CROWN POINT (10-4-2004)
- Some changes are upon us in television sports viewing. Some obvious and others
not so obvious. The biggest one will be the introduction of the Comcast Sports
Net, Channel 37 on cable systems in Lake County next week. What has
already happened is that ChicagoLand Television or CLTV, has moved from
Channel 31 to Channel 37 and, for the rest of the month, a never-ending promo
for the upcoming Comcast Channel is running. The new channel launched October
1st. It is a Chicago Channel with Chicago Cubs and Sox baseball plus
Chicago Bulls basketball and Chicago Black Hawks hockey. Basically, they
attempt to do well what Fox Sports Chicago (cable channel 40) did poorly the
last few years.
They will cover
Chicago pro sports, 24 hours a day, with lots of original programming. This is
an effort by the four Chicago pro teams involved to cut out the middle man.
This venture is owned by the four teams that will fill the 12 months with
programming. The Chicago Bears will be covered with news conferences and post
game shows as all Bears games are contracted to free-TV networks. But the
concept that all sports teams can be found on one channel is a good one. As
long as they don't bog it down with lame filler like
Fox Sports “Best Damn Sports Show Period” and nationally-provided slop
that has no bearing on or interest in Chicago.
Fox Sports is far
too into gimmicky sound effects and unqualified announcers to be considered
legitimate. The FOX programming seemed designed to appeal to the non-sports
fans. The one who needed a gimmick or a 'hook' to watch. Whether it was Lee
Ann Tweeden and Tom Arnold flirting and fooling around on 'Best Damn;' or
condescending Cub cheerleader Chip Caray doing a screamingly theatrical, wildly
inaccurate and totally unnecessary radio
play-by-play on TV, FOX Sports made a joke out of everything and truthfully,
was best watched with the sound down.
Comcast Sports Net
will have two daily news shows in the evening and at midnight, They will carry
a local talk show hosted by former Chicago Bear Dan Jiggetts. And hopefully
none of it will get in the way of the live games. Live games are what it's all
about on cable. When CNN's Wolf Blitzer starts his news show daily on CNN, he
says, 'Stand by for hard news.' That's what you want on a sports channel.
Leave the comedians and self-promoting to ESPN. Hopefully if anybody gets too
big an ego and does anything but bring us the game, Comcast will give them a
one-way ticket for an audition for “CSI-Afghanistan.”
Another change has
to do with South Bend's NBC affiliate WNDU (Channel 16) TV. South Bend
stations WNDU and CBS-affiliate WSBT (Channel 22) came onto Comcast cable full
time this summer and sports fans begin to reap the benefits now. When NBC
carries Notre Dame football game, viewers can now watch all the pre-game
programming. WNDU has Saturday morning news show from 7-10 a.m. That is
largely a Notre Dame warm up on game days. There is also an hour long pre-game
show on WNDU that Lake County viewers can watch for the first time. In the
winter, selected ND basketball games will also show up on Channel 16.
On Sundays, WSBT
in South Bend may carry a different pro game than the one seen on WBBM
(Channel 2) TV in Chicago. That could be of major value to pro football fans.
One other aspect
of the additions of these two stations is cosmetic. For reasons I cannot
explain... Channel 16's picture is clearer and sharper than Channel 5s.
Channel 22's CBS is also sharper than Channel 2's version of the same network.
If you wish to record NBC or CBS programming, record it off the South Bend
stations. You will notice the difference.
The recent flap
about CBS and Dan Rather highlights a forgotten precept of journalism. It is
not enough to say some thing that simply can't be disproved, as is the custom
today, especially on cable TV. If you say it on the air, you have to KNOW it
to be true. Rather finally admitted as much. In sports journalism, people
break that rule all the time. Often, on-air big mouths will tell flat-out
falsehoods simply because they are sure they can't be exposed as liars.
Opinion is one
thing. But generally accepted fact is not a phrase
that any credible journalist will ever use. It has to be true. Not just
generally accepted. And the burden of proof lies at the foot of the mouth that
says it. In Rather's case, that foot was firmly planted in the mouth.
Congratulations to
Tommy Williams whose talk show has been moved from 9-12 midnight to 5:15 to 8
p.m. Monday through Thursday. No one in talk radio does a good job at 11-12
midnight and Williams' show died late in the evening. The 'Tommy Williams'
Prime Time' show returns 'TW' to the old days at the now comatose WLTH in Gary
where Williams did a 5-7 p.m. shift 15 years ago. Late afternoon and early
evening is the ONLY slot where sports talk truly works.
