Telecast

With the Phillies in the World Series, who wants to watch their prospective opponents battle it out when they can see Steve Harvey rehash some vintage comedy? Technical problems kept last night's American League Championship Series game off the tube until the bottom of the first inning, after Tampa Bay Rays centerfielder B.J. Upton had tied an AL record with his seventh home run in the playoffs to give his team the lead. Cable's TBS, which telecast the game, said two circuit breakers tripped at its Atlanta transmission headquarters, knocking out the master router and its backup, making the network unable to transmit the live feed from Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla., across the country.

A Michigan company has offered the equivalent of more than $15 million to acquire ACS Enterprises Inc. of Bensalem, a diversified communications company. ACS's businesses include providing cable-television services to apartment complexes. Telecast Inc. of Fraser, Mich., which is in the same business as ACS, has offered one share of Telecast common stock and one warrant for Telecast stock for every two shares of ACS, which is traded in the over-the-counter market. About 30 percent of ACS's stock is owned by chief executive Charles Sonnenberg and his son, Alan Sonnenberg, who is executive vice president of the company, Alan Sonnenberg said yesterday.

Once again, all 82 Flyers games this season will be telecast, but with a slight change. Due to schedule conflicts, CN8 has been added to the TV broadcast picture, along with Comcast SportsNet and CW Philly 57 (WPSG-TV). Philly 57 and CN8 will each telecast five games. The Flyers are slated to appear eight times on Versus and four times on NBC. Comcast SportsNet will also televise a preseason game on Monday, Sept. 24, between the Flyers and the New Jersey Devils at the Wachovia Center at 7 p.m. There are no changes in the broadcast lineup: Jim Jackson, Steve Coates and Keith Jones will handle the telecasts.

Former 76ers star Julius Erving shares the stage with Riccardo Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra last night in a birthday tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Academy of Music. Erving narrated Aaron Copland's "A Lincoln Portrait" in the two-hour telecast carried on Channel 3. The slain civil rights leader would have been 62 today.

Michael Jordan most likely will beat the 76ers. Although a final decision has not been made, Jordan and the Washington Wizards probably will bump the Sixers off TBS's season-opening telecast on Oct. 30. Turner Sports, which includes TBS and TNT, and the NBA are talking about having the network telecast Jordan's debut with the Wizards against the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden instead of the Sixers' opener at Minnesota. A final decision will be made in the next 10 days, a Turner spokesman said yesterday.

Woody Hayes would be proud. The late football coach's team, Ohio State, has become a fixture on area telecasts. In fact, the team is in the middle of a four-week run on Channel 6. Buckeye fever: catch it, Philly! It seems the heavy thinkers at ABC Sports have decided that Philadelphia is Big Ten Conference territory. One weekend ago, Ohio State-Washington was aired here instead of the more appealing Tennessee-Florida game. Last Saturday, Channel 6 carried Ohio State- Pittsburgh instead of Colorado-Texas A&M. This Saturday on Channel 6, after a Boston College-Michigan State regional telecast (noon kickoff)

As reality TV shows go, this one has all the elements - arguments, money, occasional obscene language - and it will be back live after a five-month hiatus. Bristol Township Council decided Thursday night to return to live showings of its meetings beginning Nov. 10. "At the next meeting, they will be live," Council Vice President Karen Lipsack said, adding that there was no discussion about the decision, just "a low-key announcement" by Council President John Monahan. Monahan did not return calls for comment yesterday.

Whoopi? Whoops. Hey, we all make mistakes. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences is no different. Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" scored only two nominations and won nothing the year "Driving Miss Daisy" was named Best Picture. Alfred Hitchcock never won an Oscar. Martin Scorsese never has. Now the academy has named Whoopi Goldberg to host next month's Oscars telecast. It doesn't rank up there with "Gandhi" beating "E.T. " But it could well prove to be a doozy just the same.

Can't make it, or don't want to make it, to Woodstock '94? Not to worry. The folks running the extravaganza have made sure you can get your fill via pay-per-view television, MTV and other media. Indeed, organizers expect a much larger PPV audience than the crowd of more than 150,000 in Saugerties, N.Y. Here's a look at what's available: PAY-PER-VIEW The closest you'll come to being at the thing without getting your boots dirty is the live, inside-the-ropes telecast on pay-per-view.

You have a chance to be one of the judges awarding the $100,000 grand prize during the season's finale of America's Funniest Home Videos. Philadelphia is one of five cities in which a studio audience of 150 will join the "home" audience in Los Angeles via satellite hookup to vote for one of the 14 finalists, each of whom has already picked up $10,000 as a weekly winner. To get in on the action, you must send a postcard to Channel 6 Tickets, Box 4583, Philadelphia 19131. The names of the judges will be drawn at random during the week of May 7 on AM Philadelphia, weekdays at 10 a.m. on Channel 6. The Funniest Home Videos finale will be taped on May 19 and aired by ABC at 8 p.m. May 20. The other satellite cities are Atlanta, Cleveland, Houston and Minneapolis- St. Paul.

