Fighting Talker

Militant Nats fans want to do this to the Post

Of course, I am not shocked, sports fans always whine about the coverage of their favorite teams. I bet somewhere there are even Yankee fans complaining about their own network, YES, which covers them the same way Radio Havana covers Cuba. (All hail our Líder Máximo Derek Jeter!)

But at the urging of peeved Nats fans, Dan Steinberg over at the Sports Bog has investigated the matter of local teams (Part I, Part II) under served by the media and found that the Nats have nothing to complain about other than the team on the field.  (more…)

Paul Sherwen and Phil Liggett

I spend a lot of time trashing various elements of television sportscasting, but I wanted to just take a moment to pay tribute to the best sports telecast on American TV - the Tour de France.

It’s true. The single best broadcast in American sports broadcasting is Versus’ telecast of the Tour de France. (more…)

The days of plausibly live matches, commerical interruptions and tape delay seem gone, as NBC has teamed up with two major cable companies to create four special all-Olympics channels including an all-soccer one.

One channel will be devoted exclusively to carrying men’s and women’s soccer games 12 hours a day, while a second channel will carry men’s and women’s basketball games 14 hours a day. A third channel will be broadcast in Mandarin and the fourth in Korean.

It sounds like they will be used primarly to complement the coverage already provided live by the standard NBC networks. This likely means that every single match of both the men’s and women’s Olympic soccer tournaments will be covered live and available in more US-time zone-friendly timeslots.

And good news to my primarily DC-based readers, Cox Cable (Fairfax County and Fredericksburg, Va.) and Comcast (almost everywhere else) have already agreed to carry the channels.

Take a look at this page setup by the Versus network to buildup to its coverage of this year’s Tour de France.

Can you imagine a version of this ad saying “Screw the politics, xenophobes, and talk show hosts, etc.?”

I, for one, would love to see it because unlike cycling, soccer hasn’t actually done anything wrong (such as vast, institutionalized doping program and subsequent scandals) and might do well to come out of its defensive crouch a little. This is even a better approach than the “Go tell the world” ad because it doesn’t really lean on the team’s performance.This kind of marketing allows for some attitude that can appeal to fans of all teams, not just the US. You could do it in Spanish or just about any other language you wanted.

Taking a cue from this ad, what do you think the US Soccer/MLS version of this should read?

An obscure note for locals here - according to DCRTV, the local high school quiz show, It’s Academic, has been renewed for its 49th season on WRC channel 4. Notable former competitors on the show include, Charles Schumer, George Stephanopoulos, Michael Chabon, Donald Graham, and this very blogger, who represented W.T. Woodson High School for two seasons.

So, with Euro 2008 at an end, I will leave the in-depth tactical analysis of why Spain won over Germany to others better equipped to do so such as career winners losers Steve McClaren, Graham Taylor, and especially this guy,^ who propelled himself to a career of punditry on a bed of boring cliches that are only slightly better informed than Marcelo Balboa’s. So instead, I want to comment on ESPN’s coverage of Euro 2008 and what this bodes for the future. (more…)

Do you believe this?

I can’t vouch for the veracity of a New York Post report claiming MSNC’s Keith Olbermann “went apoplectic” over the lack of ketchup packets (!) at a memorial service for the late Tim Russert, a claim K.O.’s publicist called “an outright lie”, but I’m having a hard time determining which is funnier — the notion this incident actually happened, or a disgruntled MSNBC colleague fantasizing, “what’s the lamest possible thing I can accuse Olbermann of doing a a memorial service that someone might actually believe?”

Bill O’Reilly’s upcoming memoir is going to be entitled, and I kid you not, A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity.

The New Republic puts it best:

Jason Linkins at The Huffington Post has the goods on Bill O’Reilly’s new memoir, which comes out in September. What is it titled? Well, as it turns out, a nun at the school O’Reilly once attended referred to young Bill as “a bold fresh piece of humanity.” And now–yes, really–O’Reilly has chosen to title his book, “A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity.” You might say that this hints at O’Reilly’s egomania, but I reject such cynicism.

Readers are welcome to compliment this post on the strict condition that I am allowed to use any of the positive comments as the title for my forthcoming memoir.

Are we sure this isn’t Colbert’s memoir?

Take a look at the intro the BBC is using for EURO 2008. I think it’s pretty clever and very similar to the Baseball Tonight intro with all the baseball cards.

Soccer America’s Paul Gardner worked closely with Jim McKay when they commentated on the NASL for ABC. He wrote a kind remembrance this weekend.

But that’s not the word — serious — with which to end this short memory of Jim. He had a great sense of humor, quiet, non-flashy, like the man himself. In one of those studio sessions we watched a tape of a promo — where the voice over told us that “at halftime, we’ll feature an explanation of the offside rule, which you will find easy to follow, and an interview with Dr. Henry Kissinger …” and McKay, sotto voce murmured “who you will not find easy to follow.”