What WJOB now
needs is someone to fill the 8-11 p.m. shift, preferably a non-sports talker
who can discuss the issues of the day. WJOB needs to be local at night.
Both the WJOB and
WWCA (Region Sports Network) prep football and post-game coverage has been
extensive. WWCA's coverage has started at 6:30 on occasion, a half hour later
than WJOB's. But the WWCA (1270) AM post-game show has gone to midnight
and beyond on most Friday nights while WJOB ends coverage at 11 p.m.
WJOB has lately
added a replay of a Friday game at 11 p.m.
WWCA's Region
Sports Network production has some edited 'Bonus Coverage' after 11 p.m. and a
complete game replay Saturday at 12 noon. WJOB's Jim Barber is a smoother
in-studio host than anyone the RSN has but Bill Hazen and Chris Lanin are
probably the top broadcast team I have heard.
The truth is, when
you attend Friday night prep football, you rarely hear any live games. That's
one of the down sides of high school athletics. The people in charge are not
smart enough to realize how big their product could be if they didn't play
every single 98% of the events at exactly the same time.
Comcast cable
Channel 4 is having problems again with the tape-delay football replays.
The Wednesday night, Sept. 15 replay of Lake Central at Crown Point never
aired as promoted. The Monday night, Lowell at Andrean game on Sept. 20 game
broadcast began in the second half. There are reasons but the basic one is,
Comcast cable is a cable delivery outfit, not a TV station. There's no one
there at night and sometimes programs do not run. It's very small market local
cable and it is what it is.
WYIN Channel 56
has discontinued tape-delay games at least during the regular season. There is
a chance they will air playoff games but don't bet
on it. The 'golden era' when two TV games were aired per week on Friday nights
is definitely over, with replays and graphics and tons of information also
over. Comcast's games don't have any graphics, are
stained with name mispronunciations and references to things that aren't
explained. The lineups aren't even on the screen anymore. It's declined in
quality but it's better than nothing.
WYIN's Thursday
night highlight hour show is far more complete than Comcast's half-hour
Thursday version. Channel 56 has reporters on site at four or five games and
gets lots of post-game comments. WYIN has twice as many game highlights and
the hosts know more about the games.
I would suspect
that eventually there will be only one Thursday night football and basketball
highlight show. There's no need for two and when a show (Comcast's) gets cut
from an hour to a half hour it's on its way out.
No master how you
slick it and polish it us (and both shows do that well), it's still a week
old, badly shot, with highlights from bad angles in darkened stadiums.
Chicago Cub fans
received a big gift on the final day of the season despite their failure to
make the post-season. Announcer Chip Caray said he
was leaving the team to go to Atlanta. He won't be missed.
Caray made games very difficult to listen to with his theatric radio-style
call of TV games. Caray never connected with viewers because he seemed
to think he was some kind of authority on sports
when his comments were bizarre.
Caray
thought Wrigley Field was a pitchers' park, something akin to Dick Cheney's
insistence that there are WMDs in Iraq. He could
argue that point vigorously even though
the park has been a hitter's paradise for 100 years. Caray would insist that
when a runner grounded out with a runner at second and one out, that he 'did
his job' by advancing him to third. Second base is 'scoring position.' The job
was/is to drive the run in.
Caray would say
that a ground ball was 'belted'. He would say that a ball that fell on the
warning track hit the ball. He would say that a ball that fell in the
bleachers was on the street. His Ivy League, especially wordy pun-style humor
was always forced. Sometimes it was difficult to understand what he and color
man Steve Stone were talking about.
In interviews, he
talked about how intelligent he was and that he wouldn't 'dumb down' his broadcasting
for the viewers. That's Sammy Sosa caliber ego and its good he's going
someplace else.
As for Steve
Stone, there are mixed emotions. Stone is the king of arrogance. He is very
condescending to viewers. His voice has always been as pleasing as a grating
cat in pain and he is another one whose 'I'm so much smarter than you, I can't
believe it' act has grown old. Stone is another who is probably too smart for
his own good much less the people around him. His humor was something that
entertained only himself. But Steve Stone was never hard on the Cubs on the
air and he was never unfair to them. Cub players may have confused the smart
things he said with the stupid things Caray said.
When you do color
you are required to have opinions. You can't hide what is happening and you
have to tell the truth or it catches up to you. You
must say exactly what you think or you will eventually contradict yourself.
He looked the
other way when Dusty Baker would bunt with runners at first and second and one
out, just to stay in a double play. Stone would sit quiet while Baker tried to
force strikeout king Corey Patterson into the
leadoff role even though he had a natural leadoff man in Neifi Perez.
