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While awaiting those "negotiations" between Time Warner and LIN Broadcasting (representing WDTN) to culminate in a deal, it has come to my attention:

Only 60th broadcast

The World Series (this year on FOX) is being broadcast nationally for only the 60th time.

According to the book, "Center Field Shot: A History of Baseball on Television," (mentioned here before), in 1948, when the Indians played the Boston Braves in the World Series, only unconnected Eastern and Midwestern television networks were available. A World War II B-29 bomber was loaded with television equipment and flown over western Pennsylvania to help link the two, which it did, if not reliably. At least people in Ohio and Pennsylvania were able to view the broadcast.

Only in 1951 did the first truly coast-to-coast telecast of the series happen.

Vitale started ESPN run

Imagine this: While the World Series is only in its 60th national broadcast, ESPN is entering its 30th season carrying college basketball games. Sure, once television exploded on the world sports was going to follow, but only a 30-year lag time seems remarkably close.

There were some earlier tournament games on ESPN, but the first "recognized major game telecast" was Wisconsin at DePaul on Dec. 5, 1979. Joe Boyle and, yes, Dick Vitale did the honors.

Technical jungle

I'm sort of buying the TBS explanation about technical difficulties during the first 20 minutes of Saturday night's Boston-Tampa Bay American League Championship Series game. Sort of. I keep asking myself, "If this had been an NFL game, would there have been difficulties?"

"Two circuit breakers in our Atlanta transmission operations tripped, causing the master router and its backup — which are necessary to transmit any incoming feed outbound — to shut down," TBS spokesman Sal Petruzzi said in a statement that maybe Joe the Electrician could understand.

While the breakdown was being addressed, TBS ran an episode of "The Steve Harvey Show," with a screen crawl that read, "We are experiencing technical difficulties."

This apparently had no relation to the 1968 "Heidi Game" in which NBC deliberately cut out early on a Raiders-Jets game in favor of the "Heidi" movie.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2157 or mkatz@DaytonDailyNews.com.