I prefer TV but there’s something warm and fuzzy about listening to baseball on the radio. Driving around listening to the Reds on the radio I can imagine my grandpa as a young man in the 40s-50s doing the same thing, and that’s pretty cool.
I grew up watching lots of local (NY) sports on TV, often with the sound off & listening to the play by play on the radio.
But doing that nowadays isn’t the same, as there is often a noticeable latency/lag time due to the video being bounced off geostationary orbital satellites 23,000 mi away.
@ELJAY It’s not just that. Back in the day they would simulcast with one audio track for both TV and radio. That way the team only had to pay one guy. Then they realized sometime in the late 1990s to early 2000s that if the stopped simulcasting there were double the sponsorship opportunities to sell.
@ELJAY@j37hr0 I’m not a broadcasting expert, but there are a lot of sources for latency in both television in radio. Of these, propagation delay to a geostationary satellite is relatively small, at around a quarter of a second.
You also have:
Intentional delays for live broadcasts so that they can cut away or censor things that violate broadcast standards. These are several seconds long. I don’t think they are necessarily a fixed length, and may vary between radio and television
Realtime encoding. This latency is minimal for a live, analog radio broadcast. It can be quite significant for live HD video feeds.
Transcoding. This is minimal to non-existent for an analog radio broadcast. Again, it can be significant for an HD video feed.
Network distribution. Don’t know a lot about this and it can vary a lot.
Decoding and display. This is, again, quite minimal for radio, but can be fairly long for television.
I believe that they make apps for people attempting to sync streamed radio broadcasts with video, but I have not messed with them.
I am lucky enough to be a Milwaukee baseball fan and have Bob Euker as my radio announcer. I still watch on TV if I can, but he makes the games more than interesting enough if I’m in the car.
Grew up in Los Angeles with Vin Scully and when you went to the games, folks would bring radios so you could hear him announce. I never became a huge sports fan, but his voice and style makes me happy. I’ll sometimes intone, “two on, two out, a two and two count: it’s deuces wild at dodger stadium,” but nobody is as delighted with my terrible vin impression as I am.
I think the reason that baseball was the national past time for the first half of the 20th century and beyond is because it translated so well to radio. While I am a huge baseball fan, I have to admit both NFL and NBA just make the transition to television better, relatively speaking.
@olperfesser I grew up doing that sort of thing also, but it’s difficult to do these days. Terrestrial radio is usually 4-5 seconds of ahead of TV (regardless of cable or streaming), meaning you hear what happens way before seeing it unfold. Occasionally I will do it anyway if I find a particular announcer unbearable.
Transistor radio so small size were kind of newish when I was a kid and my elementary school fall or filled with kids sneaking them into class to listen to baseball games especially the playoffs in the World Series as long as the class mostly focused on what it was supposed to be about the teachers kind of tolerated it
I also like listening to Radio broadcasts of college football games once in a while when I’m doing something else or driving. I never take the time to just sit and watch that stuff unless it’s a party or something but having it on either the TV in the background if you’re at home doing something or else listening to the radio while you’re out can be pretty entertaining if you care about the team or the game
Listening to baseball on the radio is sort of comfort food for me because it’s nostalgic, but unfortunately my team’s radio announcers are painful to listen to. Still, is better than nothing.
I have listened to tennis on the radio, and I can’t recommend that.
baseball and football translate pretty well to radio. hockey is the only sport i keep up with though, and because it is just continuous plays happening at fast speeds, that can really be a challenge to keep up with and have an idea of what’s going on when it’s audio only! thankfully it’s only been a couple times where radio was the only the option - like during the bruins stanley cup run years ago when we lost power and my roommate had to bust out his camping radio!
To me, it depends HEAVILY on the actual announcer. Being a Chicago Cubs fan, I think Pat Hughes is absolutely the best radio play-by-play announcer out there. (And no disrespect to Vin Scully.)
I prefer TV but there’s something warm and fuzzy about listening to baseball on the radio. Driving around listening to the Reds on the radio I can imagine my grandpa as a young man in the 40s-50s doing the same thing, and that’s pretty cool.
