Tag Archives: Los Angeles Times

CTRL+ALT+DEL: A capitalistic re-direct with the Dodgers-AT&T-DirecTV PR “news flash” … details not on SportsNet LA

Posted on by Leave a comment

By Tom Hoffarth

The story was big enough to be on the front-page of Thursday’s Los Angeles Times print edition: “Dodgers’ channel finally plays ball: TV standoff ends and games to be available in almost all of L.A.”

In a tight, one-column piece of real estate allotted to this business announcement that somehow wedged its way into everything far more life-and-death in today’s world, maybe the headline was restricted in what it could actually convey. Regardless, it rang hollow.

The online story could couch it a different way: “After six years, the Dodgers’ channel will be available in L.A. What happened?”

91333642_512922749651069_6497779441197098395_nTruth is, nothing substantial has happened.

Other than DirecTV viewers now find Dodgers’ classic reruns on the team-owned SportsNet L.A., arriving on Channel 690 for the time being. Whatever else is streaming on the AT&T  platforms is another element if you’re looking for silver linings.

Without games going on, what’s to celebrate?

More importantly, and to be accurate, is that SportsNet L.A. launched just prior to spring training for the 2014 Major League Baseball season, has been “available” for the last four-plus years throughout Los Angeles — since Charter Communications bought Time Warner Cable in May, 2015 and the combined territory covered about 90 percent of the Dodgers’ TV region.

A good many just choose not to drop one system and pick up another to get it. Many of them were DirecTV customers.

Based on years of following and reporting on this back to when the red flags came up when it announced in 2014, and with our current contacts in the business, here’s what we can conclude about all this: Read more

Take a trip down memory lane — what’s your top Staples Center memories from the first 20 years?

Posted on by Leave a comment

By Tom Hoffarth

Staples Center has gone platinum, for those who aren’t sure about the proper gift to present for someone’s 20th anniversary.

The date falls on Oct. 17, with a Kings’ game against Buffalo for some saber rattling. We often overlook these sort of celebratory moments. Not this time.

south-park-12

We’ve got the “centerpiece” story in the current issue of the Los Angeles Business Journal (the first quarter of it linked here) about how those who were around from well beyond the groundbreaking can’t believe the $32 billion economic impact the arena has had on the downtown South Park area.

We’ve noted in our latest L.A. Times weekly column our favorite life-intimidates-media moment from “Curb Your Enthusiasm” in 2001 (here’s even more background), followed by a Lakers-Clippers game in 2017. The “Shaq” episode also made it on TheRinger.com’s 2017 list of the top “Curb Your Enthusiasm” shows of all time… as it should be. Read more

A sign of the (L.A.) Times: Jim Healy, 25 years after his departure, and if he still influences today’s radio landscape

Posted on by Leave a comment

By Tom Hoffarth
Is is true: Jim Healy left us 25 years ago — on his current gravemarker at Forrest Lawn Cemetery near Lakeside Country Club, Jim asks the question he made famous. And then his wife,  Pat, who passed away three years later, provides the answer above.
hollywood-ca-december-06-jim-healy-star-on-the-hollywood-walk-of-fame-KHRHA9
For our July 22 piece for the L.A. Times, we mark the occasion with a couple of interviews from his son and KNBC-Chanel 4 longtime reporter, Patrick Healy, KLAC’s Petros Papadakis, and former Healy sound-clip providers Ted Sobel and Paul Olden (the later of whom got the answer from Lasorda about a simple question some 40 years ago, with this clip below). Read more

A sign of the (L.A.) Times: An appreciation of Jim Bouton, smokin’ ’em inside decade after decade

Posted on by One comment

By Tom Hoffarth
The passing of Jim Bouton last week at age 80 was pause to reflect on his career not so much as a major-league pitcher, but for what he delivered to journalism in the form of “Ball Four: My Life and Hard Times Throwing the Knuckleball in the Big Leagues.”
IMG_6791We are thankful we have a place to express our own reflections and cherished personal encounters in this week’s Los Angeles Times media piece.
We’ve done pieces on Bouton in the past, and enjoyed every moment, from paragraph to end quote.
A 2003 piece on his book, “Foul Ball,” gave us a chance to even challenge our own bosses at the time. We are thankful he posted it on his own official website.
In 2010, we caught up with Bouton in Burbank, for another treat, also with old friend Greg Goossen, Bouton’s former Seattle Pilots teammate who became a memorable character in “Ball Four.”
In 2017, we wrote about how the notes and recordings Bouton did for “Ball Four” were up for public auction. The collection never met the required minimum, and never sold. Which is fine, since it found its way to the Library of Congress, although money from that sale could have helped with Bouton’s medical expenses. Read more

A sign of the (L.A.) Times: Bob Ley retires … what now, ESPN?

Posted on by Leave a comment

Bob Ley was the one guy we envisioned during his 40-year run at ESPN who didn’t “have all the fun,” like the book title said.

While self-inflicted, self-centered chaos broke out around him, he was the one who had to ask those around his cubical to please hold it down because he couldn’t hear his phone conversation with Arthur Ashe.

Oral histories of the self-proclaimed Worldwide Leader in Sports have documented a cacophonous collection of egos and attention seekers, crossing lines of decorum. In more recent times, ESPN has devolved into SportsCenter personalities unable to get out of their own way in Twitter feuds with the sitting U.S. president.

