Nats TV

This article describes the latest about the wrangling over the Nats television agreement, which is to say that there is no agreement yet. But, regardless of the terms of the deal, I have very little hope that the final product for us fans will be any good. That's because the quality of sports telecasts has diminished dramatically over the years, with now it being the norm that announcers fail at the very fundamental point of their job -- telling you what is happening in the game.

Case in point: Saturday's Nats-O's game on Comcast. Round about the 7th Inning or so, George Arias pinch-hits and gets on first, later coming around to score. When did Fred Manfra and Buck Martinez tell me about Arias? When he came to the plate? No. While on First? No. When he scored? No. In fact, they NEVER identified him. I was rewinding my Tivo trying to figure out who he was -- I finally found out when he came out to celebrate Wilkerson's home run.

Now, I know this is preseason, and this is the O's telecast, and there were probably about only 7 people left watching the game at this time, but COME ON! In fact, it is a pretty safe bet that anyone watching at that point ONLY cares about who the players are -- they could care less about the score. Yet we get none of that information from either the announcers or the graphics on screen.

Even during the regular season, announcers fail to tell you who has come into a game as a defensive sub, for example. And would it kill them to put the batter's fielding position on the graphic they show when he is at the plate? I'm stunned at how rare this is -- Comcast never did it during Saturday's telecast.

Yes, I'm ranting and tilting at windmills here. But if you can't do that on a blog, then I'm not sure why the technology exists.