I am in my second season without NFL Sunday Ticket, which I thought would be my biggest regret at having to ditch the mini-dish. There have been a few dark moments (mostly when I can't watch a Ram game, or the stupid Raiders force a meaningless game and make us in NoCal miss a better AFC game). But it has not been nearly as bad as I feared, mostly because of the RedZone channel. I did not watch the DirecTV version that much, but the NFL Network version seems to me to be much better. It does a lot more than just show action from the opponent's 20 yard line and in - you can see a lot of the meaningful action in most games, and the "1:00 pm slot" (that is, the second game) often allows extensive viewing of the prime games because there are rarely more than 4 and sometimes only 2.
It is so easy to throw rocks at sports broadcasters, that I should give props to Scott Hanson who I find to be just about perfect in his role as host. He is excited and passionate about the action in the games, without giving way to mere hype. He gets a kick out of the little things (today he had fun showing us someone, maybe Charlie Batch(?) throw a ball threw the endzone that landed right center in the parabolic mike) without turning into a snarky ESPN guy or dufus local sportscaster. He really is like a really knowledgeable, smart friend who is watching all of the games simultaneously and takes us to the most interesting parts of the best games. More precisely, it is like, and often even better than, having the NFL Sunday Ticket and being able to switch around among all of the games - better because when you do it yourself at home you never know what you are missing in the other games. I have gotten to the point that I almost miss him when I instead watch all of one game. Today the Rams played - and BEAT(!) the 49ers so I watched all of that during the early game, which went into OT so I missed the most compelling part of RedZone, which is the interval when the morning games enter the last 4 minutes or so of the 4th quarter. But I did watch all of the afternoon game on RedZone - catching at one point what I have come to learn is a prototypical RZ moment - two teams scoring touchdowns live simultaneously on the split screen. And Hanson does such a good job with the transitions back and forth from games that the viewer is not just watching disconnected highlights, but has enough of a feel for how each has developed that it really is like watching both games at the same time. Sometimes it fizzles - I think last week there were almost no exciting finishes, but other times it is just riveting; I think 2 or 3 weeks ago there were like 4 games coming down to the final possession in the final seconds, and 2 or 3 went into OT. Hanson was in football heaven - and I have to admit, so was I. What is most surprising to me is that RZ is produced by the NFL Network - since they are so consistently and extraordinarily awful with their Thursday night broadcasts of games (and their pregame show may actually be worse than ESPN's). How can the same people do one so well and the other so, so, bad? -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
