I miss Scott Saville.

Trust me, I never thought I'd string those four words together in a single sentence.

I offer those words - I miss Scott Saville - with whimsy, truth and sarcasm mixed together. I miss his sports reports on KCRG, because he's a likeable guy and enthusiastic about his work, but KGAN, KWWL and FOX-28 are just a click away.

You guessed it. We have DirecTV at our house, and this dispute between KCRG and DirecTV has lasted long enough. If I've counted correctly, KCRG has been unavailable on DirecTV for the past four weeks while the two companies try to resolve their problems.

I don't have a dog in this hunt. The Gazette Company, which owns KCRG, fired me six years ago. And DirecTV seems to go on the fritz every time there's an electrical storm, ice storm or stray cloud in the sky.

My heart does not bleed for either big-bucks company, but doggone it, Saville could make you laugh and smile for a few minutes every night while he delivered the news, never taking himself too seriously in the process.

I've invited Saville to drop by my house after the 10 p.m. news and re-enact his broadcasts, but so far he's declined. I forgot to mention the part about cookies and milk, so I'll try again the next time our paths meet.

I don't understand a whole lot about the dispute between KCRG and DirecTV. Both companies have posted their versions of the truth on their websites. It's apparently about money, but how much is unclear. There's probably enough greed to go around on both sides, but that's just a guess.

We could always call Mediacom or ImOn or somebody else and change our service to get KCRG again, but that would probably disrupt some kind of "bundle" we have for Internet and phone service and wouldn't be worth the hassle. Besides, we left Mediacom a number of years ago when it looked like they wouldn't be carrying the Big Ten Network, and a few days later Mediacom announced it had struck a deal with the Big Ten.

If we switched back now, it would probably trigger an agreement between DirectTV and KCRG and convince Mediacom to get into a fight with the local ABC affiliate about something else.

On a somewhat serious note, a good chunk of the viewing public has been denied the KCRG signal for nearly a month now. It's not just Saville and his sports reports that we're missing. There's a bunch of other sports, news, sitcoms and semi-interesting stuff as well. Are they still running "Two And A Half Men" re-runs? That show was a hoot, although it seems to be on other stations as well.

What about the advertisers? They paid good money to sell their wares on KCRG, but nobody who has DirecTV is seeing them. Those advertisers cannot be happy about that.

Advertisers aren't happy, sports fans aren't happy, soap-opera fans aren't happy, DirecTV isn't happy, KCRG officials aren't happy. Come on, folks. It's time for everyone to compromise and solve the problem.

I need to know if Scott Saville is asking intelligent questions at Fran McCaffery press conferences.