Ley was known as the General for the leeway he had in navigating through the corporate business relationship landmines, reinforcing that his way was most often the right way.

Here is our Los Angeles Times part essay/part exit interview with the 64-year-old who retired from ESPN last week, from an “Outside The Lines” show that included his name in the title, and what’s in the future for it all.

A sign of the (L.A.) Times: What chance does the XFL have in 2020? Depends on who you’re betting on … (bet on Joe Cohen)

Posted on by Leave a comment

By Tom Hoffarth
In last weekend’s ESPN.com story post about the perceived viability of the XFL relaunching in the spring of 2020, USC professor of sports business and principal of The Sports Group David Carter offers up a quote:
“Anybody that thinks that there’s an unquestionable market for spring football is delusional. There have been some credible people throwing time and resources at it without the result they anticipated. While you can step back and say that XFL 2.0 — with all of its changes, all of the learnings and the takeaways from over the years to include their own missteps — is positioned far more favorably than anyone else, it’s certainly not a guarantee.”
No one is guaranteeing anything. But with Vince McMahon’s second shot at this, 18 years after his first try with NBC as its partner and now using ABC/ESPN and Fox as his wingment, we asked the same sort of questions to cable industry pioneer and McMahon longtime business partner Joe Cohen in our latest Los Angeles Times sports media column.

 

A sign of the (L.A.) Times … and N.Y. Times … and the Washington Post … who reads their sports sections, and why, compared to 20th Century consumption?

Posted on by Leave a comment

In addition to the L.A. Times piece we crafted this week about John Schulian’s new book, “The Great American Sports Page: The Greatest Writers, the Greatest Games, All on Deadline,” we wanted to touch on several other things discussed that didn’t actually fit into print — yes, that happens:

Sculian admits that when he grew up in Inglewood in the late 1950s, he delivered  77 editions of the Los Angeles Herald-Express each day before heading out to baseball practice — it was an afternoon edition, which are all but non-existent now. Mr. Lockwood was his route manager.
6a00d8341c630a53ef015432135150970cBut it wasn’t until Schulian moved in 1958 to Salt Lake City with his family that he found Jim Murray, a syndicated writer who started working at the L.A. Times in 1961 after a run at Sports Illustrated and Time magazine.
“Whoever plucked him out of relative obscurity did a great service to sports writing,” said the 74-year-old Schulian the other day from his Pasadena home. “When I read him as a kid, he spun my head around. No one was doing that kind of writing in Salt Lake City.” Read more

A SIGN OF THE (L.A.) TIMES: BILL WALTON AND HIS OWN SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERIMENT

Posted on by Leave a comment

By Tom Hoffarth
Here’s an illustration of Bill Walton from the esteemed Jim Thompson, who drew it up to help set the tone for a piece we did on the former UCLA star and broadcaster in 2016  entitled “Bill Walton’s long, strange trip inside his reconstructed soul”
THOMPSON WALTONIt was right about the time his new book, “Back From The Dead” came out — if you’re wise you’ll get the audio version read by the author. He revealed how he almost ended everything because the pain in his back was too much to bear.
You see him now with photos of outstretched arms, embracing the world … like above.
“It’s because I can now do that,” he said then. “For so many years, I couldn’t even lift my arms because my spine was so bad. It is a very celebratory pose that people use when things are going great. And right now I’ve never been better or busier. Or this healthy since I was 13 years old. Both ankles are fused. Got a new knee. A new spine. I never thought I would be pain free. I’m lucky.”
We are lucky to have a pipeline into Walton’s world, and we reconnected for a story about how, whenever he’s on an ESPN or Pac-12 Network telecast, the social media world embraces him, often in very opposite ways.
Some call him insufferable.
We align with those who refer to him as a “national treasure” and example of “a sonic voyage … of cosmic exploration.”
As we talked to Walton recently, he was in the passenger seat of his car with his wife, Lori, doing the driving. We asked if he was aware of the volatile social media debate he sparks every time he’s on TV.
“Lori, do I pay attention to social media?” he asked.
Probably not a good time to ask. As they were driving from Death Valley to Westwood on Interstate 15, a dust storm was amidst and visibility was limited.
After a long pause, Bill came back on the line: “Lori says no!”
He seemed to be howling in concert with the winds whipping outside his window.
“The world we live in now .. for so long, we have had dreams, and worked hard and tried to be intelligent about them,” he continued. “Today, if you have a thought, in literally the shortest period of time, that nano second, it becomes reality and part of a larger collaborative community. I take my responsibility very serious and take pride in it.”
We could fill a whole new post with just the outtakes from that discussion. But for now, here’s the piece we had in the L.A. Times about Walton’s social media experience that we swear most times he’s just messing with us …

UPDATE 12.15.18: Five letters to the editors included in the Saturday edition of the L.A. Times as it relates to this, linked here ….

 

 

Q&A: Bob Costas flies national on his trip to Cooperstown as an honoree

Posted on by Leave a comment

By Tom Hoffarth

Part of Bob Costas’ experience growing up with a radio to his ear included a few years in Redondo Beach in the early 1960s — and hearing Vin Scully.
Scully received the Ford C. Frick Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame, from a vote of baseball historians and broadcasters, in 1982, with a speech for the ages.
Costas, 66, receives the award this weekend in the Cooperstown, N.Y., ceremony. He talked about it in a Q&A we did with him that appears today online with the Los Angeles Times at this link.
The San Diego Union-Tribune has also published it. Read more