TV GOLF: IT'S NO EASY PAR; AUDIENCE HUNGRY FOR NEWS OF WOODS, DUVAL.

Byline: TOM HOFFARTH The Media

By rough estimate, there will be slightly more than a bajillion hours of professional golf on network, cable and security-camera television in 1999.

Most, if not all, will attempt to include every practice swing, tee shot, fairway chip and curling putt of Tiger Woods and David Duval.

And if they're leading that particular tournament, so much the better.

``They are the story, week in and week out, and you've got to show them because people want to know how they shoot, poor or great,'' said CBS' coordinating producer for golf Lance Barrow. He spoke in his trailer just up from the 18th hole at the Riviera Country Club on Wednesday during a rare break in preparation for this weekend's coverage of the Nissan Open.

CBS has been on the Woods-Duval story the past four weeks. Woods didn't cooperate much at last week's Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines. He shot a course-record 62 Saturday but finished his round five minutes before the network went on the air at noon with its three-hour live coverage.

With any luck, the two will match each other shot-for-shot on USA Network's CBS-produced coverage of today's second round (ridiculously tape-delayed for the second day in a row at 4 p.m.), then finish high enough on the leaderboard to make the live-coverage window Saturday (noon to 3 p.m.) and Sunday (1 to 3 p.m.) for the network presentation with Jim Nantz and Ken Venturi in the 18th-hole tower.

Thanks to advancements in microwave technology, a network like CBS can cover them anywhere on the course.

It's not as if Riviera course designer George Thomas had TV in mind when he created this 18-hole playground down in a dry river bed in the Palisades in the early '20s. Not until the 1953 Los Angeles Open did TV cameras even venture in, and that was only for local coverage by ABC over L.A. affiliate KECA.

(Historical sidenote: Arnold Palmer's victory in the 1966 Los Angeles Open, played that year at Rancho Park, was the first network-wide coverage of a golf tournament, albeit in black-and-white. Color TV cameras were used the next year, again at Rancho, again won by Palmer.)

Up until about four years ago, a course like Riviera could only be televised on the back nine. An eight- or nine-camera team was tied to cables, except for the occasional good blimp angle to cover a particular hole (such as the blind-shot 18th tee, where CBS still uses a camera on top of a firetruck crane to follow the ball into the fairway).

Now, with up to 16 cameras at Barrow's beck and call for director Steve Milton and associate director Jim Rikhoff, all within clear range to feed pictures and sounds to one of several 100-foot microwave towers around the course, it'd be difficult for anyone on the field to slip by unnoticed from camera view or from course reporters Gary McCord, Bobby Clampett, Peter Oosterhuis, David Feherty or Peter Kostis.

Because of the updated technology, particularly with the conversion to digital, CBS is using larger production trucks this year, which made finding a place just to park the half-dozen units at Riviera's cozy little facility that much more of a challenge.

All of which makes golf, believe it or not, probably the toughest live sport to cover, according to Barrow, who does his share of college basketball and auto racing for CBS.

``For the two hours you might be on the air, there are no breaks,'' Barrow said. ``There are no confined areas and play is going all the time. And it sounds like nothing to the average viewer, but the toughest thing is when we decide to go to a commercial. You could miss five great shots during a break, so when you come back, you have them all cued up on tape, and while you're showing those, you're missing five more shots.''

Or, in the case of trying to cover Woods last Saturday, his entire round is on tape and Barrow has to decide when to duck in a highlight reel of Woods' best shots to show during the live window.

And you gotta show Tiger, right?

Time after time: This year, CBS bumped up its golf schedule to 24 events. But after this weekend, the crew won't convene again until the second week in April for coverage of the Masters because of the network's commitment to the NCAA college basketball tournament through March.

In addition to the live action, CBS has added two 15-minute highlight shows for several tournaments (including the Nissan) to air Thursday and Friday nights after ``Late Show With David Letterman'' that Rikhoff and Chris Svendsen help pull together with golf bards McCord and Feherty.

