Broadcasting

The sports website sbnation.com has ranked the Greatest Sportscasting Moments of 2011 and No. 1 was probably the hardest thing for Orioles fans to watch this year - maybe ever. The top moment for sbnation.com was Jim Palmer's touching, teary tribute to Mike Flanagan an hour or so after he learned that his good friend, ex-teammate and broadcast partner had committed suicide. The web site said Palmer, who was doing the color commentary that night for MASN, followed a “superhuman evening of broadcasting with a heartbreakingly human moment.” The site said Palmer's words and emotions reinforced the close relationship that viewers have with their broadcasters.

Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. will renew Fox Broadcasting Co. affiliations with 19 of its television stations in an agreement that also allows Sinclair to purchase a Fox-owned station in Baltimore. Under the agreement with Fox, Sinclair has the option to buy WUTB, Fox's MyNetwork station in Baltimore, for up to $52.7 million between July 1 and March 31, 2013. Sinclair negotiated for the option to strengthen its position as owner of a Fox affiliate in Baltimore, one of the broadcaster's most important markets, David Smith, Sinclair's chief executive and president, said in a statement.

Leaders of the House and Senate committed Wednesday to broadcasting all committee proceedings beginning next session, a move they say will make the state's government more transparent and accessible. Video and audio of House committees will be available online, but the Senate will provide only audio. Senate President Thomas V. "Mike" Miller said his chamber's committee rooms did not have adequate technology to provide images online. Hearings and voting sessions will be broadcast.

I have been putting off this post for a couple of weeks. It's about Mike Bordick's performance on MASN as an analyst on Orioles games. It started with a colleague, who is usually a keen observer of sports media, casually stopping me in the newsroom to say, "Z, you gotta write about Bordick. " As he said it, he shook his head side to side, winced and gestured with two thumbs down. So, I started watching and listening to the likable former Orioles shortstop. Instead of jumping into print with what I saw after a couple of games though, I also started asking other media types who watch a lot of Orioles baseball about their impressions of him. Representative of what I mainly heard was this: "Geez, Z, you're not going to rip Bordick, are you?

Broadcasting an Ultimate Fighting Championship fight between Tito Ortiz and Forrest Griffin II may cost The Horse You Came in on Saloon $150,000. That's how much a promotional company wants the Fells Point bar to pay in damages for showing a fight it claims it had sole rights to. Joe Hand Promotions, based in Pennsylvania, filed the lawsuit Monday in Baltimore's U.S. District Court. A second lawsuit over the same fight was filed against a Silver Spring restaurant, Irene's Pupusas III. The company has a history of filing similar lawsuits against area bars, and has found some success.

Joe Angel, the radio voice for the Orioles for the past six seasons, confirmed Sunday that he will return to that role for the 2010 campaign. Fred Manfra is also expected to be back as Angel's partner, though the Orioles have yet to make an official announcement. "This is where I want to be," Angel said in a telephone interview. "I've left Baltimore twice and come back twice, so this obviously is where I want to be. I'm ready to go." During the past month, Angel was under consideration for a similar role with the Los Angeles Angels, who are searching for a replacement for the late Rory Markas.

Will the new Republican majority in Congress pull the plug on public television and radio?Incoming House Speaker Newt Gingrich says he wants to eliminate federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes some $285 million annually to hundreds of local public television and radio stations across the country. He says the explosion of cable TV stations and niche radio has eliminated the need for federal funding of public television and radio.That argument confuses quantity with quality.

WE MIGHT as well face facts, kids. Our society is disappearing down a cultural sewer.The evidence is everywhere. Be it movies, television or music, coarseness, vulgarity and sophomoric sexual innuendo are the order of the day.The New York Times, in an article on "Gross-Out Humor," listed a few recent examples of successful attempts to set new standards in bad taste: an MTV talk show host vomiting into a toilet on camera, a character in a movie thought to...

Howard Cosell, who died yesterday at 77, was at his core a shameless self-promoter, full of bombast, self-importance and self-righteousness, the kinds of qualities that routinely made him America's least-liked sportscaster in a series of TV Guide polls."

Ira H. Apple, a veteran broadcasting manager who later became an industry consultant, died of a brain aneurysm Aug. 11 at Seasons Hospice at Northwest Hospital Center. The Reisterstown resident was 74. Mr. Apple, the son of a furniture salesman and a homemaker, was born in Pittsburgh and raised in Kittanning, Pa., where he graduated from high school. He began his radio career in the late 1940s when he signed a small Kittanning radio station on the air before attending high school, and then returned after school to sign off the daytime-only station.

