Any day now, the Clippers might finally let Prime Ticket and everyone else know they’ve decided to drop anchor with their longtime TV partner and re-up their local rights deal for at least one more NBA season — presumably, the one that starts in about six weeks.

This, as team owner and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer continues to micro-tinker with an idea of creating some sort of his own digital-driven, over-the-top service that is supposed to lay the groundwork for how we consume sports to infinity and beyond.

It’s not as if FSW/Prime Ticket can’t afford to watch the Clippers jump ship at this stage. But if you go with the analogy that a shopping mall can watch only so many anchor tenants leave before the pillars begin to weaken, the optics wouldn’t be all that great for this landmark local sports channel group in its fourth decade of operation. The Lakers, Dodgers, Sparks and Galaxy are already former rights holders while deals with the Angels, Kings and Ducks stay strong.

The Lakers, a prime reason why the late Dr. Jerry Buss bankrolled the original Prime Ticket launch in the mid-1980s, eventually snuck off to a Time Warner Cable SportsNet partnership in 2012, taking the Sparks and Galaxy with them.

Two years later, the do-it-yourself Dodgers were lured away to start a lucrative yet stalled distribution of their own channel, with TWC’s facilitation.

Somewhere along the way, those USC and UCLA football and basketball games that FSW and Prime Ticket once carried also went away, now secured with the Pac-12 Network.

New leadership

More changes happened last summer.

Henry Ford, who had been heading Fox Sports San Diego, became the new senior vice president and general manager of FSW/Prime Ticket as well — a three-channel grouping. He believes this Fox regional group to be “very robust and healthy, as we have been for some time.”

Despite the loss of the Lakers and Dodgers, he insists “we’re not shutting doors or changing our business as much as we are doubling down and investing heavily into our business portfolio and making sure we’re providing the best experiences for the viewers as well as the sponsors and the team.”

But then there are these Clippers, who keep pulling down the bobber on the fishing line. What kind of domino effect would that create in the L.A. sports channel landscape that might cause concern among distributors as they reassess whether the monthly subscriber fees for this FSW/Prime Ticket two-channel model in L.A. and Orange County market (as well as Las Vegas and Hawaii) is valued properly?

“We have three channels and we need all three at the end of the day right now,” Ford said. “That’s almost 900 live events we’re producing each year. It takes a lot of creative programming to deliver it with all kinds of live game conflict planning. It’s not ‘How do we skinny it back with fewer teams,’ it’s ‘How do we make sure it’s a thriving viewer experience.’ ”

Lindsay Amstutz, the newly installed assistant GM for the three So Cal channels as well as VP of marketing for all 22 Fox Sports regionals, points out that if you take “more a global look at the RSN portfolio, we have many regionals in other cities that have fewer teams than we do and are doing great businesses.”

San Diego can import the Clippers, Kings and Ducks, but L.A. can’t bring in the FSSD Padres games, per MLB rules. Prime Ticket/FSW could get San Diego State and University of San Diego games to fill a 24/7 menu that already has ancillary programming linked to UFC, horse racing, poker, Red Bull-sponsored races and Big West Conference games.

Ford’s hope is to reduce the number of infomercials that appear in the overnight hours and replace them with original programming. Why not consider going retro with a re-launch of a “Press Box” nightly news show focused on Southern California sports — especially with the arrival of the Rams? A simulcast with a local Fox Sports-talk radio show? Anyone up for a quick-and-easy Jonathan Quick 24/7 documentary series?

Ford says many things are under consideration as well as utilizing more of the Fox Go App for distribution. But one of the things that sets FSW/PT apart from others this fall, aside from the NHL and NBA seasons starting, is live high school football on Friday nights, beginning its 20th season and adding more value with streaming games online at PrepZone.

“As an L.A. native, I see high school games as a great way to be ingrained in the community from the get-go and win the hearts and minds at a young age,” said Amstutz, raised in Chatsworth and living in Pasadena. “When our trucks roll into a game, whether it’s Mater Dei or Calabasas, it’s still a big deal.”