``I was thinking about this while I was on a plane the other day,'' said Barrow, who was killing time on a flight last month to produce the AFC Championship Game for CBS in Denver. ``From the first of February until the end of August, we'll do 82 golf shows. Add in the late-night, and it's 98 shows. In years past, we'd arrive at the course on Thursday, rehearse on Friday, then cover Saturday and Sunday. Most of the time now (with the cable partner doing the first two rounds), it's arrive Tuesday, plan Wednesday and shoot for four days.

``I'm a huge golf fan, so I enjoy all this, but. . . .''

It's a lot of hours, right?

``Yes,'' he said.

SOUND BYTES

By Tom Hoffarth E-mail: sptmediaaol.com

WHAT SMOKES

Although it seems preposterous to consider ``The Miracle on Ice'' 1980 U.S. hockey team's win over the Soviet Union 38 places down from Mary Tyler Moore throwing her hat in the air, Entertainment Weekly's current issue attempts to list the 100 Greatest Moments in Television. Included are these sporting events: No. 14: the 1958 NFL Championship Game; No. 33: the 1963 Army-Navy game in which instant replay debuted; No. 40: ``The Miracle on Ice''; No. 43: ``Monday Night Football'' debuts; No. 53: ESPN ``SportsCenter'' teams Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick; No. 75: Mark McGwire's 62nd home run; No. 78: Nadia Comanici scores a perfect 10 at the '76 Olympics; No. 88: ``Wide World of Sports' '' agony-of-defeat clip, and No. 94: Bobby Riggs vs. Billie Jean King tennis match. And, if you want to count 'em as a sport, No. 45: Gorgeous George steps into the TV ring to help popularize pro wrestling, and No. 86: Beavis and Butt-Head play ``frog baseball.''

Joe McDonnell is back on the radio from 3 to 7 p.m. - on a permanent shift for all-news KFWB-AM (980) doing the sports updates at 15 and 45 past each hour, starting Monday. Meanwhile, McDonnell and Doug Krikorian team up again, this time for ESPN Radio (picked up on AM-1150) on the overnight 11 p.m.-to-3 a.m. shift for the vacationing Todd Wright.

WHAT CHOKES

To avoid a repeat of the all-time low 13.9 national rating it drew last season, ABC execs are reportedly considering messing around again with the kickoff time for ``Monday Night Football.'' It was pushed up last year from 6 p.m. to 5:20 p.m. They're talking about now going back to 5:35 p.m. with a half-hour pregame show. Although ESPN's ``Sunday Night Football'' ratings were up, kickoff might also be moved to 5:35 p.m. Sure, it'll help some with folks who are getting off work, but the real reason the ratings fell flat last year was the blowouts. Don't confuse viewers any more than they already are with more kickoff changes.

The Lakers' window of opportunity to hire Marv Albert as the eventual successor for Chick Hearn might have closed when Albert signed a multiyear contract this week to do NBA games for TNT and TBS. He'll start working for Turner's cable network in early April.

Who has claim to the title of worldwide leader in sports television, News Corp's Fox or Disney's ESPN? Or is it really Time-Warner's family of CNN-SI and HBO, which takes its unbiased look at the former two's sports-TV battle as part of the latest episode of ``Real Sports'' (Monday at 10:30 p.m.) with reporter Armen Keteyian.

WHAT SMOKED ON LOCAL TV

The top 10 Nielsen-rated sports events (with their share numbers) on L.A. television from Feb. 11-17:

Event Date Station Rt/Sh.x

NBA: Indiana at Lakers 2/14 KNBC  9.9/23

U.S. Fig. Skating

(women's final) 2/13 KABC  7.5/13

NBA: Lakers at Minnesota 2/11 KCAL 6.6/11

Daytona 500 2/14 KCBS  4.6/14

PGA Buick Invitational 2/14 KCBS 4.3/11

Gator 125 2/13 KCBS 3.7/13

U.S. Fig. Skating

(men's final) 2/13 KABC 3.6/9

NBA: Charlotte at Lakers 2/16 FSW  3.6/5

NBA: Dallas at Lakers 2/17 FSW 3.0/4

NCAA: UCLA at Cal 2/13 KABC 2.5/8

Note: The UCLA-USC game Wednesday had a 1.1/2 mark on FSW2 while the USC's upset of Stanford on Saturday did not register a rating on FSW.

x-One rating point equals 50,092 TV homes in Los Angeles; a 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)