WHAT'S ON THE AIR, AND UNDER IT.

Byline: Tom Hoffarth The Media

Movers 'n' shakers, matchmakers, fakers and bellyachers for the new media millennium:

--Deja vu all over again: Dick Enberg and Billy Packer on the same college basketball game broadcast? And it's not on ESPN Classic?

With Enberg's jump from NBC to CBS finally official, his new employer has put him on Saturday's Ohio State-St. John's telecast (1 p.m.) with Packer. The last time those two crazy kids worked a game together was the 1981 NCAA Championship between Indiana and North Carolina when NBC was the college hoop king.

On Feb. 5, Enberg and Packer are reunited with antagonist Al McGuire for the UConn-Michigan State national telecast on CBS. McGuire, who used to fondly refer to Enberg as ``Dixie'' on the air at NBC, will be his right-hand man through the college basketball season and into the network's tournament coverage. Enberg then goes to the Masters, PGA Championship and U.S. Open tennis championship before teaming with Dan Dierdorf for CBS' NFL coverage next season.

``To be part of the NFL again and college basketball has my adrenaline flowing,'' said Enberg, the longtime L.A. Rams and UCLA basketball voice on KMPC in the '60s and '70s before joining NBC 25 years ago.

Enberg, the former San Fernando Valley State (now CSUN) baseball coach, may even be able to do Angels games in some capacity for their 40th season celebration since his summer is less constrained without the Wimbledon commitment with NBC (he's done 19 of 'em, along with nine Rose Bowls, eight Super Bowls, five Final Fours, four Olympics and one World Series), but it would likely be limited to a very small number of games. The Angels recently hired Darren Sutton, the 29-year-old son of former Dodgers and Angels Hall of Fame pitcher Don Sutton, to replace Brian Barnhardt on radio play-by-play with Mario Embemba.

--Dodgeball: Someone at KTLA Channel 5 didn't want Ross Porter as part of the broadcast team for the Dodgers games on their station anymore and sent a letter last October to the team telling them a change to Rick Monday was going to happen, sources say.

But when the Dodgers and KTLA released their 55-game schedule last week, Porter and Monday were announced as sharing the second play-by-play chair with Vin Scully.

What happened?

``We wanted Ross to be part of it - everyone in the organization did - so we talked it over with KTLA and figured out a solution,'' said Derrick Hall, the Dodgers' VP of communications who started his new position at the first of the year and had much to do with remedying the situation.

Soon after the KTLA letter was sent to the Dodgers, former Warner Brothers chairman Bob Daly was named the Dodgers president. The thought was that Daly could fix Porter's situation since he knew the players at the WB-owned KTLA. Hall says Daly kept up with the situation but never had to step in and assert his authority.

``If the decision had actually been final by KTLA, he probably would have,'' said Hall, who added that Channel 5 never made a clear-cut decision to replace Porter with Monday despite what Porter understood to be a done deal.

``I was surprised when I read the story in the Daily News last fall (about the initial decision), but I'm happy the situation has been resolved,'' said Porter.

Porter and Scully will continue to be the only two play-by-play men in Fox Sports Net 2's 80-plus game schedule, with Monday working as the pregame co-host with Paul Sunderland.

--Unlucky 13: In a time when local TV sportscasters cram as much (or little) into a four-minute segment of an unwatchable ``newscast'' as tolerable, something like the half-hour Sunday night ``Talk About Sports'' show with viewer interaction that Newy Scruggs had cooking at KCOP Channel 13 for the last four years was more than a breath of fresh air. It was a chance for everyone to breathe, period.

But when contract talks between Scruggs and the station broke down at the end of '99 and his deal wasn't renewed, the show simply faded away, another fine idea tossed aside for lack of anyone else capable of hosting it.

Scruggs, the co-host of the ``The Dawg Pound'' on all-sports AM-1150 weekdays from 1 to 3 p.m., isn't hurting for local work. But the fact is, he has out-of-state contacts that could pull him out of the market entirely. To extricate one of the few hard-working local TV sportscasters in town with a disrespectful exit would be a crime.

``I hate to say it, but in five or 10 months from now, I think they'll miss me,'' Scruggs said of KCOP.

The best chance for him to stay involved in local TV is if he becomes part of Fox Sports News' half-hour local segment, which has been pushed back to a June launch because the Fox corporate structure has been strangled in red tape trying to free up the cash to get the project launched (all while it decides if it's going to be a regional network with a national slant or visa versa).

