Fox Sports is happy to have Tim McCarver, right, working his record 16th World Series as an announcer.

But would the ratings be better without him?

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Imagine a world without sportscasters, where fans tuning to games on television get the game get only the sounds from the stadium or arena and little else. No chatter. No promos for other programming on the network.

You don't have to go too far to imagine such a world. Just a little north to Canada.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. recently locked out its unionized staff, including the announcers who provided play-by-play and color commentary on Canadian Football League games.

The reaction of fans? A big jump in ratings, with one game posting the best viewership of any regular season CFL game there in eight years.

Those critics of John Madden and Tim McCarver out there will be disappointed to know that the lockout has ended, and the announcers have returned to the games.

But as McCarver, who is both among the most praised and most maligned announcers in sports, prepared to do his record 16th World Series broadcast this weekend, the question is worth asking -- are the networks wasting millions on contracts with big-name announcers who fans would rather do without?

Even the CBC management says that's not the lesson they are taking out of the viewership increases they saw during the announcer-free games.

"I think that if you peel away the layers, they're not saying don't have anybody. They're saying we don't need as much," said Ruth-Ellen Soles, spokeswoman for the CBC. "I think we're already seeing more of that since the announcers have returned. They're holding back a little bit, especially on the play-by-play."

Sports television consultant Neal Pilson, a former president of CBS Sports who has signed his share of multi-million dollar announcing contracts, concedes that the teams involved and the quality of the game are the real keys to the ratings of an event.

He said that one of the reasons networks spend the time and effort they do building the announcing teams is that they're a part of the broadcast, along with the pictures, that they can control.

"In sports, a significant majority of viewers are tuning into an event. But we all believe that announcers do make a difference, and we compensate them accordingly," Pilson said. "You can not take an amateur and put them on a major sports property without cringing."

Pilson said networks look first to land the announcer they believe can attract a viewer to a game they wouldn't care about otherwise, although he concedes that's relatively rare. It's more common that a good team can keep viewers tuned in when the game itself turns out to be less than compelling.

"It's hard to measure. But a lot of viewers, when they gauge their satisfaction with coverage, include the announcing team as they look back to say if they enjoyed a broadcast," said Pilson.

Every announcer has fans and critics. Fox praises McCarver's work on its baseball broadcasts, as does Pilson. But his work also inspired New Yorker Thomas Baiter to start a Web site, shutuptimmccarver.com, that sees its traffic pick up to about 1,000 readers a day during the baseball postseason.

Baiter said when he was a Mets fan growing up he actually enjoyed McCarver's analysis, but now can't stand to listen to broadcasts he does. But, even with his strong feelings about McCarver, he intends to be among the millions watching the World Series.

"I'm not going to turn off the game because he's on. But it certainly does ruin the experience when I find out he's covering the game," Baiter said.

Baiter enjoys the games done by current Monday Night Football announcer John Madden. But whenever I've written about MNF's rating challenges in the past, I am sure to get e-mails from football fans blaming Madden for their personal reduced viewership.

Pilson puts Madden and partner Al Michaels among the handful of announcers he believes bring viewers to a game with their own style.

But even a strong negative reaction by some viewers to an announcer isn't necessarily a bad thing, Pilson said. He points to probably the most controversial announcer ever -- ABC Sports' Howard Cosell.

"He was the most talked about television personality of all time," said Pilson. "Whether you loved him or hated him, people wanted to hear what he had to say."

For a look at John Madden's recently announced move to a fourth network, click here.

For more on the business of sports, click here.