Chess and cribbage are pretty great on the radio.
@UncleVinny Might as well; can’t find them on TV.
@phendrick the Slovakian cribbage team could go all the way this year. I’ve been following the action on late-night AM radio.
I occasionally listen to college basketball if my nephew is playing but once he graduates, heck no!
I grew up watching lots of local (NY) sports on TV, often with the sound off & listening to the play by play on the radio.
But doing that nowadays isn’t the same, as there is often a noticeable latency/lag time due to the video being bounced off geostationary orbital satellites 23,000 mi away.
@ELJAY It’s not just that. Back in the day they would simulcast with one audio track for both TV and radio. That way the team only had to pay one guy. Then they realized sometime in the late 1990s to early 2000s that if the stopped simulcasting there were double the sponsorship opportunities to sell.
@ELJAY @j37hr0 I’m not a broadcasting expert, but there are a lot of sources for latency in both television in radio. Of these, propagation delay to a geostationary satellite is relatively small, at around a quarter of a second.
You also have:
I believe that they make apps for people attempting to sync streamed radio broadcasts with video, but I have not messed with them.
I am lucky enough to be a Milwaukee baseball fan and have Bob Euker as my radio announcer. I still watch on TV if I can, but he makes the games more than interesting enough if I’m in the car.
Grew up in Los Angeles with Vin Scully and when you went to the games, folks would bring radios so you could hear him announce. I never became a huge sports fan, but his voice and style makes me happy. I’ll sometimes intone, “two on, two out, a two and two count: it’s deuces wild at dodger stadium,” but nobody is as delighted with my terrible vin impression as I am.
@jakeline same at the old Forum with Chick Hearn. Lots of those old mono radios in the stands with the earpiece.
baseball is a go, football is ok, most everything else is not good.
I think the reason that baseball was the national past time for the first half of the 20th century and beyond is because it translated so well to radio. While I am a huge baseball fan, I have to admit both NFL and NBA just make the transition to television better, relatively speaking.
I grew up listening to the radio broadcast of the Dolphins while watching the TV with the sound off. The radio guys stuck to the game description.
@olperfesser I grew up doing that sort of thing also, but it’s difficult to do these days. Terrestrial radio is usually 4-5 seconds of ahead of TV (regardless of cable or streaming), meaning you hear what happens way before seeing it unfold. Occasionally I will do it anyway if I find a particular announcer unbearable.
Transistor radio so small size were kind of newish when I was a kid and my elementary school fall or filled with kids sneaking them into class to listen to baseball games especially the playoffs in the World Series as long as the class mostly focused on what it was supposed to be about the teachers kind of tolerated it
I also like listening to Radio broadcasts of college football games once in a while when I’m doing something else or driving. I never take the time to just sit and watch that stuff unless it’s a party or something but having it on either the TV in the background if you’re at home doing something or else listening to the radio while you’re out can be pretty entertaining if you care about the team or the game
my husband listens to sports on the radio because we don’t have television. I don’t understand how he can follow what’s going on
Listening to baseball on the radio is sort of comfort food for me because it’s nostalgic, but unfortunately my team’s radio announcers are painful to listen to. Still, is better than nothing.
I have listened to tennis on the radio, and I can’t recommend that.
baseball and football translate pretty well to radio. hockey is the only sport i keep up with though, and because it is just continuous plays happening at fast speeds, that can really be a challenge to keep up with and have an idea of what’s going on when it’s audio only! thankfully it’s only been a couple times where radio was the only the option - like during the bruins stanley cup run years ago when we lost power and my roommate had to bust out his camping radio!
(also agree with others about the nostalgia of baseball on the radio. that’s some original feel good asmr right there.)
Steelers games were great with the TV muted and Myron Cope on the radio.
To me, it depends HEAVILY on the actual announcer. Being a Chicago Cubs fan, I think Pat Hughes is absolutely the best radio play-by-play announcer out there. (And no disrespect to Vin Scully.)