The Front Row with Mark Nelke January 17, 2011

Being a DirecTV subscriber is usually a good thing on Sundays.

For one, you are able to purchase the NFL Sunday Ticket, which lets you watch any NFL game you like on Sundays, whether your local channels choose to televise it or not.

However, with DirecTV and the company which owns the Fox network squabbling over how much DirecTV should pay them to carry their programming, the local Fox channel, KAYU, has been taken off DirecTV since Jan. 1.

Tune to channel 28 and all we get is a sad note and no programming.

So we couldn't watch at our house as the Seahawks played the Bears on Sunday in an NFC divisional playoff game.

SURE, THERE were other ways to see the game - visit someone who has cable TV, visit a local sports bar, or, if you believe everything you google, watch it on the Internet by downloading something or other.

Not even being a Seahawks fan, I wasn't about to go to any of those extremes - this time. Besides, who knows what else I might have downloaded from the Internet if I'd tried to download the game.

So I fired up my 31-year-old radio and we listened to Seahawks announcers Steve Raible and Warren Moon describe the action we couldn't see.

"On the shores of Lake Washington," Raible said, describing the scene just before the game.

We knew he meant Lake Michigan but on the radio, all lakes look the same.

"Let's see if they kick it to Devin Hester," Moon said as the Seahawks lined up for their first punt of the game.

Ha, ha, very funny Warren. You're the only one of us who can "see" if they kick it to Devin Hester.

IN ANY event, it reminded me of back in the day when not every key game readily available on television.

I remember in Salt Lake City, pacing the living room and listening to a Utah Stars game in the ABA playoffs because CBS was televising the game but had blacked it out locally.

I few years later, I borrowed the keys to my mom's car and sat in the carport and listened to the Portland Trail Blazers beat the Denver Nuggets in Game 6 of the Western Conference semifinals in 1977 (hopefully her car started OK for work the next morning). A few weeks later, we celebrated - via TV, thank goodness, the Trail Blazers winning their first - and still only - NBA title.

As for Sunday's game, it sounds like we didn't miss much.

However, if we're still looking at the same sad note on the TV screen in three weeks, we may have to switch to Plan B.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via e-mail at mnelke@cdapress.com.