Awful Announcing Is Back!!!..........Sort Of

When I woke up this morning and put my socks on for my first day back at my university, the last thing I expected was to stumble on the return of Awful Announcing. Well, guess what? As of Sunday, August 29, 2010, Awful Announcing is back!. Just one caveat: It is no longer Brian Powell's site. The site has been purchased from Powell by the Bloguin network and the new site features a whole host of new writers. For a little more information on what is happening, here is the first 2 paragraphs of the 1st post of the new blog written by one of Awful Announcer's new writers and seemingly new head editor: SB Nation Detroit's Brian Packey.

A little over four years ago, Brian Powell started Awful Announcing because NBA broadcaster Hubie Brown somehow let "wideopenshotability" escape from his mouth on-air. It wasn't just another spontaneous sports blog destined to fail, though. Powell had a vision for the site and built it up into one of the most well-known sports blogs on the 'net, focusing on everything broadcasting from potential sharts to random hair product placements. Unfortunately, new responsibilities prevented Powell from posting as much and, ultimately, pretty much at all (the last post prior to today was April 20, but a source close to the situation has said that he still wants to post here occasionally).

Bloguin stepped up to the plate, offering to resurrect AA and put the revered sports blog back on top where it belongs. In an increasingly competitive blogsphere, it will be a tall task, but I think we've assembled a strong enough group of writers to make it happen. We all plan to work hard to maintain the roots of the original AA site, including announcing assignments, quotables, videos, live blogs and analysis, amongst other goodies, but we'll also be splashing in our own flavor to spruce things up a bit.

It is awesome that the site is back, even if under the proverbial new management. Even though I have never read Packey's work before, the fact that he writes for an SB Nation site gives him some credibility in my book. SB Nation writers know what they are doing.

Seeing as Awful Announcing went on hiatus over 4 months ago and prior to that the site was gaining loads and loads of criticism because of Powell's increased real-world responsibilities took away from the quality of the site, it will be interesting to see how big of an audience this new site receives. Whether or not this site's readership consists mainly of old AA readers or new readers that had not heard of Awful Announcing prior to this site revival will be interesting. Myself, Mookie, and 49er16 will still be hosting NFL live blogs on Sunday and I am definitely going to have live blogs up for some MLB playoff games, but I will still be peeking over at the new AA to see what is going on there as they are claiming they will be having live blogs.

Outside of the community fostered, the thing I liked most about AA was the fact that he took long and winded press releases and condensed them into short blog posts that got to the meat and potatoes of the story while adding his opinion at the end. Since AA's decline and hiatus, no site has really been all about what AA was about. The now defunct Sporting Blog kept track of some things, but occasionally ventured into other topics. Dan Levy's new Press Coverage site is a fine new site that could turn into something like an Awful Announcing, though the site is a lot more opinionated than AA was (which is saying something because AA did have his opinions) frequently focuses more on other topics in sports media outside of announcing. While the style of writing will surely be different, if this new re-launched version of the site can deliver posts and news regarding announcers in a matter similar to what the old AA did (already there are posts on non-stories that gets talked about in July and August, Jay Mariotti, and ESPN's so-called "fantasy experts") , I think it has the potential to be a great success.