Former KTLA Channel 5 sportscaster Ed Arnold, who has applied to fill Scruggs' opening at KCOP but would likely have to work as a weekender, would be another critical acquisition for Fox Sports News if it wants to establish local credibility. Since Arnold was unceremoniously made the fall guy to make room for Claudia Trejos last fall, he has continued his tireless community service work and Monday begins co-hosting a weeknight show for the Orange County PBS channel KOCE called ``Real Orange.''

--The Golden handshake: A funny thing happened to KAVL-AM (610) since it was purchased by Clear Channel - the measly Arbitron ratings seem to indicate that many Valley folks actually find it easier to pick up the simulcast of AM-1150 programming on the Lancaster-based station instead of the L.A.-based signal for KXTA.

When 1150's lineup changed at the first of the year - specifically the addition of the syndicated Bob and Tom Show put in tape-delay from 5 to 9 a.m. weekdays - KAVL was forced to eliminate Brian Golden's local sports show that had been surprisingly running strong in the 4 to 6 a.m. slot, supported by the many commuters who have to leave for work early to get to jobs in the Valley and other parts of L.A.

So as KAVL celebrates its 50th year in operation, its only regular local programming is Dan Sabastian's Saturday morning show from 8 to 10 a.m.

Golden was given notice by station GM Larry Thornhill just two days before the last show Friday, Dec. 31.

``It was tough and I feel bad about it, and so did Larry, but in a perverse way it was good to hear the people who protested to the station about it,'' said Golden, the Antelope Valley Press columnist.

His next radio gig could be working for One-on-One sports, aired locally on 1540-AM. Golden will be teamed with Jay Mariotta's morning show the week before the Super Bowl, which will be based in Atlanta. The syndicated all-sports network has been looking to fill a 10 p.m.-3 a.m. Friday night slot. Plans for a local L.A.-only afternoon show from 1540 have apparently been discarded.

SOUND BYTES

WHAT SMOKES

--The Marion Jones Nike ad for the new cross trainer that ends with a message about how it's continued on the shoe's special Web site is ingenious. So much so that NBC and CBS have been so worried that they'll lose viewers to the Internet, they've forced Nike to revise the version of the ending on their networks. The former Thousand Oaks prep phenom exclaims: ``Oh, you wanna race? You don't have a chance,'' and sprints ahead of a POV camera as the chase begins - through houses, smashing through a glass door, dodging a clothesline of laundry, before she goes past a street performer juggling chain saws. The POV crashes into him and the saws are falling from the sky - and that's where the 30-second commercial stops and says ``Continued at whatever.nike.com.'' From there, it's four different endings to pick from (as long as you've got the right stuff downloaded and the time to wait for it - all while you're not watching TV). On paranoid CBS and NBC, it just gives the Web site address without the word ``continued.''

--ESPN Classic's ``Reel Classics,'' which started two weeks ago as a way to work in Hollywood with sports events of the past. Sunday's installment (6-8 p.m.) is ``Dead Solid Perfect,'' starring Randy Quaid as a second-rate pro golfer leading the U.S. Open based on Dan Jenkins' book. (Look closely: Playing the part of the TV golf analyst is a former ESPN employee, Keith Olbermann.) It's followed up at 8 p.m. by the 1967 U.S. Open golf tournament from Springfield, N.J., when a promising young amateur named Marty Fleckman held a one-shot lead over three guys named Nicklaus, Palmer and Casper going into the final round.

WHAT CHOKES

--Please don't put this in the time capsule: It's only been out two weeks, but the autobiography of WWF star The Rock, entitled ``The Rock Says . . .'' has hit No. 1 on the New York Times, Publisher's Weekly and The Wall Street Journal bestseller lists simultaneously. The Rock, a former University of Miami football player who looks like Deuce Bigelow on 'riods, overtook ``Have a Nice Day! A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks'' by the WWF's Mick Foley, which has been in the top six of the NYT list since its debut in December and will be No. 3 this week. For the record: The books are nonfiction; their employment is fiction.

--Tiger Woods sells on news stands. On one hand, he made the inaugural cover of Greensfever: The Magazine for Young Golfers. But then he's also on the cover of Senior Golfer's January issue, a story touting how he'll lead the game into the 21st century. Somehow, Tiger missed out on the cover of Women's Golf Today.

--ESPN execs won't even hide the fact that the network plans to pair coverage of the Little League World Series tournament with the X-Games from June 25-Aug. 17 because it'll be easier to bombard homework-unburden kids with ads targeted for them right before school starts, says a story in USA Today. Don't even think of throwing coverage of the Spelling Bee in there, too.

--FYI: Twenty-one years ago, when the Rams and Bucs met in the NFC title game in '79, Pat Summerall did play-by-play for CBS, with Tom Brookshier. Two years later, Summerall hooked up with John Madden. Five years ago, Summerall should have retired.

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