Merlin Olsen isn`t expecting any pick-me-up bouquets.
Olsen, the soft-spoken FTD pitchman, was the odd man out earlier this week when NBC hired former San Francisco 49ers coach Bill Walsh to be its No. 1 analyst.
”I was sort of surprised,” Olsen said. ”I had anticipated changes earlier this year. I had expected some (announcing) teams to shuffle. But when I didn`t hear anything, I thought it was going to be the teaming of (Dick)
Enberg and Olsen for a 12th season.”
But it wasn`t to be. Instead, NBC President Dick Ebersol and Executive Producer Terry O`Neil were working quietly to bring Walsh aboard.
For his part in the shuffle, Olsen will have a new partner in Charlie Jones.
”We had worked together in the past,” said Olsen, who has at least one more year left on his NBC contract. ”I`m very comfortable with that. I think it`s a good pairing. Obviously, I`ll miss working with Dick Enberg. But I think this will bring a new energy to both of them.”
Enberg was secretly flown to the World Wrestling Federation headquarters in Stamford, Conn., for an audition June 24 with Walsh. NBC had Enberg and Walsh recreate last season`s AFC championship game from videotape.
The reason the WWF site was chosen, said a network spokesman, was that the wrestling people ”knew how to keep a secret.”
Enberg said Walsh wanted it done that way because he wasn`t sure the audition would be successful and he didn`t want 49ers owner Ed DeBartolo Jr. to hear about it.
”He (Walsh) didn`t want the rumor mill to start,” Enberg said. ”He didn`t want it to leak out in the wrong way.”
But it did. And, according to an NBC source, Walsh was the leaker, telling a friend at the San Francisco television station that broke the story Monday.
”Needless to say, all of this was to be done in a more orderly fashion,” said Olsen. ”I was to have breakfast with Terry O`Neil Wednesday. But that was before things broke loose in San Francisco.”
Which also made for a busy Monday for O`Neil, who had flown from London to Anaheim for the All-Star Game. When he heard the Walsh story was about to break, O`Neil immediately drove to Olsen`s home in Pasadena so Merlin wouldn`t hear the news elsewhere.
Once the word got out, Ebersol went so far as to compare Walsh with another O`Neil protege, John Madden.
”If we`re able to convey one half of Bill`s sense of humor, we`re going to make the coach of the `80s to the commentator of the `90s,” said Ebersol. ”The on-camera authority he and Enberg delivered were beyond anything I`ve ever seen in football,” said O`Neil.
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Walsh, 57, reportedly signed a multiyear contract worth nearly $800,000 annually, still short of the $1 million a year he earned coaching. While his rehearsals during the preseason will be off-camera, Walsh`s network debut will be Sept. 10 when NBC televises the Bengals-Bears game from Soldier Field.
And won`t that be choice: Walsh taking potshots at his least-favorite peer, Mike Ditka.
And the new asssignment won`t be that hard for Olsen to take.
”The pairing with Charlie probably will give me more West Coast games, which will help my acting,” he said. ”It also will let me see my 16-year-old son play football.”
– And the NBC shuffling continues. O.J. Simpson replaces Ahmad Rashad on
”NFL Live.” Rashad will be a game analyst.
– Before the Glitter Twins of Ebersol and O`Neil try any more gimmicks, like using former President Reagan at the All-Star Game, they had better step back and take a deep breath. Tuesday night`s effort was, in a word, awful.
It was hard to tell who was more uncomfortable, play-by-play man Vin Scully, who kept calling Reagan ”Sir” as if he were some member of royalty, or Reagan himself, who, when he wasn`t stumbling over his index cards, was awkwardly stepping on Scully`s lines.
It became obvious as the 25 minutes droned on Reagan had lost his magical ”Great Communicator” touch, especially when he was forced to ad lib. No set speeches to fall back on, no cute anecdotes to tell.
Perhaps no one was more embarrassed than Reagan himself, as he later admitted: ”I was a little uptight because, as I say, when I was sitting up in a place like this I had to tell the people what was happening because they couldn`t see it. Now I get a little self-conscious when I know that people can see what`s going on.”
Kind of like the Ollie North trial.
– Cable mogul Ted Turner has moved National Basketball Association telecasts from his TBS superstation to his Turner Network Television for the 1989-90 season, the last under the current national cable contract. TNT, which started less than a year ago as Turner`s fourth programming service, topped the 30-million subscriber mark this week, which the NBA required for the switch.
Although TNT must maintain, or increase, the 30-million mark for the next 60 days to make the change official, a Turner spokeswoman said that was just a technicality. To fill the TBS programming void, Turner will televise 25 games of his Atlanta Hawks. There`s a lesson in the somewhere.
– SportsChannel continues its Pro Boxing Tour with a 10-round junior welterweight bout between unbeaten Hector Camacho and journeyman Tommy Hanks at 11 p.m. Monday.