Like most color
commentators, Stone told selective truths and covered up for the home team. My
complaint about Stone is that he didn't have enough nerve
to be hard on the home team on the air. To be fair to Stone, color
commentary is the most difficult job in sports. It carries none of the glamour
or satisfaction of play-by-play and it catches all the heat. Athletes always
feel they are better than media and that someone who is lesser than them
should back them up and cover for them. That is true at all levels.
Stone should be
let go because he's difficult to listen to, not because he's a bad announcer.
On air people often forget that it's called 'broadcasting.' You do
simplify things for the broadest amount of people. Inside references that only
the crew understands and lame banter with your
partner about something that happened off the air is dead air to people
who want to hear the game.
Steve Stone, a
former Cub, falls into a category that most ex-athletes fall into. He's good
at commenting on baseball but he's not very good at broadcasting it.
VIDEO
NOTES: Television is about bad shows. Some of them even become
popular if the timing is right. 'Friends' was one of the most poorly written
shows ever to last more than a season on Prime-Time TV. But the stars included
cute females and the shows around it were good. You don't
need talent, writing or realism for TV success. You just need a surgically
enhanced rack on the shelf, so to speak.
The
worst new TV shows
'Joey' -
Thursday - NBC
It's just bad.
There's no getting around it. It's 'Friends' without its only three redeeming
qualities: Courtney Cox, Lisa Kudrow and Jennifer Aniston. This is like the
Iraq war. No reason for it. No logic in it. It never should have happened. The
'Golf Channel' has better writing and Alan Keyes is funnier.
'Veronica
Mars' - Tuesday - UPN
Since smart alecky
writing, cute teens (at the time) and a mind altered, teenage
fan base made 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' a mid-range hit, producers have been
looking for a more ridiculous premise. Enter Veronica Mars, a high school
student who helps her dad, a private investigator, solve crimes in a small
town. I'm tired of arrogant teenagers as heroes and,
even if I wasn't, you've got to smoke a lot of weed
to buy this premise.
“Commando
Nanny' Friday - CBS
This project
should have been born dead. An out of work military man becomes a nanny to
three Beverly Hills rich kids. That makes about as much sense as a president's
son who ducked military service, won the presidency despite having less votes
than the other candidate and started a war over weapons, enemies and threats
that turned out not to exist. Sorry, that's the spin-off, 'Commander Ninny'.
“Jack and Bobby' Sunday - WB
Another one that's
DOA. The concept of a back-dated prequel about one of two brothers who will be
president in 30 years is far too difficult a flight of fantasy for a TV series
to keep in the air. Besides, the idea that characteristics of a world leader
manifest themselves in his or her early teens is as far-fetched as the concept
that world leaders have any deep-seeded moral character to begin with.
The
BEST new TV shows:
'Boston Legal'
- Sunday - ABC
William Shatner
teams with James Spader as two morally challenged
and ethics-free lawyers (is that redundant!) who seem far-fetched until you
realize that Kobe and OJ are walking the street and Martha Stewart's in the
slammer. Two veteran TV home run hitters from the scene stealers Hall-of-Fame
making the outrageous seem normal and vice versa. Television is rarely
original. Producer/writer David Kelley had a long running hit with 'Ally
McBeal'. This is Ally McBeal with a darker, male lead. This can't miss.
'The
Benefactor' - Monday - ABC
Sports team owner
and billionaire Mark Cuban is Donald Trump in jeans and a T-shirt. Cuban will
give challenges to his contestants to win a seven figure cash prize. He has a
big enough ego and a twisted enough mind to pump a dozen poor fools through a
wringer for the right to $1 million of his fortune.
And we're sick enough to watch. It needs to find a weak time slot but people
love this stuff, especially when they know the guy and the money are both
real.
'Desperate
Housewives' - Sunday - ABC
ABC has said,
“To heck with reality' and recycled a six pack of prime-time soap opera
vixens off the scrap heap of the 'Lifetime' channel and dinner theater.
With Teri Hatcher, Marcia Cross and Nicolette Sheridan, you know this is high
class trailer park trash. Nobody's invoking the image of 'Playhouse 90' or ER
here. If you're looking for redeeming qualities, go read a book. This is very
well-acted but it's not a flattering, Primrose Lane portrayal
of family life.
Shows with vamps
and tramps like this on Sunday night is the reason Disney had to go and get
their own channel. Very dark humor with very pretty people and a deep, dark
and disturbingly true core premise. Will it be a hit? How many years did
Melrose Place run? 11?
