almost floor to ceiling, like an extravagant security room at a Las Vegas casino. In the adjoining studio, separated by a pane of glass, is for now an audio room with enough dials and slide bars to record a few CDs while a game is going on. But it's also ready to run High Definition Television, or HDTV.

And it's a work in progress with the potential for millions of dollars of more equipment and software to be installed.

Game producers and directors who've been accustomed to cramming into long, narrow mobile-production trucks gasp when they first enter this massive studio that isn't going anywhere.

``I was intimidated, kind of in awe when I first walked in,'' said Mike Hassan, who has directed Kings games for four seasons and got to do the first sporting event at Staples Center in late October when the Kings opened against the Boston Bruins. ``The day before the first game, we were in here 12 hours practicing. All the cameras weren't up then. We didn't know what to expect. We had a production truck outside as a backup.''

But when nothing blew up and everyone realized what they were just a part of, the future of TV didn't seem that far off.

Maybe the biggest adjustment for the crew had to be the additional number of tape machines. Popping a feature together with this new system can be done almost as quickly as the producer thinks about it. And what makes that happen are the additional tape machines, especially a couple of four-channel gadgets known as EVS - or ``Elvis'' in the production parlance - that collect images and have the immediate-replay ability.

``It's not that much different than what a TiVo machine will do,'' said Garcia, referring to the popular new home-video digital record and replay systems. ``The facility is really like a big computer. With the push of one button, you can do almost anything.''

Although Staples Center has room for six underground TV production trucks, where visiting teams and networks will now congregate rather than outside in the parking lot, the benefits to those who get to use the in-house studio continue to be realized as the less-than-two-month-old building continues to be worked in.

Of course, there's little to no set-up time for a TV game. The Sony digital equipment is top-notch and stays that way because it doesn't have to be packed up and moved by truck after every show.

When games were at the Forum, preproduction meetings used to be held in one part of the building while the game crew was off in another part. Now, on a Kings game for example, broadcasters Bob Miller and Jim Fox meet in the studio with producer Borgen and can discuss graphic and replay ideas right with the technical crew working on the broadcast.

The Sony one-of-a-kind cameras not only transmit the signal that a standard TV production uses, but they simultaneously send HDTV signals. Only a small number of facilities have in-house studios to begin with, and of those, Madison Square Garden in New York is the only other with the ability to do an in-house HDTV telecast.

``It's the beginning of the next TV revolution,'' said Garcia of HDTV. ``That's the next big thing we hope to roll out. When hockey goes to HDTV, it'll become a sport people will want to watch even more. Imagine not only seeing the puck clearly but seeing the logo on the puck.

``We've prided ourselves here, going back to Prime Ticket, of being a leader in regional sports, and this keeps us there.''

So far, only the Lakers, Kings and Clippers have used the control room. When a wrestling show came by Staples Center recently, it had its own production truck. When NBC arrives on Christmas Day to do the Lakers telecast, it also plans to bring its own truck. KCAL-Channel 9 will take a crack at it on Tuesday's Lakers-Clippers telecast (technically, a Lakers road game). Down the road, it should be used for the Grammy Awards in late February or even the Democratic National Convention later in 2000.

Staples Center communications director Michael Roth said the first HDTV telecast will likely involve a Japanese TV crew televising a game to that country, but nothing has been booked.

Are the crews spoiled by having all this at their fingertips? Put it this way: When the Lakers, Kings or Clippers production teams go out on the road, they feel as if they're taking a step back in time.

``I went back to a truck to do a boxing show the other day and felt like I was in a closet,'' said Jerry Romano, who produces Lakers games for Fox Sports Net. ``Maybe this building is less intimate than the Forum, but as far as working conditions, these are the best.''

On Earth, and maybe even on Mars.

By Tom Hoffarth

WHAT SMOKES

How 'bout Chick Hearn doing the wave on Sunday's Lakers-Magic telecast?

Pay attention NBC: ABC won its ninth Eclipse Award for its coverage of the Belmont Stakes.

A three-minute montage of the top golf images of the decade will close ABC's Saturday 1-to-3 p.m. live coverage of the Diners Club team match-play event at Pelican Hills in Newport Beach. You can guess there'll be Tiger Woods' Masters victory as the highlight and the bagpipe tribute to Payne Stewart as the most emotional.

ESPN expands its ``Outside the Lines'' show to a weekly Sunday-morning half-hour edition starting in April - single-topic shows that will dissect the week's major news events. The next monthly installment, entitled ``Sports Behind Bars,'' will be Wednesday at 4 p.m., a look at how sports thrive behind the walls of the country's penal system. Included is a look at how the inmates at the state prison in Lancaster get up each year for their Super Bowl party.

ESPN SportsCentury's book will debut on The New York Times Best Seller list - No. 10 under nonfiction hardcover - when it comes out Sunday.

WHAT CHOKES

Howard David, the ``Monday Night Football'' play-by-play man on CBS Radio, said it after the referee stopped the game and called for the third video replay of the first half in the Vikings-Bucs contest: ``They've had more reviews in this half than Gene Siskel has had this month.'' Considering Siskel, the former Chicago newspaper movie reviewer, has been deceased for almost a year.

USA Today's Rudy Martzke, in his annual ``Rudy Awards'' that seem to come out about three times a year, decided that Fox's adding Jimmy Kimmel to the NFL Sunday pregame show was one of the ``best moves'' - just months after he proclaimed it to be the worst hiring this decade.

The nomination ballot for this year's Southern California Sports Broadcasters Award, ``honoring the best in our profession'' for 1999, includes Karl Malone of KXTA in the radio talk-show-host category. Funny enough in itself, except Malone never touched an 1150-AM mike (thankfully) in 1999. He was off the air by then when the NBA lockout ended and he returned to his night job.

WHAT SMOKED ON LOCAL TV

The top 10 Nielsen-rated sports events (with their share numbers) on L.A. television from Dec. 3-8:

Event Date Station Rt/Sh.

NFL: Minnesota Tampa Bay 12/6 KABC  14.1/23

NFL: Seattle Oakland 12/5 KCBS  12.3/29

NFL: Indianapolis Miami 12/5 KCBS 8.2/22

NFL: St. Louis Carolina 12/5 KTTV 6.1/17

NBA: Portland Lakers 12/3 FSN  5.4/9

NCAA: Texas vs. Nebraska 12/4 KABC 5.2/16

NCAA: Florida vs. Alabama 12/4 KABC 5.0/11

NBA: Lakers Sacramento 12/8 KCAL  4.4/8

NFL: Pittsburgh Jacksonville 12/2 ESPN 4.2/7

NCAA: Army vs. Navy 12/4 KCBS 3.7/12

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):

Photo, 2 boxes

PHOTO One of two high-tech, broadcast-control rooms at Staples Center, which could make NASA jealous.

John McCoy/Staff Photographer

Box: (1) Sound Bytes (see text)

(2) What Smoked on Local TV (see text)