One of the fonder childhood memories I had was having access to not just one but two Major League Baseball teams – the Braves and the Cubs – that I could watch to my heart’s content without paying a thin red dime. Many of you did to, regardless of where you’re from, hence the Braves being dubbed “America’s Team”. I think WGN also aired the White Sox but my boyhood innocence somehow thought the Cubs and the Braves were almost like brother teams to one another because they wore red, white, and blue, so I don’t think I got into the Sox.
Anyway, long gone are the days of the “superstation”. I also think back to Georgia football in the 90s and Jefferson Pilot sports. Somehow, I enjoyed watching games free from the corporate, Disney World flavor of broadcasting that accompanies these games nowadays. To be honest, I hadn’t watch a Braves game in a while because they were being carried by some group that didn’t air on any of the stations in our cable package, and, well, the team sucked just enough for me to not really care. Now, here we go again…
Just my humble opinion, but it seems like the organization is more interested in building their entertainment empire than they are in trying to field a winning team. If on Amazon, I have a subscription, but somehow I envision watching will come at a higher price for subscription.
Thanks, but I think I’ll pass.
Anyway, for today’s Roundtable, is it the network we watch on or is it the needless surrounding noise that accompanies game that is taking the luster off sports nowadays? I can’t hardly watch football without “let’s get back to the studio” with a cast of clowns, the Braves don’t exist on my viewing packages, and I haven’t had an interest in the NBA since Jordan hung it up. I will say I watched the Stadium Series in Tampa on Sunday and quite enjoyed it, but it wasn’t without the annoyances of “entertainment” between periods. If there is a good thing, like watching European Football (soccer), it’s that the action is relatively free of commercials and commentator bantering. I somewhat enjoyed it.
How about you? Are you less or more entertained with sports than you were when telecasts had a touch less “production value”?
I enjoy the “skycast” option when available. Mostly because I am a grouchy ass boomer and everything hurts. In addition to the Braves and Cubs, WWOR out of Secaucus used to show all the Mets games. We had it made and didn’t even know it.
Bally Sports/Fanduel is in financial trouble and all the MLB teams pull out recently knowing that network is doomed. The Braves pretty much had to go this route. I doubt it will happen, but maybe we will get lucky and the new Braves network will revive the days of TBS. There are some rumblings that they will be aired on a group of over the air stations across the state that serve local markets already.
I signed up for FuboTV a few years ago because my provider dropped the Fox Regional/Bally Sports channels, but now FuboTV has dropped the NBC Universal family of networks so I don’t even get the local NBC affiliate out of Macon. Maybe I will be able to drop Fubo once I see where the Braves land.
I sure do miss the days of TBS having the Braves. My roommate and I in college drove our other housemates, who were from California and Michigan, crazy with the Braves in Boulder, CO. We watched every game at the end of the ’92 season and to start the ’93 season. It was great because the games usually started at 5:05 pm local time.
I moved to Fubo when YouTube TV had their little spat with Disney. I signed up for the sports only package. I love saving money and not having to scroll past endless channels with crap I don’t care about. But I really hate that all of their channels, except for the ESPN 4k channel, have a max resolution of 720p. Everything is grainy and it’s driving me nuts.
I’m waiting for YouTube TV to offer their sports only package and then I’m switching back.
I enjoy the EPL broadcasts as well. Obviously, the lack of commercials is a big factor, but I think we enjoy the bantor because the commentators have British accents…lol. It just sounds better and more intelligent.
Come on you Reds!
Another vote for SkyCast whenever available. The Braves are part of my history not my present. If they happen to be available at no extra cost I would watch occasionally. As for the production part of sports that’s a big negative mostly for me.
I miss the days of just watching a game in peace without blaring music and talking heads telling me their opinions as facts.
“The Braves are part of my history not my present.”
Truth! Same for me, but a big part of that feeling for me is that the Braves don’t have a network and haven’t had one for a while unless you subscribed. When they were on TBS the games were all called by ‘family’ for lack of a better term. Johnson, Caray, et al. were familiar and had personalities (think b grade Munson) and actually made a contribution to the experience rather than detracting from it. On YouTubeTV here the PSN channel announced they were broadcasting the Braves, but 15-20 throughout the season scattered between blackouts, ESPN and Fox provides no consistency. If they get their own network and it is available for free I could be back, but I am not holding my breath.
I remember when I was about eight or so, dad got us cable. How he pulled that off, who knows. We didn’t have a lot of money but we got it. WTBS was awesome. Daddy was a braves fan and we’d watch pretty much every game. My brother and I liked it because we could come home from school and watch “Dark Shadows” and other cartoons. After 12 midnight all the other 3 networks went off the air but me, mom and my brother would stay up sometimes and watch Bill Tush. Heck Bill would talk about absolute nothing and it was way better than the crap we have now.
Bill Tush was great!
Skip, Randy, Pete & whomever was serving as #4 at the time were so familiar they were like family. And happy birthday wishes were issued to every lady in every podunk across the country.
You have to remember Ernie Johnson, Sr., as one of the original 4.
