Caps Shutout Tonight

Or should I say, fans who wanted to watch tonight's Caps-Islanders game were shutout by NewsChannel8, one of three local cable networks which rotate game broadcasts, determined by I-don't-know-what.

Tonight was NC8's turn to broadcast the game, but they decided to pre-empt the game in order to broadcast the (shaky) State of The Union address (yawn). Apparently, it wasn't enough that the SOTU address could be seen on at least fifty-six other channels on our local cable outlet. It just so happens that NC8's owner, Joe Allbriton, is an influential Republican and Bush family friend.

The game actually is being carried locally on something called MHz 2, which sounds like one of the elements that fell off the periodic table.

What this means for NC8's viewership is that probably 0.0003 percent of all DC area households will be tuned in to watch the speech on NC8. Dang, they would have had twice as many viewers if they carried the game instead!