TEAM'S TV SCHEDULES CLEARER.

Byline: TOM HOFFARTH The Media

Less than two weeks before the start of the regular season, the Dodgers and Angels finally sorted out their 2005 local TV schedules. The winners: those who pony up for cable or a satellite dish.

In the last year of its over-the-air package with the Dodgers, KCOP/Channel 13 squirmed out of its contractual obligation of 50 games and went with half that - 25 - this season. The result, and the reason for the delay in issuing the schedule, is that FSN West 2 juggled enough things around to accommodate the extra Dodgers telecasts, increasing its take to 125, up from 100 a year ago.

``Because this is our last season, we wanted to lessen the impact on our network and regular program schedule,'' John Frenzel, a spokesman for Channel 13, said Thursday in a statement.

Meanwhile, FSN West increased its Angels take from 81 last season to 102 for the upcoming season, the most the cable channel has had in its 13 years of doing business with the team. KCAL/Channel 9, the Angels' partner for one more season before carrying the Dodgers, will show 50 games. The remaining dates for the Dodgers and Angels have been claimed by Fox and ESPN.

Giving the cable side 125 games probably benefits the Dodgers financially and causes less confusion with viewers, yet it will be those who live in the 20 percent of homes without cable or a dish in Los Angeles who will complain the loudest once the regular season begins.

Because Channel 13 said it didn't want to disrupt its less-than-sparkling UPN network programming, all but two of its telecasts are on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday - one on Monday, July 4 at Colorado.

The other is a Thursday game from San Francisco on Sept. 15, which is the first of a four-game series against the Giants, all on Channel 13 except for Saturday's Sept. 17 game slated for the Fox network.

``KCOP is a part of a network that finds it's more and more difficult each year to clear that many nights for programming, and that's the reality of trying to fit in sports,'' said Lon Rosen, the Dodgers executive in charge of broadcasting.

Rosen said when the Dodgers switch to Channel 9 for over-the-air games in 2006, it'll go back to a 100-on-cable, 50-on-over-the-air split.

The Angels haven't announced what it will do for over-the-air in 2006 with limited options. Last year, after claiming it would televise every game of the season, it patched a schedule together using KDOC and a Spanish-language channel, neither of which are included in the 2005 slate.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers continue to use the exhibition season to give their new broadcast pairings some quality time together.

Charley Steiner and Steve Lyons, who will do TV road games east of the Rockies later in the season, are paired for today's radio game. Rick Monday and Al Downing, the radio team during those road games, did a few exhibitions together this week.

Otherwise, the most noticeable improvement on the radio side this spring has been Monday's effectiveness in the role of a color man working with play-by-play man Steiner.

--No kidding around: The fact that San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds brought his 15-year-old son, Nikolai, with him during his brief but media-blaming interview in Scottsdale, Ariz., on Tuesday didn't play well with those analyzing his motives.

Both Jim Rome and Dan Patrick said on their syndicated radio shows the next day that they thought Bonds used his son as a shield to keep reporters from asking about the latest grand jury BALCO testimony from a purported mistress that involved his steroid use and failure to report autograph-show income.

New York Newsday columnist Shawn Powell wrote in his column Thursday that by bringing his son ``for protection,'' Bonds ``figured we wouldn't be so ruthless, so cold, so penetrating in our interrogation. He figured wrong.'' Powell added that ``by doing our job and pressing Bonds on the issue of steroids, we have sent him to his knees, begging for relief from the constant public intrusion. Good. It's our responsibility to get to the truth.''

On Rome's show Thursday, Powell went further, calling Bonds' strategy by using his son as ``laughable'' and the ``act of a desperate man.''

In video aired Tuesday on ESPN, Bonds even asked the cameraman and photographers to include Nikolai in their shots ``so you guys can see the pain you're causing my family.'' Bonds also refused to speak to reporters until the San Francisco Chronicle's beat reporter, Henry Schulman, left the group, saying: ``I'm never going to talk to you for the rest of my life,'' although Schulman is not involved in the Chronicle's stories in the BALCO investigation.

New York Times columnist Selena Roberts wondered if Bonds' wife has ``a few queries of her own. Maybe his children do, too. What does he say to them? With his son by his side, he simply blamed the news media for his predicament of despair.''

The analysis even went to Rush Limbaugh's syndicated political radio show, where while admonishing the media for ``going nuts with this,'' he noted that Bonds' son wore a Barry Sanders No. 20 Detroit Lions jersey while he sat through the reporters' questions.

``What's Barry Sanders noted for, aside from his records?'' Limbaugh asked. ``He just quit.''

SOUND BYTES

WHAT SMOKES

--Overhead coverage via blimp and cable cam of the famed 17th island hole at the PGA Tour Players Championships at Sawgrass definitely enhanced ESPN's first-round coverage Thursday and promises to make it even more of a treat as the 146-yard, par-3 moat-surrounded mini-beast becomes more nerve-wracking this weekend (today on ESPN, third- and final-round coverage on NBC Saturday and Sunday). ``The perspective that you get when you actually get some movement into the shot, you can really get an idea how big, or in this case, how small that green really is,'' said Tom Roy, NBC Sports' executive producer on the addition of the camera high on a cable behind the green. At least 10 cameras are used in covering the hole by the networks, and PGATour.com has additional video coverage of every shot taken there.

--Tony Bruno, last heard in the morning drive on Fox Sports Radio more than a year ago, will reportedly resurface as the new 6-to-10 a.m. host on 1540-AM The Ticket starting next month as the permanent replacement for Roger Lodge.

--Erik Morales' decision Saturday over Manny Pacquiao, which drew about 350,000 pay-per-view buys last week, replays Saturday (HBO, 9:45 p.m.) as part of the pay-service channel's coverage of the Fernando Vargas-Raymond Joval middleweight bout from Texas.

--ESPNU, the new all-college sports network, will combine with ESPN and ESPN2 to do various UCLA and USC baseball and softball games the next two months.

WHAT CHOKES

--St. Louis Cardinals broadcaster Wayne Hagin should have been smart enough not to imply that Colorado Rockies star Todd Helton tried steroids earlier in his career, even if his quotes in a radio interview were ``taken out of context'' (as Cardinals team president Mark Lamping told the media) and apologies were dished out in the aftermath. All Hagin had was a conversation with former Rockies manager Don Baylor. And then to say that Helton being on ``the juice'' only meant that it was a legal supplement, not anabolic steroids, simply was too much to backpedal from. The sooner Helton stops threatening to follow this up with a lawsuit, the sooner it will go away as a misunderstanding and not a media-perpetuated issue, but it should also serve notice that idle speculation won't fly in these oversensitive times.

--With Dennis Scott mercifully cut, Dee Brown and Matt Bullard are the last two unimpressive contestants left standing in ESPN's latest ``Dream Job'' competition, designed to make a group of former NBA players jump through a few more hoops in hopes of becoming a studio analyst. The winner will be determined in Sunday's final breathtaking episode at ... what time does that air again? The loser could immediately be considered as an improvement someday for Jack Haley on FSN.

--The first season of the poker-based soap opera ``Tilt'' gave ESPN an average Nielsen cable rating of 0.97, which was better than what the network did airing NHL games during that same time frame in 2004.

BY TOM HOFFARTH

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