THE BROADER VIEW Televised competition

FAYETTEVILLE — We’re at an intersection of major sportsseasons. With the World Series underway, baseball is in the final days of the 2009 season.

College and NFL football teams are deeply into their seasons. NBA basketball has begun another lengthy season, with college teams beginning play shortly.

And television is at the center of it all.

As is the case with politics, television has had significant impact on sports.

Television has become the playing field for politics, the arena in which political competition is conducted. And in sports, television brings us the competition directly from the playing fields and arenas.

Television heightened the significance of money in sports as well as politics. Candidates raise huge amounts of money in order to advertise on television and center their campaigns around TV. On the other hand, television pours money into sports, escalating the salaries for professional athletes, turning both professional and major collegiate sports into big business operations. Directly and indirectly, television has prolonged political campaigns, especially those for president, and done the same for sports seasons.

And much of our political campaigning is covered like a sports event - a horse race being the best example - with an emphasis on who is ahead, who is coming up fast, who is a long short, etc.

Meanwhile, the sports-TV relationship grows deeper and broader. There is a long relationship between the broadcast media and sports, now spilling over to the Internet. Radio and television have played key roles in popularizing sports. This is especially true with professional football, which came to the forefront of fan popularity only after it became apparent that it was particularly suited for TV coverage. Another notable example is the “March Madness” of NCAA basketball, which has become a leading television spectacle.

Baseball has the longest relationship with the broadcast media, with coverage of games and scores among the earliest programming, beginning in the 1920s. Pioneering TV coverage also featured baseball. We have come a considerable distance from the time when many baseball radio broadcasts were “re-creations.” In earlier days, some major league teams and most minor league clubs could not afford “live” broadcasts when they were on the road playing in distant cities. Broadcasting over open telephone lines was expensive, not to mention travel costs for the broadcasters. So some broadcasts relied on a rudimentary telegraph account from the game site, which local announcers then turned into a colorful play-by-play description - even though they were far away from the actual game. They used recorded ballpark sounds in the background, turning up the volume when something exciting happened, and provided sound effects to imitate batted balls.The recreation announcers sometimes ad-libbed comments that were suppositions of what was happening on the field. Interruptions in the telegraph transmission could test the imagination of the announcers, leading them to sometimes describe rain delays on sunny days.

Now, television brings close-up images of every batter and pitcher, every play on the field. Watching the World Series on HDTV makes it even more vivid.

And that brings us to the question at hand: Does baseball belong in November?

Even as one who hates to see baseball seasons end, I don’t think so.

And why is the World Series being played so late in the year? Not surprisingly, television’s influence is a factor.

Anyone who follows sports knows that television dictates starting times for many sporting events. And this is often done with little regard for those who actually attend the games. Football may pop up just about any night of the week. And to accommodate television, college games now frequently begin before noon or at odd times such as 6 p.m. on Halloween, and many times these scheduling decisions are made without much advance notice, further inconveniencing those who are paying higher and higher prices to be there in person. And, of course, there are extended time-outs during games so TV can get in more advertising time. Basketball games have “media time outs” at regular intervals.

Once upon a time most World Series games were played in the afternoons and early evening. Earlier games make it easier for youngsters to watch the games and help develop their interest in the sport. However, most of the games now are scheduled for starts at 8 p.m. or later on the East Coast. Night games in colder climates often bring chilly or inclement weather, conditions not really appropriate for players or paying spectators. In late October last year, the fifth(and final) Series game was suspended for two days because of bad weather in Philadelphia. This year, league playoffs in Denver were delayed because of subfreezing temperatures.

This is the only year, other than 2001, when World Series games have been played in November. In 2001, post-season play was delayed for a week after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Fox, which has the current TV rights, wants the World Series starting in mid-week rather than on the weekend because it can get higher ratings than on a weekend. And the 2009 season opening was delayed by a week because of the televised World Baseball Classic in March.

Meanwhile, Major League Baseball and other major sports leagues and even major collegiate conferences such as the Southeastern Conference and Big Ten are creating their own TV networks and online coverage, along with extensive and lucrative contracts with broadcast and cable networks.

For the sports fan this is in many respects a wondrous bonanza, with almost every sports event of any significance showing up somewhere on TV and/or online. However, this sports smorgasbord has some distorting effects as well: dictating schedules, interrupting the flow of play, and, of course, the money factor. It also tends to put a greater premium on spectacular plays and hot-dog performers as opposed to old-fashioned teamwork. And if we look again at the political parallels, we can see that the omnipresent TV focus on the presidency has contributed to a distortion of power between what are supposed to be coequal branches of government, with Congress at a disadvantage in access to the TV bully pulpit.

As we appreciate how much is available through today’s communication technologies, and the close up views we get of both sports and politics, we might also consider ways of bringing a little balance and common sense into play.

Hoyt Purvis is a journalism and international relations professor and served as press secretary to Sen. J. William Fulbright, foreign/defense policy adviser to Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd, and as chairman of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. His column appears on Sundays.