How about a big round of applause for KJZZ's coverage of the high school football championship games last Friday?
And not just because Ch. 14 devoted hours and hours of TV time to putting the games on the air, but because the KJZZ team did such a fine job on the production.
I didn't see all of any of the games, but I did see quite a bit of each — the 3A, 4A and 5A title contests.
KJZZ didn't have all of the whiz-bang gadgetry of some football telecasts, although about the only noticeable absence might have been the lack of that computer-generated yellow line that shows where the first-down line is. (And isn't it kind of weird how we've come to expect that to be there?)
But the camera work and the direction were excellent. It seems like a simple thing, but the camera managed to follow the ball on just about every play. (At least just about every play I saw.) And not just from a single shot high above the field.
Compare that to some of the games we've seen on The mtn. this fall. Or CSTV. Or Versus.
They didn't ask for my help, but I'm thinking maybe they ought to ask the folks at KJZZ for some help.
STEVE BROWN is one of my favorite local sportscasters, and I'm impressed with his play-by-play performance — and that of analyst Mike Norseth — for doing three games back-to-back-to-back.
I was, however, taken somewhat aback by something Brown said during the 3A game between Bear River and Snow Canyon. After a delay while an ambulance came onto the field to remove an injured player, Brown told viewers the paramedics were completing "the ambulatory process."
The player wasn't seriously hurt, thank goodness, so, c'mon, that's funny! Ambulatory process?!?!?!
MOST AMERICAN VIEWERS won't be able to see the big football game because it's on a new network that hasn't worked out agreements with cable companies that reach tens of millions of viewers.
No, we're not talking about BYU-Utah on The mtn. and CSTV. We're talking about the Baltimore-Cincinnati NFL game this coming Thursday.
Most Americans won't have access to the Ravens-Bengals game just the way they couldn't see the Chiefs-Broncos game on Thanksgiving night. And, it appears, won't be able to see any of the other six games on the NFL Network.
As of this writing, the NFL Network reaches only about 41 million of the 111 million TV-equipped households in America. And it's in the middle of major disputes with big-time cable companies like Time Warner, Cablevision and Charter.
They're fighting over how much the cable companies will (or won't) pay to carry the NFL Network and where the channel will be placed in cable lineups. The NFL Network wants to be in basic cable in the vicinity of ESPN; cable companies want to place it in a pay-extra sports tier.
Utah's biggest cable company, Comcast, put the NFL Network on a digital sports tier; the NFL Network is suing Comcast over that placement.
We should learn a couple of things from this. First, that the struggle to get The mtn. on cable and satellite systems is not unusual. It's the way the TV business operates.
And, second, if the mighty NFL hasn't been able to muscle its way onto more systems, no one in their right mind should be surprised that the Mountain West Conference is having as much trouble as it is.
Including the people behind The mtn.
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com