THE MEDIA: ESPN WEST WILL JOIN THE CROWD.

Byline: TOM HOFFARTH

The upcoming dodge-ball war between new kid on the block ESPN West and the established Fox Sports West might make a fine piece of TV programming some day.

But neither would be satisfied with who owns the rights to it.

ESPN's announcement at this week's Western Cable Show in Anaheim that it was diving into the regional sports business next October - and taking with it two key franchises that provided programming for Fox Sports West and Fox Sports West 2 - was really no stunner.

Disney, which owns the Angels and Mighty Ducks and had peppered Fox with lawsuits to get them out of their rights agreements, has grumbled all year about starting its own regional channel.

At last comes the move by Disney-owned ESPN to establish a channel that can be made available to about 4.4 million homes in Southern California, Nevada and Hawaii, opening speculation that it could be a major player in the regional sports-channel business across the country.

So how does ESPN West, a new 24-hour sports channel, expect to elbow its way onto an already crowded playing field - especially after witnessing the resistance FSW2 experienced this year even when it was touting exclusive cable coverage of the Dodgers?

``Life is full of choices,'' said George Bodenheimer, ESPN vice president of sales and marketing.

And smugness will get you nowhere.

Don't expect many cable viewers outside the Orange County concentration camp to clamor for this, especially if it means giving up other channels to get it. In the San Fernando Valley, the Angels and Ducks are nice to keep up with, but not at the expense of giving up another sports spot on the cable box.

Kitty Cohen, general manager of Fox Sports West and Fox Sports West 2, learned the hard way about cable resistance in the last nine months.

Fox Sports West 2 finally got past the gatekeepers at Time-Warner cable in the West Valley early this month and has reached 2.2 million of the 3.1 million homes it had set its sights on early in the year, but Fox practically had to give it away, at least at the start. Century Cable, which might soon be gobbled up by the all-mighty Tele-Communications Inc., and Comcast remain the two holdouts.

When ESPN West comes a callin' in about a year and the FSW2 charges start kicking in, what will the cable system carry if it's trying to keep its costs to the consumer down?

``There was so much media around our launch (of FSW2) that it was really only three months when we had trouble getting cable systems to sign up,'' said Cohen.

Again, that would seem to bode well for an ESPN West launch. But it would leave FSW2 searching for new material on a landscape that already seems pretty exhausted.

``In a perfect world, we'd like to keep the Ducks and Angels,'' said Cohen, whose channel is in the second year of a five-year deal with the Clippers and, in light of the pending Dodgers ownership change to Fox, will have that team locked in for years to come.

Cohen said they'll go with more local coverage. ESPN West says it will also vie for more local coverage, which includes satisfying a Spanish-language audience with soccer and Mexican League Baseball.

So if the time comes when Fox Sports West and ESPN West start fighting for the right to cover something like the La Puente Thanksgiving Day youth soccer festival and gunny sack race, maybe someone will realize we not only don't need any more local sport channels, but we can't afford them.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN SCHOOL . . .

Maybe it's the fact it doesn't have the look of a high-gloss production. There are no commercials for McDonald's or Nike getting in the way. And you know everyone working the game can't possibly be there for the hefty paycheck.

There's something special about watching the L.A. City high school 3-A and 4-A championship football games on KLCS, the educational channel allocated to the L.A. Unified School District. And with local interest in 3-A El Camino Real against Carson and 4-A Taft against San Pedro, the six-hour live show that KLCS broadcasts will likely be the most-watched show on Valley TV sets tonight.

So take a break from the ``Homework Hotline'' and those school board meetings on KLCS.

It's one of the few times each year the little channel that could, does. It's not a lot of frills, but there's always plenty of thrills.

Richard Cochran, who produces the broadcast, has just four field cameras to cover the event - less than half what a network would use on a college or NFL game. And when you're talking about making the Coliseum look intimate for TV, that can be a huge obstacle.

