hi Walt,

I agree with this totally.  I don't know how old you are, but in the early 
days of TV-say the 50's and 60's, the sports broadcasters like Kirk Gouty 
and Ken Coleman had come directly from radio and they tended to stay focused 
on the game itself.  Also, because of the lack of modern camera technology 
and large screen media, announcers still had to fill in a lot of the blanks. 
Now this really isn't necessary and in a few cases, the networks have 
actually experimented with removing the announcers completely.  I listened 
to one of these games and by paying attention to the PA address, I was at 
least able to find out what happened after each play.  This is not much 
worse than the current status of listening to the TV announcers anyway.

Take care.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Walt Smith" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2006 5:58 PM
Subject: Re: another freeby possibly going away


I would _never_ try to catch sports on television, anyway. I'd rather go
without than try to fill in the blanks that the so-called play-by-play
announcer leaves because describing something to somebody who is using a
visual medium is...well, pretty stupid, if you think about it. It's either
radio or nothing for me where all sports are concerned and that's been my
rule for a lot of years. In addition to the lack of any meaningful
description, television sound engineers could take a lot of lessons from
radio sports broadcast engineers where crowd noise is concerned. I've never
yet tried to listen to any sporting event on radio where the crowd totally
blotted out the announcers, but this happens all the time on television.
It's just not worth all the hassle.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Fred Olver" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2006 5:47 PM
Subject: Re: another freeby possibly going away


yah, but I bet it'll be on Sirius.

Fred Olver