Steve, being a natural born contrarian your appeal for "no flames" incites me to do just that, alas having read your dissertation I can only report that it mirrors my own findings associated with the problem of processing "live" NBTV through a sound card into my software.
Once the low frequencies are lost to the extent that there is programme-on-sync there appears to be little one can do except to "fly-wheel" (if possible) and recover once that situation abates.
The one saving grace is that common programme material generally ends up being random enough for such large swings to be relatively unusual.
None-the-less even under those circumstances determining a best-placed sync slice is problematic.
I have thought in the past whether a form of lowpass pre-emphasis and/or an inverse frequency response post-emphasis??? :-/ arrangement might improve things but whether it would improve things enough to warrant the additional complexity is debatable.
But if you can think of anything I can flame you about please let me know...
Wikipedia:
Flaming (Internet), the act of posting deliberately hostile messages on the Internet used mainly by a troll.
In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory,[2] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community
A contrarian is a person who takes up a position opposed to that of the majority, no matter how unpopular.