The screams of joy from Monica Lawler could be heard across the cavernous clubhouse at Pimlico shortly after the Kentucky Derby ended Saturday. She and her father, Bob Lawler, put money on No. 19, I'll Have Another, who had just won the first leg of the Triple Crown. Monica bet $6 on the Kentucky-bred horse to finish first, second or third. She picked the horse based solely on its name and quickly headed to the teller to collect $55 in winnings. Her father, who tried a more complex bet involving other horses, didn't take home a dime.

Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc., a Hunt Valley-based operator of television stations across the United States, said Wednesday that its profit nearly doubled in the first quarter, fueled by higher sales of political and other ads and the acquisition of several new stations. The company, which operates 74 stations in 45 markets, reported a profit of $29.4 million, or 36 cents a share, in the quarter ended March 31, compared with $15.3 million, or 19 cents a share, in the similar period last year.

Another rumor that the Mega Millions winner from Maryland had been identified — this time as a Glen Burnie man named Michael Dronet — began swirling around the Internet on Tuesday after his mother told a media outlet in Mississippi her son had won. But by Wednesday, Dronet said he was not one of the winners of Friday's $656 million jackpot — and his mother, Linda Bobo, didn't know what to make of his story. "I don't have any idea," she said when reached by phone, sounding upset.

Does anyone in charge at NBC News have any sense of journalistic standards? How about any sense of shame? I have been banging away at NBC News since at least the days of the suck-up White House interview the network's bowing anchorman, Brian Williams, did with President Obama. You remember the one when they "spontaneously" went out for hamburgers in the middle of the day. (Loved the celebration of special correspondent Chelsea Clinton the last few months as well.) But the double whammy this week is just too much for me to keep quiet - even though I'm on vacation.

The head of Sinclair Broadcast Group has a definite idea about television's future: It will be a mobile medium. And he doesn't need industry research to tell him so. David D. Smith, president and chief executive of the Hunt Valley-based broadcaster, recalls an experiment he conducted during a trade show: He set a portable TV down in a bar and then watched as people gathered around, asking where they could get one. "People who say they won't...

Viewers of WPXI-TV in Pittsburgh were stunned this morning when anchor Todd McDermott reported that long-time Steelers wide receiver Hines Ward had signed with the Ravens. A few problems with the "signing": No free-agent signings can take place until next Tuesday at 3 p.m., and the Steelers haven't officially released Ward. The joke was a spoof by BroCouncil.com that WPXI fell for. The fake post even has Ward in a Ravens uniform. Not sure who would be stunned more if it turns out to be true next week: Steelers fans or Ravens fans.

A lawyer representing Harford County Broadcasting Inc., owner of WHRF-AM radio in Bel Air, says the company plans to defend a suit against it for unpaid rent by showing that its lease was breached after the Courtland Square office building in Bel Air was foreclosed on.The radio station rents offices in the building, located on Main Street.Lawrence Melfa, an attorney with Howard, Butler and Melfa law firm in Towson who is representing Harford County Broadcasting, said the company had an agreement with the former owner of the office building, Steven R.Hankins of Bel Air, that the company would pay approximately $2,099 a month in rent.

The word went out on Tuesday afternoon - appropriately enough, Valentine's Day - that two House of Delegates committees charged with considering legislation authorizing same-sex marriage would hold a vote at 4:30 p.m. to decide whether the matter would be sent to the full chamber. If you happen to follow The Sun's Annie Linskey on Twitter ( @annielinskey ), you would have learned about this at 2:54 p.m. Devotees of The Washington Post's John Wagner ( @wpjohnwagner )

Kenneth Allen Maylath, a veteran Baltimore broadcaster who had been host of "Conference Call" on WFBR-AM and was later news director at WCBM-AM, died Saturday of sepsis at Franklin Square Hospital Center. The longtime Parkville resident was 75. Born and raised in Westchester County, N.Y., Mr. Maylath was a 1954 graduate of Croton-Harmon High School in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y. Mr. Maylath's love of radio began in the 1940s, when he listened to the network broadcasts of Arthur Godfrey, one of his favorite on-air personalities, on WCBS Radio.