Having worked in the newspaper and TV mediums in various markets across the country, Ford says he has learned that the ins-and-outs of this market is much more than about just finding the best route through freeway traffic.

“It might be a less rabid fan base than I’d be accustomed to in Midwest or East Coast markets, but this market does behave very similar to other markets where, if a team isn’t doing well, the ratings tail off. We all deal with that,” he said.

The Clippers’ accord

As FSW has grown to an estimated 6.8 million subscribers, and Prime Ticket comes in with about 6.2 million, the value of bundled channel distribution rather than a la carte as some may clamor for is also important for its business future. But in keeping FSW/PT a relevant spot on SoCal sports channel tier, with all the competition growing and changing, it can’t rest on its history.

“It’s a challenge in this market, but the focus has always been the strength of our team partners,” said Amstutz. “The more we can get to tell the stories of those on the field and on the ice in celebrity-driven L.A., you put them front and center and make people care about them. That’s what we have found that works here perhaps a little more so than in other markets.”

So if celebs like Chris Paul, Blake Griffin and even Doc Rivers are to remain the marketing focus of the Clippers from a Prime Ticket perspective — the two have been together for the last 20 years and the last seven exclusively — Ford will only say it’s “all up for us to find out.” And the marketing department, which has been ready to go with its campaign since the start of summer, waits it out.

Reports are that Prime Ticket has paid some $20 million a year for the Clippers rights in the past, but its recent offer of $60 million annually was turned down by Ballmer.

Ford acknowledges the two remain “engaged in discussion and there’s a desire to move forward, but also the expectation that we’ll pull this out. But again, in this business, I’m not surprised anymore (how negotiations go). We launched FSSD without a Padres’ deal until three weeks into the season, so it’s not unheard of for this.

“As I’ve already told our staff, this will probably be most unpleasant on timing, but it’s very doable.”

With three channels and lots of room, there’s plenty of do-ability.

More media notes about the Rams’ season opener at www.insidesocal.com/tomhoffarth

MEASURING MEDIA MAYHEM

WHAT SMOKES

• Hockey Hall of Fame play-by-play man Bob Miller, who missed the last two months of the Kings’ last regular season as he recovered from heart bypass surgery, will definitely be back for his upcoming 44th season — but it will be with a reduced schedule by mutual agreement of him and the team. Miller, who turns 78 next month, sat out 33 games after his Feb. 2 surgery before returning as a spectator to watch the Kings open the playoffs in mid-April. “They said it would be a six-to-nine month recovery and I’m feeling pretty good now seven months from the surgery,” Miller said Friday from his West Hills home. “The team has been great in working on how to adjust the schedule for me.” The Kings have not announced the specifics of the plan, but it will involve hiring another TV play-by-play man as to not disrupt the flow of the radio side with Hall of Famer Nick Nickson or KingsInsider.com Jon Rosen filling in. While doing all home games and Pacific Division road contests, Miller will likely pass on about 20 games that involve extended road trips that focus on East Coast travel, such as most of the one that covers nine games in 17 days from Dec. 13-29. Miller’s first test run is doing back-to-back exhibition games in Las Vegas on Oct. 7-8 — which, by his count, will mark 3,321 broadcasts in his career. The regular season begins Oct. 12 at San Jose (an NBCSN game) and Miller’s first regular-season game back will be Friday, Oct. 14 when the Kings face Philadelphia at Staples Center.

WHAT CHOKES

• DirecTV subscribers still without the Dodgers’ SportsNet L.A. as well as the Pac-12 Network will begin their annual muted frustration over the inability to access either of Saturday’s USC or UCLA home football openers, and probably a few more Trojans and Bruins games going deeper into the season. The short answer for Pac-12 execs is to tell consumers to keep pestering their providers, but recent agreements with Comcast, Frontiere and Cox, plus this week’s deal with over-the-top distributor Sling TV, could push the issue. But probably won’t.