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First let me say that I rarely cover other media since it gets a little tricky, but I'm going to make an exception here. I like Joe Buck and Tim McCarver. I think that for the most part they do a great job. But the Fox

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[NWS  Loading...      ()   ] sales team is getting a little too aggressive for my World Series taste.

I want to say that I understand capitalism and I'm all for it. And I think the people at Fox who managed to sell every piece of "The Best Damn Sports Show" set are brilliant. But at some point in a broadcast, you have to go with integrity.

Fox pays an exorbitant amount of money for these TV rights. So I suppose that in order to get what they want from advertisers they have to give them more added value than ever before.

I stayed at the game through the fourth inning last night and then went to the truck to work. In a span of an hour, I heard and saw two indefensible things.

The first one came in the fifth inning with two outs. They flashed to what looked like a fake crowd. A bunch of people with red shirts, who looked like they shot a scene in a studio. The girl in the middle was holding a digital ad for Chevy Malibu. Fox can say it was clearly an ad, but I'd argue differently. Are we really OK with the fake fans part?

The other one happened a couple minutes later in the sixth with one out. Fox flashed to the mike on the players, who just happened to be talking about the Taco Bell promotion for a minute. Again, if we have faked moments like this, how do we know that other sound when we need it is genuine?

I know the argument. In this TiVo world you have to do what you have to do. But even McCarver himself called the Taco Bell mike moment "shameless."

UPDATE:Read the Fox response to this blog post.

Questions?  Comments?