Opinion : Sports Broadcasting

I have been watching a lot of ESPN lately (mostly background noise as I eat) and I am becoming disappointed.  I love sports, but I am not happy where cable sports broadcasting is heading.  There is very little actual sports shown and instead there is continuous news programming played on a minute loop.  While this is not a new format idea, several trends are making sports channels less watchable.
 First is the very narrow range of sports covered by the endless news programs.  Sportscenter yesterday spent hours yesterday talking about College basketball and NFL trades, with a little NBA and men's golf sprinkled in.  What about College Hockey or the NHL?  Soccer?  MMA? women's sports?  Baseball?   I understand that College hockey is not as popular as college basketball, but with over 6hrs of news a day, doesn't it warrant a few minutes of coverage?  

Second is the trend of airing news and documentaries instead of the actual sports.  At one point last week, ESPN was airing a documentary about Basketball players (Magic Johnson) when there were actual basketball games being played.  These are good stories, but ESPN is not the place.  as a fan who flips to a sports network, I want to see sports.  ESPN has a sister station ESPNnews  that was supposed to be the channel that allowed branded sports themed programming to be shown without displacing actual sports, but for whatever reason, ESPNnews is no longer in my cable package and its programming is constantly on the flagship network. I feel that this cheapens the whole brand.

Third, the competition is increasingly conforming to ESPN instead of innovating.  When NBC sports took over VS network, they started a branded sports news show and have moved away from the outdoor programming that defined the network.  They have even moved their offices to Connecticut.   Local sports networks keep getting bought out by the teams that they cover and get turned into a marketing exercise instead of a real sports broadcaster (See: Yes Network)  Networks founded by leagues seem to be an attempt to shake down cable companies as opposed to actually increasing the amount of programming available (see NFL network, Big Ten Network)

All of this has led mt to the following unfortunate point:  despite far more cable channels and broadcasting capabilities, there is no more live sports on TV than there was a decade ago (at least on my cable package on Comcast Philly).  This is a missed opportunity, as availability of sitcoms, reality TV and Movies has increased, sports has not kept pace.  I want to see more college and olympic sports and local coverage that extends past the major league level.  I can watch engineering lectures that are broadcast city wide by my college but I cant watch the school's lacrosse games.   The internet is great for stats and news but nothing beats watching sports live.

TV review : House MD

Tonight is a season premier of my favorite TV show, House MD. on the surface this is a show about a misanthropic doctor and his associates. Every episode follows a similar formula: first a patient collapses, then they try treatment that repeatedly do not work. Towards the end of the show, House will get a brilliant idea and treat the patient. There is also a little bit of the personal life storyline for the characters in every episode as well. But the show is actually much much deeper than it would initially appear.

House MD is really a show about two different styles of practicing medicine. In the 60s and 70s the style of medicine known as paternalism was taught and widely practiced. Paternalism is roughly defined as a style where the doctor knows all and the patients except his wisdom without question. Believers in this practice saw patients as weak and saw science is all-powerful to solve diseases. The competing philosophy of that is humanism, in which the physicians sympathize with their patients and work with them to find a common solution to their problems. Physicians who practice in the style try to use a holistic approach and appreciate patient's feelings and moral values.

As a doctor, House represents the alpha paternalist doctor. He is absolutely brilliant as a scientist and always right, but disdains patient interaction. He is thrust in to a modern hospital however, and forced to confront several of the changing aspects of medicine. His boss is a woman, as as one of his fellows. He also has a minority fellow, to go along with a fellow who is a rich white legacy. While he is an angry paternalist, his fellows all believe strongly in humanism. The overriding premise of the show is that his paternalist style can solve all of his patients problems but ironically enough, he cannot solve his own. For his personal struggles, he needs but resists the humanism of his colleagues.

It should also be noted that House with his fellows must confront all of the major problems facing modern medicine. There are episodes about, pharmaceutical companies trying to buy influence, fetal rights, patient rights, rights to treatment of prisoners and poor people, and personal struggles with drug addiction and dishonest relationships. Some episodes tend to confront the philosophical topics, such as how to spend the last moments of one's life, were facing up to mistakes. Further episodes comment on politics or current events. The topics on the show read like a list of topics from an actual medical bioethics class and are deeper than almost any other show on television..

While the cases that appear on the show are unusual and unlikely to occur in the number that they do, the actual medical dialogue on the show is surprisingly accurate. The treatments and symptoms are generally right from the textbook. While the show rarely betrays the long and often tedious work involved in being a physician, it does accurately portray the roles that students and attending physicians have in a modern hospital. Of all the medical shows on television, House easily is the most interesting to someone who understands or works in medicine.

Opinion : The Discovery Channel

They seem to make this network over every now and then, along with its sister networks: TLC and Discovery Health. (I rarely get the science channel so I cant comment on that one) As a loyal fan, I have a few observations, starting with the positive ones:

During the day, I have recently noticed that the Discovery channel is repeatingly airing a show called How its Made. This is a show that shows random things being manufactured with a little dry commentary and some strange repetitive background music. Apparently this show was made by some Canadian public broadcast station or something. It is oddly surreal and beats any other Day time television that is on, although I will admit that I am a little embarrassed when my roommates catch me watching it...It may be the dorkiest show on television.

Something that really sucks is that the TLC network seems to have been given over to chick programming all the time. I have nothing against having a network for that crap (alright, maybe I do) but I really liked what used to be on The Learning Channel. There is no learning involved in gay men making over houses.

Another gripe is that the health channel seems to be going the same way. More and more the only programming on there is women talking about being pregnant. The still occasionally do the "real-life" versions of ER and forensic detectives, but they stopped showing my favorite thing: late night surgery. They used to show random taped surgery at night on that channel, and I was a big fan. Now they seem to show prime time re-runs. Its alright though, I recently discovered videos of surgical telecasts on Hahneman Hospital's website...