Sports fans thankful for TV, radio

Now that the turkeys have all been carved up, the gravy has congealed, and the rolls have hardened (unless they were covered), it’s still a good time to stop and remember the many reasons to be thankful.

Especially if you’re a sports fan and it’s the day after Thanksgiving.

So as you get dragged to shopping malls and stores by your wives, girlfriends, or significant others, be thankful for the existence of audio-video departments and electronics stores and their tradition of leaving on all TV sets, the vast majority of which are tuned to college football.

And when you’re not shuffling up and down the crowded mall walkways – trying to balance and or maintain a grip on five different bags full of holiday purchases while also trying to avoid the inevitable wrong-way mallwalker or five who apparently haven’t mastered the art of walking with the flow of traffic – be thankful for cellular phones and personal radios/headsets which allow you to tune in and stay connected with the latest scores, highlights and developments.

Let’s face it, if you’re living in Eastern Maine and within earshot/range of the Bangor radio market, you have reason to give thanks because you have an all-sports radio station to listen to. Sure, you might like to make fun of Dale Duff, Clem LaBree, Dan Hannigan and the Sports Zone crew for their views on everything from the Red Sox to Little League baseball, but it’s much better than round-the-clock Christmas music before the month of December has even begun. If you had a choice between the latest in an interminable number of Jingle Bells renditions – Just how many are there anyway? – or a college football broadcast involving the TCU Horned Frogs and the Rice Owls, which would you lock the radio on?

If you’re a big television sports fans, you’ve got a host of things to be thankful for, from satellite television service to cable TV, from surround sound stereo systems that give you the sound and feel of a stadium atmosphere to big-screen TV sets, High-Definition TV sets, and big screen HDTV TV sets. Oh, and then there’s TiVo – tapeless TV recorders that can tape up to 80 hours of programming. These are indeed the best of times to be a sports couch potato, so take root.

Television isn’t the only medium to be revolutionized by satellite technology. Now diehard fans of teams based well beyond the borders of the area they live in can listen to every down, pitch, dribble, and slap of the puck on their car radio. Ever listen to a game from start to near-finish, only to have the signal weaken and finally give out in the waning seconds of a down-to-the-wire game? You can thank your lucky stars for XM satellite radio, a service which – for $10 a month plus the initial setup fee – will allow you to receive up to 100 different sports, talk or music stations with no fading signal and no difference in clarity, no matter where you drive.

Yes, there are a lot of things to be thankful for.