Last night as usual I watched the NBC feed of the Seahawks/Cardinals game–but the TV was on mute. For sound, I listened to the local Seahawks radio. The Seahawks broadcast team is way better than the NBC team (Seahawks color guy Warren Moon actually criticizes the home team more than most national teams.) I also do the same thing when Joe Buck does baseball, tuning to the ESPN radio feed. Who else does this? Or do you watch the TV with no sound at all?
I do sometimes when I want to just have a game in the background that I’m not giving my undivided attention.
For Browns games, I absolutely mute the TV crew and try to sync up Jim Donovan and Doug Dieken. Can barely stomach those games as it is, can’t imagine how terrible it would be without the homer broadcast.
Only when I had a radio capable of picking up WGN and Harry Caray wasn’t in the TV booth.
I don’t mute, but I keep it down so low that I can hear the ambient noise associated with the game but not having to actively listen to the jackasses completely explain things not actually happening on the field.
It wouldn’t do me much good - AT&T U-Verse is on a 15-second delay, so the radio is always ahead of the TV.
I’d do it regularly when Chickie baby & Stu were calling Laker games, or when I watched the occasional Dodger game.
Back in the 80s we’d always mute Celtics games and listen to Johnny Most. Especially if they were playing the Pistons.
My late grandfather who was a baseball fan watched a lot of games on tv always with the sound muted. He found the announcers annoying. I remember going to his house often as a kid finding him watching the Brewers with the soumd off.
My father and grandfather both did that with Brewers games. They much preferred Bob Uecker over anything on TV.
My father pretty much always muted the TV and listened to the radio during any football or baseball games.
I often mute baseball games. Most of the times the announcers aren’t saying anything that’s not obvious to the viewer. The exception is when I’m doing something else at the same time, like cooking or crocheting.
The announcers on Fox for the World Series games are incredibly annoying and I have been muting them 90% of the time.
Here in England I watch cricket on TV, but use the radio commentary.
I often watch baseball on one computer monitor while doing work on the other. In those cases, especially if the work i’m doing requires some concentration, i’ll mute the sound and just glance up every few minutes to keep an eye on what’s happening.
During the World Series, i often mute just so i don’t have to listen to Joe Buck.
I used to do that for Redskins games, like my father did it back in the 80s, but today the delay is too far off and I don’t have a DVR to be able to sync it up. The radio is always a good 5-6 seconds ahead of the TV. I’m sure there’s an app or something that could fix it, but frankly I just don’t care enough anymore to figure it out.
Back in the 80s, NBC ran a Jets-Dolphins game without any announcers. I saw some of it and liked the concept (and it would be even better these days, with better display technology). I’d love to see someone try it again.
I don’t pay that much attention to games on the TV so I keep the audio on to pick up the action. Sometimes I go out to the bar to see a game and there’s no sound, but then I’m there more to socialize than to pay attention to the game and someone provide the necessary commentary for anything worth noticing. Back in the day there were a lot of people who said they’d turn off the sound on Monday Night Football because they hated Howard Cosell. I can understand what they mean but I can filter out annoyances like that. My wife might prefer I turn off the sound sometimes because I argue with the announcers frequently, and she’s probably right because they have those headsets on and they’re just ignoring me.
I don’t have cable so my only option for the Indians is radio. Our radio announcer is amazing.
During the playoffs though I got SlingTV so I could see the games. But I didn’t want to miss out on my radio god! Also it turns out that TBS announcers are the fucking worst.
Since it was SlingTV (which is like a stream of a stream) there was a huuuuuge delay (150 seconds) between the video and any audio source I had. But I followed the instructions hereand used my MLB Gameday Audio subscription to stream the audio on my laptop, play it through Virtual Line In, then delay it using Radio Delay.
Now that it’s on Fox the delay is shorter but it’s still there. I am SO happy to have beautifully synched TV and radio for these playoffs!!!
By the way - I went to the stadium last night to be outside of the World Series. They had the TV feed on a big screen and the local radio announcers as the audio. They’ll be doing that for the watch parties, too. The teams know that radio is where it’s at!!
I would be willing to do what the OP describes, but when considering it I realized I don’t have radio in my house. When did that happen?
I do this with the Seahawks games too and have an overly elaborate setup to deal with the broadcast delay. It starts with an Eton clock radio that I picked up at Goodwill for $5, because it has a line out jack. That goes to a Focusrite audio interface that’s connected to a laptop running Windows 7. It runs the Radiodelay freeware (Daan Systems) to delay the audio by about 8 seconds before it’s output via the audio interface to a small amplified studio monitor, which is needed to provide the desired loudness compared to the lousy laptop speakers. Kind of crazy, but it’s well worth it to be able to listen to Steve and Warren instead of Buck and Aikman.
My husband usually mute the tv while watching games. When he watch games he doesn’t bother what’s going around.
Not mute, but I turn it down to 4 or 5. Who needs sound when they put everything of import on the screen. The only reason I leave it on at all is so i can hear an official explain a penalty or something.