NEW YORK - Some forward-looking college professors enabled television's Smithsonian Channel to offer a look at the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from the time in which it occurred. The network said Wednesday it will air a documentary in February culled primarily from local news footage in Memphis, where the civil rights leader was murdered on April 4, 1968. Most of the footage hasn't been seen on television since it originally aired. Many such moments are lost since local television stations usually taped over old broadcasts or threw away film reels, said David Royle, executive producer at the Smithsonian Channel.

The Flyers have been scheduled for 13 national telecasts next season, starting with the season opener at Boston on Oct. 6 on Versus. Included on the national TV schedule, which was released by the NHL, is the yet-to-be-officially-announced Winter Classic at Citizens Bank Park on Jan. 2 between the Flyers and Rangers. NBC will broadcast that game at 1 p.m. The Flyers have five other dates on Versus: Nov. 2 at Buffalo; Nov. 9 at Tampa Bay; Dec. 7 at Buffalo; Dec. 21 at Dallas; and March 26 at home vs. Tampa Bay. The Flyers also are scheduled to be on NBC on Jan. 22, when they host the Bruins.

"Daily News Live" kicks off Comcast SportsNet's coverage of the Flyers first-round playoff series against the New Jersey Devils. "DNL" begins at 5 p.m. and features host Michael Barkann and Daily News sports writers Dick Jerardi, Mike Kern and Paul Domowitch. "SportsNite" airs at 6 p.m., followed by an hourlong edition of "Flyers Pregame Live" at 6:30 p.m. Game 1 airs at 7:30, with "Flyers Postgame Live" at game's end. The Sixers at Orlando game will air on the Comcast Network at 8 p.m. The Phillies home game against Washington will air on WPHL-17 at 7 p.m. CSN will air all the playoff games during the series, with a pregame show and postgame show.

Comcast Corp. isn't surrendering its regional sports network to DirecTV and Dish Network without a fight. A day after the Federal Communications Commission closed the "terrestrial loophole" that keeps Comcast SportsNet off satellite TV, company executive David L. Cohen said Comcast would challenge the FCC action in an administrative process at the federal agency. DirecTV and Dish Network still must show that Comcast's exclusive right to the Phillies, Sixers, and Flyers through Comcast SportsNet has hurt them competitively, which Cohen says is not a slam dunk.

With the Phillies in the World Series, who wants to watch their prospective opponents battle it out when they can see Steve Harvey rehash some vintage comedy? Technical problems kept last night's American League Championship Series game off the tube until the bottom of the first inning, after Tampa Bay Rays centerfielder B.J. Upton had tied an AL record with his seventh home run in the playoffs to give his team the lead. Cable's TBS, which telecast the game, said two circuit breakers tripped at its Atlanta transmission headquarters, knocking out the master router and its backup, making the network unable to transmit the live feed from Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla., across the country.

Once again, all 82 Flyers games this season will be telecast, but with a slight change. Due to schedule conflicts, CN8 has been added to the TV broadcast picture, along with Comcast SportsNet and CW Philly 57 (WPSG-TV). Philly 57 and CN8 will each telecast five games. The Flyers are slated to appear eight times on Versus and four times on NBC. Comcast SportsNet will also televise a preseason game on Monday, Sept. 24, between the Flyers and the New Jersey Devils at the Wachovia Center at 7 p.m. There are no changes in the broadcast lineup: Jim Jackson, Steve Coates and Keith Jones will handle the telecasts.

Three police officers assigned to Philadelphia International Airport yesterday sued a Fox29 investigative reporter for claiming they allowed a security breach by not manning a post on weekends. The defamation suit, filed in Common Pleas Court, names Jeff Cole and the TV station and alleges the May 24 broadcast report was "outright 'yellow journalism.' " "Defendants concocted their broadcast solely to capitalize on the fear and emotion surrounding the 9/11 Terrorist attacks in an effort to boost their market share and increase their revenues in the month of May, when obtaining such ratings are critical in the news media industry," the complaint says.

Students sit in a semicircle in the television studio at Oxford Area High School. The things many teenagers disdain to talk about with each other - let alone in front of a television camera - don't appear to embarrass the four girls and six boys. NBC10 News anchor Lauren Cohn holds out the microphone as she moves among them. Is sex education in school a good thing? Can you talk to your parents about the intimate details of your life? Do you worry about sexually transmitted diseases?

Shawn Oleksiak's team is ready for the new NBA season, ready for Allen Iverson and Chris Webber, Andre Iguodala and Kyle Korver. But the job of Oleksiak's team isn't to play ball against the 76ers. It's to show the Sixers playing ball. Oleksiak is the Sixers' senior director of broadcasting. He oversees the telecasts and radio broadcasts of the Sixers' games. His team includes television announcers Marc Zumoff and Steve Mix, radio broadcasters Tom McGinnis and Todd MacCulloch, and TV director J.R. Aguila.

As reality TV shows go, this one has all the elements - arguments, money, occasional obscene language - and it will be back live after a five-month hiatus. Bristol Township Council decided Thursday night to return to live showings of its meetings beginning Nov. 10. "At the next meeting, they will be live," Council Vice President Karen Lipsack said, adding that there was no discussion about the decision, just "a low-key announcement" by Council President John Monahan. Monahan did not return calls for comment yesterday.