Friday, February 22, 2008

SHIFT CHANGE AT THE CAMPBELL SOUP FACTORY

The Blue Jays released their broadcast schedule yesterday. Now, you've heard of the Williams shift, putting all the infielders on one side?

How many Jays followers have adopted the Campbell shift -- watching 2-3 innings of the TV broadcast to get a feel for the game, then shift to another room to follow it via Alan Ashby and Jerry Howarth on the radio.

No offence to the play-by-play guys for the two Canadian cable networks that air the Jays games, but Ashby, Howarth and Mike (Awesome) Wilner on the post-game show are just that much better. By the way, if TSN ever starts doing more Jays games, get Gord Miller in the booth, please.

One downside to the CBC covering weekend games (24, up from eight last year) and Sportsnet having fewer broadcasts (100, down from 116) is less bonus coverage when games end early. CBC doesn't have the rights to any other MLB games, so if Roy Halladay throws a two-hour, 10-minute complete game, you'll get 50 minutes of yammering instead of a couple innings from another game.

The average length of a Jays game should increase a bit without Mickey (Swing At Everything) Brantley as hitting coach. That said, it's nice to follow a team who doesn't drag out every pause between batters almost to the point of cheating, like a certain team in pinstripes that shall remain nameless.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Neate, I do that on a fairly regular basis - I find Jamie Campbell to be in the Joe Buck mold of broadcasting. Give me Jerry and Alan any day.

Anonymous said...

Get a digital video recorder, pause the TV, wait for the radio to catch up the the TV and press play.