Fancy Store-Bought Dirt

NFL Week 4 TV

CBS late game:
Obviously NE-CIN is the featured game. Meanwhile:
1. Who's the player on {Jacksonville or Washington} that all the people of Ft. Smith, Arkansas like so much?

2. Same question for Topeka, KS, and the Browns-Raiders game (unless that's just an advanced form of Raider Schadenfreude).

3. Southern Florida is not Jacksonville Jaguar country, emphatically not, though it's nice how JAX-WAS gets that connected swath of Atlantic coast. Meanwhile, with all of California inexplicably pigeonholed as Raider fans (especially SF itself: darn those non-blackout sellouts), we don't have any fugly "only the home markets get to see it" games.

CBS early game:
1. Why does Utah like the Jets (Colts?) so much?
2. How is it that all of Florida, most of Texas, and even most of Louisiana get that MIA-HOU dog foisted on them?

I suppose it's better than no game at all (you can tell from the white patches which cities have sold out home games on the other network).

Fox single game:
1. The SF-KC coverage area is really amusing. The 49ers or Chiefs are big in Eastern Montana.
2. Look at the Pacific Northwest getting NO-CAR. Really, most of the nation should get that game, but you know.
3. Vick still popular in Charlottesville Blacksburg (d'oh!), to no surprise.
4. So apparently DC, Philly, and the non-Bills part of New England are enthralled by the Terrell Owens saga? Most of the stations getting Cowboys-Titans foisted off on them really deserved Saints-Panthers. Whaddayagonna do?

Meanwhile, good old USA Today previews. We in Northern California get the broadcasting talent of Chris Myers, JC Pearson, Ian Eagle, and Solomon Wilcots. Woo.

I like it when, after CBS's top matchup, there's an obvious second best game but also a different obviously second-most-hyped game so that the crew with Dan Dierdorf (and formerly Dick Enberg now Bryant Gumbel) can get the higher-profile game while the crew with Kevin Harlan (and Rich Gannon now) can get the better football game. CBS has obviously recognized that Dick Enberg isn't the broadcaster he used to be.

CBS/Fox pecking orders, as best one can tell from the Week 3 and Week 4 previews and broadcast maps:

CBS
1. Nantz/Simms
2a. Gumbel/Dierdorf
2b. Harlan/Gannon
4. Enberg/Cross
5. Johnson/Tasker
6. Eagle/Wilcots

FOX
1. Buck/Aikman
2. Stockton/Moose
3. Albert/Baldinger
4a. Rosen/Ryan
4b. Pitts/Donahue
6. TBA/Pearson

Posted by Matt Bruce at September 29, 2006 04:48 PM