Yeah, those guys were great. They made the game enjoyable. Don Sutton also did a great job with the braves.
I watch the Dawgs, but I don’t watch much else now. Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit and the rest of the broadcast teams (since Uncle Verne’s retirement) set my teeth on edge. I can’t get into the SkyCast … I just can’t. I want the crowd noise, but I want multiple angles. I’ll still take the in stadium experience (other than the TV timeouts) over anything from Section HD.
On the Braves, the entire sport let me down in ‘94. I’ve never really gone back. The sport is spiraling right back to the problems of 1994. A work stoppage is coming.
Agree, 1994 turned me off. 1995 Braves got my toe back in. I got into the McGuire/Sosa deal because my father was working abroad and wanted me to email updates. Then TBS dropped the Braves and I was out but I got back intime for the ’22 WS and have enjoyed the team since – especially Ronald, Money Mike & Fireball Spence.
TBS and the radio for me. I was only allowed 2hrs TV growing up but if I kept my grades up the Braves & Bulldogs (who were rarely on in the 80s) didn’t count. No WGN for me, we didn’t have cable. Never was into the losin’ asrse Cubs, anyways, and side with the incomparable Lea Elia regarding Cub fans. Like a hypocrite, I did go to the Call the Dawgs/Dooley first pitch game (which the Cubs lost to some cheater on the Brewers home run – blushing smile emoji). Growing up to “get in shape” for my enlistment, I used to do the Herschel Walker pushups/situps during commercials workout and made a game for beisbol. Pushups every homerun, lunges every strikeout, etc. I’ve since been listening to the radiocast the past two seasons and trying the same game (with a TRX straps gym because I’m at an unsatisfactory level regarding pullups – anything to stave off the eventuality of TRT). Broken down and late 50’s is everything it’s cracked up to be, lol. Also, once Ballys fired the lovely Kelly Crull, it was back to the radio for me!
Buy you a few Kettle Bells! Simple in house workouts keep you fit. I competed nationally into my late 50’s in CrossFit…if you think the 50’s are difficult, just wait until the 60’s get here!
Thank you, I first heard about KB Swings from Tim Ferris. Then I went down the “Grease the Groove” path from Pavel. KB Swings for the win & the Dan John Armor Building Complex & Humane Burpees. Lol, the toughest part of some of my workouts – carrying my 50lb Kettlebell from the parking lot to the little downhill next the the damn at Lake Herrick and back. 10,9,8…3,2,1 Pushups + 10 KB Swings, sprint up the hill and walk down. Never could tame my ego for Crossfit – Murph broke me too many times, smh.
Kelly Crull >>>Wiley Ballard
FWIW, the Braves on the radio is probably the *closest* thing to what we would likely consider “traditional” broadcasting around, IMO. They do a good job of not having to fill every second with their talking, a lost art for sure. And Joe Simpson is much more likable on the radio than he was on TV. There is something about listening to a Braves game on the radio, still….
I know most don’t like Scott, but I do also enjoy listening to the Dawgs on the radio when I am running around, and enjoy the pre- and post-game shows as well….
I have satellite radio in the car, and I will occasionally listen to a random game on long drives. I do enjoy the imagery a good play-by-play person can create.
espn is the devil and their announcers love the smell of their own farts in the booth…
The over-commercialization of the major sports, combined with the constant drumbeat from the online sports gambling companies, have turned me away from a lot of sports/events I have traditionally loved. Two things I have come to like are EPL soccer and FI. Both sports are commercial free during the events and the games/races typically take around 2 hours. Both are good products and fun to watch once you get into them.
My tendency is to believe that we’re just a bunch of old fucks for whom the sins of broadcast sports have boiled over. At the same time, the suits realize that people younger than we are, or less engaged than we are, can be had by doubling down on the obnoxious. So now we also get to enjoy the stylings of Pat McAfee.
I think that if we had watched JP with our current jaded eyes, we’d see some of the same issues that we see now.
The problem ultimately is that the world just hasn’t produced any replacements for Larry Munson, Skip Carey or John Facenda. It requires talent to use your voice to add something valuable to the game. The current field just ain’t got it.
Did not get to baseball when l was young. Listened to St. Louis Cards or Pittsburg Pirates on little transistor radio. No Braves around then. Later l did really like Ernie J. Sr. And Skip Carey! Scrapping bottom of barrel for announcers now! But there will never be another “Get the Picture”!! We have heard the BEST!!
Braves network…don’t you have to be entertaining?
Never missed a Braves game in the 90’s. Remember when we’re finally competing for a pennant, but in the west division and the whole city and state was sleepwalking to work and school after those late night games in September?
Heady times… I remember being shitfaced in Buckhead the night Kirby Puckett broke our hearts. We were a Lonnie Smith brain fart away from the biggest party in the city’s history.
Come to think of it, I also remember a few weeks earlier when we were all doing the tomahawk chop before the Clemson game. Funnily enough…also shitfaced.
