I think the two underlying things which are awful about Nine's coverage are the intentional dumbing down of the commentary and the commentators being cheer leaders rather than analysts.
Someone like Michael Slater, when he first started commentary, provided really good insights into the game. He doesn't even try now. The same with Ian Healy. When Mark Nicholas does a domestic LO game, he starts talking technical matters cricket and it's brilliant. Really incisive. But when the international season starts they flick the switch to vaudeville and it's awful. I think the saddest of all is Mark Taylor. Sad not just because he's a Liberal Party supporter and loves John Howard, but tragic because he had such great tactical nous as a captain, and we get little to none of it on the tv. If he was offering the sort of insight he is capable of, I'd be prepared to forgive the upward inflection at the end of every word. It's flat out awful, and just when you think they are all complete idiots, they have a lunch break and Warne/ Taylor/ Healy do a masterclass on their specialised skill and it's beyond wonderful. Taylor and Slater talking one time about opening the batting, rotating the strike, knowing where their off stump was etc was ****ing mind blowing. Warne doing the same thing with leg spin was flat out incredible. Just watching the control he had and how he thought about his bowling - it was like he became a different person. But I think the best of all was Ian Healy doing a spiel on 'keeping. It was ridiculously enlightening. I dead set thought they'd put an Ian Healy mask on a real person for the segment, it was that good.
Most people don't like Ian Chappell, but he speaks his mind and gives decent insights into things. When Channel Nine started commentating, he was probably the weakest link of the fab four (Richie, Tony, Bill and Chappelli). These days imo he is easily the strongest of the Nine commentators.
I miss Bill, Tony and Richie. I like it when Bill comes back for the Boxing Day test, but I wish he was still about all the time. Sure he is parochial and gets excited, but he's prepared to call it as he sees it, and his humour (especially at Greig's expense) is badly missed. I remember when they used to do these postcard pieces from whichever city they were in and they cut away to pics of Bondi beach with Greigy saying "Look at that Bill, just magnificent. Only a short walk down the road from my place, too". "Yeah, why don't you get out in the western suburbs with the real people, Tony Greig?"
Now you've got, as Steve said, polls about pizza, you have that idiot James Brayshaw who is beneath contempt and real boys' club in-"jokes" between a bunch of blokes who mostly played in the same side. Maybe they need to get some blokes from different eras. Someone else from the 70s or 80s (you know who, TOTAB) or sack the lot of them and just bring in the BBL commentary team from channel ten.