Good-faith TV, as opposed to the other kind, is hard to find. Recent examples of both:

Good – ESPN2’s “Friday Night Fights” ringside analyst, Teddy Atlas, last week prefaced the middleweight bout between highly regarded Rhoshii Wells and 39-year-old, short-notice pay-dayer Bernard Gray (last fight, 1997) with an apology.

ESPN (on behalf of promoter Don King), said Atlas, owed its viewers – and the sport – better than the slam-dunk mismatch they were about to witness. Minutes later, Wells won a second-round KO.

Bad – The difference between an infomercial and USA Network’s Monday night telecast of the Serena Williams-Corina Morariu match was often difficult to discern.

USA several times cut from the match for in-stadium interviews with stars of USA Network shows. Worse, those interviews were followed by clips of the shows, thus live U.S. Open points were lost to network promotion.