``It's a piece of cake,'' Cochran said. ``It won't look like a mausoleum. In fact, I think it'll look better than a Raiders game.''

One camera slides up and down the south sideline to do the live plays. A second sideline camera is used for tight live shots. The other two cameras are in each end zone.

One more camera is in the press box, where Randy Rosenbloom and Greg Nathansen supplement their game call with live interviews to help fill the time before each game and the half-hour between.

Rosenbloom, the versatile North Hollywood native, is in his third year of broadcasting the 4-A game for KLCS and second of broadcasting the 3-A game. He gives the games a professional feel without compromising the fact that it's a high school contest.

Last year, he even helped avoid what could have a been a minor disaster.

The kickoff for the 3-A game was to be at 5:07 p.m., giving KLCS a seven-minute lead-in to the game. But at 4:45, Rosenbloom looked down at the Coliseum field and saw the Van Nuys and Wilson players ready and the ball teed up.

``I started screaming at them to stop because we weren't on the air yet,'' said Rosenbloom.

High school sports coverage in the '90s has been getting big-time, which makes some uncomfortable but generally excites those rabid fans who treat the sports like a pro game.

Since KCOP Channel 13's five-year deal to do City and Southern Section championship football games expired, FSW2 has been getting first crack at title games to put on its weekly high school game-of-the-week show. With more interest in Southern Section than L.A. City, Fox passed and KLCS gladly took care of its own.

And if you want to look at it another way - KLCS is in far more homes than Fox Sports West 2, going from Santa Barbara to San Diego over the air and on cable.

In the early '80s, Valley Cable (now Time Warner) did four years of local high school and college game coverage, including a local call-in show. And in the '70s, there are many who remember Ross Porter and Bryant Gumbel announcing prep games for KNBC.

The KLCS coverage goes back to the basics. And how many times do you hear that phrase in connection with the education system?

SOUND BYTES

WHAT SMOKES

Classic Sports' ``Classic Bowl Week'' of college football bowl highlights. Start with last January's Rose Bowl between Ohio State and Arizona State (Sunday, 8 p.m.), then go to the '78 Cotton Bowl between Joe Montana and Notre Dame against Earl Campbell and Texas (Monday, 9 p.m.); the '79 Sugar bowl between No. 1 Penn State and No. 2 Alabama (Tuesday, 9:30 p.m.); the '79 Cotton Bowl between Montana's Irish in one of the greatest bowl comebacks against Houston (Thursday, 9 p.m.); the '80 Holiday Bowl featuring BYU and Jim McMahon in a shootout against SMU and Eric Dickerson (Dec. 19, 9 p.m.); the '82 Sugar Bowl between Georgia and Dan Marino's Pitt squad (Dec. 20, 9 p.m.) and the '83 Sugar Bowl between No. 1 Georgia and Herschel Walker vs. No. 2 Penn State (Sunday, Dec. 21, 9 p.m.)

Ross Porter's golf game. The Dodgers play-by-play man aced the 15th hole (118 yards) at Sunrise Country Club in Palm Springs on Thursday. That was his second career hole-in-one. Ask Ross for the statistical odds of it happening to someone twice in a lifetime.

WHAT CHOKES

The countdown has begun for the end of Jim Rome's 3-to-5 p.m. L.A.-only radio show for AM-1150. Rome's national show will likely be on both that station and XTRA-AM 690 from 9 a.m.-to-1 p.m. in the very near future. The flip side, however, means Joe McDonnell will stretch from 3-to-7 p.m. (leading into eventual Dodgers game coverage). And Rome will be free to pursue a TV deal with Fox Sports Net that will soon be announced involving he and New York Post writer Wally Matthews in a sort of sports ``Crossfire'' show.

No more Oakland Raiders games on ``Monday Night Football'' this year. So we'll have to wait for the postseason when ABC's big bad Al Michaels can malign Al Davis. Oh, that's right. The Raiders were eliminated in Week 3.

And the Lakers still tape-delay road games on KCAL Channel 9?

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