The Russia-Holland game was in HD for me on ABC. Perhaps the local affiliate fucked it up wherever you were.

IMP is right about Tommy Smyth, though I've been listening to him for so long now, I can easily tune his blathering out. This is basically a survival instinct.

Andy Gray and Derek Rae work quite well together, I think, and in general, the coverage has been better than the last World Cup.

I meant "give in exchange for cash," i.e. sell.

That makes sense but in the US, the announcers for the various pro and college leagues usually censor themselves a bit for fear of "damaging the relationship with their corporate partner."

I think that in the US, ESPN/Disney is in a position to not have to bow to FIFA/UEFA etc., as there aren't enough other broadcast companies that will bid the same serious money on the rights. FSC, Setanta, and GolTV obviously aren't in the same league, and certainly don't have the same potential reach.

Though this brings up a subject that has continued to amaze me - why no one, other than Fox's regional-based effort in the late 90s, has tried to come up with a national sports network to really compete with ESPN...

Fox has to a certain extent tried, with its agglomeration of regional networks, but the real problem is access to cable systems (especially as part of the basic package), and the juice that Disney/ABC bring to the table on ESPN's behalf in that regard is enough to make any rational person think more than twice.

From over here, it looks like Rupert is losing his bet on FoxBusiness, which will only convince others that such a gamble isn't worth it.

There are vaguely persistent rumors that ESPN would love to buy Setanta and turn ESPN Classic into essentially ESPN3-soccer, rugby, cricket, F1, etc.-but I'll believe it when/if it actually happens. Also that they're going to take another run at EPL rights.

"Mr. Genius, I'm astonished that a man of your tactical depth could pay a second's heed to this blethering walnut. Or have you just wound me up for your own tawdry delight in revenge for me suggesting that you've got a secret thing for Barry Glendenning and all that is good and Guardianesque?"

Granted IMP that i only had four days exposure for which alot of the time Smyth was in the studio making "Rat up a drainpipe" comments and when he did commentate (the ABC matches) he seemed subdued and said relatively little.

I can assure you that you have been away from England long enough to remember how bad it is here.
If truth be told, i may have been spared his blatherings as most of the games went to extra-time and since the show had overrun, he was only given a couple of minutes to sum up in the Sportscentre studio before they went on to discuss more important things like that baseball coach that got fired at 3AM or the 40 year old pitcher with the best post season record ever who's shoulder is fucked....

Turner took a stab at it a few years ago. He had the CNNSI network which was more or less exactly like what ESPNNEWS is like now, but toward the end CNNSI tried to show some actual sports - NASCAR qualifying, early Wimbledon, WUSA and NLL (indoor lacrosse). I recall the lacrosse. I looked up the rest on wiki.

There's room for more channels with sports. That's what Vs. is. But all other attempts to do a national sports news show just came off as a poor imitation of SportsCenter. For a while Fox tried to do that. Not only was it less entertaining than SportsCenter but it replaced all the regional/local sports wrap-up shows, which fans actually liked. Fox eventually realized how stupid that was they got rid of that and now all the Fox regional stations have their own shows. We don't have a Fox regional station, but we have Comcast Sports which does the same thing, plus MASN. In Boston they have Comcast Sports and NESN.

Hello, my name is Dynamo Kev and I don't mind Tommy Smyth one bit..

there I've said it.. I mean I prefer a few others- but he's fine.

Like I said, if stating the absolutely fucking staringly obvious in a moronically inane fashion is your thing, then obviously Tommy's yer man.

Did I mention that I'm not a fan?

IMP hasn't taken on a cause with such passion since that neighbor dog started shitting on his lawn.

It's not so much that Tommy Smyth is a bad & boring commentator of football. It's that he's clearly an unrepentant unyielding jerk. And he uses that cheery cartoon accent to gloss over the fact.

From today's LAT:



That rating for the Germany-Portugal QF in the middle of the day on a Thursday is huge.

If I could only get my neighbour's dog to shit on Tommy Smyth instead of on my lawn, my world would be perfect.

I thought you were going to say that "Tommy Smyth is like the dog shit on the verdant front lawn of this tournament."

The comparison to the NBA Finals is ridiculous. I suspect the LAT just wanted to bash soccer there. The NBA games were on in prime time. The Euros are on in the afternoon, with most games during the week when people are at work. Boston and LA are in the United States so they have lots of fans here in the United States. No team from the Western Hemisphere is competing in this tournament.

How does one get ESPN Deportes? Do you have to order a special Paquete de Canales Superiores to get that?

It's on the "Spanish tier" on my cable, along with Spanish-language versions of a bunch of other channels.

How much did you have to pay extra to get that?

Don't recall, but I think it was just a couple of bucks extra/month. Not a ton.

I know about the Finals comparison, Reed. The article was actually in the entertainment section and not the sports section, so I'm guessing they reached for another sporting event that was going on around the same time.

I'd be more interested to know about comparisons with ratings for the World Cup in 2006, since the games were both on around the same time of the day, and both were on ESPN.

I know some soccer heads that have DirecTV opt for a Spanish-language base programming package rather than the usual ones so they can get ESPN Deportes as well, plus some South American sports channels (TyC, some others), Fox Sports en Espanol, and a few of the big English-language cable networks, then buy the regular sports pack.

ESPN feed goes out during the semi. Announcers are clearly not there, as they can't tell us what's going on in the match without the video. @#$@#!

Clearly not everything can be done from Bristol. Wonder if ESPN will send announcers to events like this in the future, or if they don't want to spend that kind of money and assume they can do a fine job from half a world away.

Derek Rae and Tommy Smyth have been live at one or two CL finals. I can't recall if ESPN sent anyone to Germany in 2006. I doubt they'll send anyone to South Africa in 2010.