The Braves were my first sports love, before the Dawgs, after I went to a game in 1981. But the late ’80s sucked, as most everyone around here remembers. I caught the fever again in ’91 when I checked the standings sometime in April or May and there were actually doing okay. Imagine my disappointment when I got orders to 29 Palms, Ca., which had what must have been the only cable system in the US that didn’t carry TBS. I spent my afternoons watching the scroller on ESPN to get score updates, and then hopefully reading about the game in the LA Times the next day. I even went to see them in Dodger Stadium in ’92.
This whole Fanduel situation has been tiring, we couldn’t stream the games on our old TV because it wouldn’t support the Fanduel app, so we got a new one for last season. I’m anxiously waiting to see what they plan to do. I can’t imagine it’ll be worse than Fanduel.
I wrote a lot just to basically say I miss the simplicity of just turning on TBS at 7:05 or 7:35 to watch the games.
I went from not missing a college football game, to watching a handful of UGA games a year. I usually watch them on the replay that’s posted on here after the fact because I can watch it under <2 hrs and I struggle with all the stops and commercial breaks trying to sell me items that I don't care about and won't ever use. The only sporting event I watch consistently is premier league soccer, that I also watch replays of, to skip half time and there aren't any commercials or ads during the game. Could justbe my ADHD though!
Kdawg05
When I was growing up, the Braves had their own network, and it was called TBS.
The past few years I’ve paid for YouTube TV just during the college football season and a handful of other streaming services. I think next year I’ll just to the Sling TV day pass. Five bucks each Saturday to watch all the games I care about is good enough for me.
I used to watch the Braves religiously never missing a game and reading just about every article written about them. That all ended in ’21. It was the perfect storm of the broadcast moving to Bally Sports and the MLB pulling the All Star game from Atlanta for reasons we would all debate in the playpen. Anyway, I’ve only been to one game in the stadium in Marietta. It was an okay experience but not easy to justify the cost.
-SS
Braves lost me when they suddenly decided to move to Cobb County and intentionally suck for the 2-3 years it took them to do it. Never plan on going to a game there.
I went to a concert at Truist Park and the Roxy next door and getting there and back from Augusta is not fun. I doubt I’ll ever venture up there to see the Braves, but I used to go see them at the Ted often and ride the Marta in from Indian Creek and that was much easier. Now, if I wanna drink beer and watch baseball I just go see the Augusta Greenjackets on Thirsty Thursday’s.
Thirsty Thursdays are GREAT!
-SS
I remember watching the Braves on TBS during the 70’s with Skip Carey while he was still drinking. One night the team was so odious Carey intoned “if you promise to buy all our sponsor’s products you have my permission to change the channel.” At the time we all laughed and understood it as classic Skip Carey announcing. Imagine if someone, anyone, said that today. Heck, Howard Cosell routinely said things on air that would get you fired today. It was a different world. And yes, I miss it. But my daughter constantly tells me I have become a grumpy old white dude. She’s probably correct.
Every time I hear one of us old-timers (Gen X or earlier) lament about the current state of sports broadcasting, I think about my time in Conrad Fink’s class at Grady College of Journalism in the late 1980’s.
Pre-email, pre-internet, and pre-media consolidation, Fink was astute enough to predict that the digital age was on its way and it would change everything, and it was already scaring the crap out of traditional media.
While Fink got the “who” wrong (sort of), he joked about going to conferences with newspaper and tv station owners and shouting “Baby Bell” just to watch them jump, he was right that delivery system for entertainment, information, news and sports were going to shift to corporations that had far more capital than those who dominated the media in the 20th Century. Fink thought it would be the “Baby Bells” because they owned the wiring.
However, he was correct that those that control the infrastructure are now dominating who delivers the content.
Ironically, one the players we can “blame” was Ted Turner, namesake of the Turner was already weighty figure in media but he wanted “a greater scale and leverage for Turner Networks with cable operators in the mid-1990’s. Warner Bros and Turner merged (WB eventually sold the Braves to Liberty Media, a major cable operator.) AOL buys/mergers with WB in 2000. That ends up being a disastrous move.
Eventually, AT&T (not the original but the corporation formerly known as SBC or Southwestern Bell Corp) buys Warner Bros with the final elements completed in 2022. Look a “Baby Bell”
As we sit here in 2026, there is more sports content available across platforms than ever before domestically and internationally. Nearly every sport, nearly every top league and event. It is very much a golden age for live broadcasts.
I worked at Turner for a big, big chunk of my career. The mergers have been progressively worse, with the AT&T sale to Discovery (they call it a merger, but there’s basically only Discovery folks in charge of everything) being the biggest disaster.
I am sorry. I know would not be anyone’s place to tell Ted Turner and the Turner executives to not sell, but the sale/merger of Turner with Warner Brothers, then AOL, then AT&T to eventually Discovery has been a tremendous hit for Atlanta, Georgia and by extension UGA.
Turner was a terrific place for Grady students to get their foot in the door in news, entertainment etc. There were so many options be it CNN, the entertainment networks, sports properties, outdoor advertising.
TBS, CNN, TNT, the Braves, were a big part of why Atlanta rose to prominence not just a regional power, but a national/international one.