H.W.
Okay, so you might not like my answer, but here goes...
I had an almost 6 year old space cadet.
Then our little Space Cadet hit six.... and now seven...
AND he is still a space cadet. I think he's earning stripes and soon to be promoted in rank!:)
Really, what you might not want to hear is that I think we've figured out what's going on with our kid, likely a central auditory processing issue. We will have to take him to an audiologist for further information, but using good online checklists and asking his teacher to fill out her checklists of what she sees in class, he's hitting over half of the checkpoints just in listening alone.
I think things are harder for a kid with CAPD (central auditory processing disorder). I think team sports are hard because a person has to track a lot of communication and information very quickly. When a person has a hard time processing verbal information, social situations can become overwhelming fairly easily.
For what it's worth, in uncovering my son's challenges, I am identifying some of my own. :) For example, I cannot visualize abstract ideas unless I have a printed example. If you start talking to my about the hypothetical, I sort of glaze over. I want a concrete example instead of a description for anything of detail.
Regarding television-- in my long experience of working with a variety of kids, I have seen children who had a lot of television exposure usually had a harder time settling into play activities, but could generally sustain play and were still relatively present during group instruction or while being addressed. My son, conversely, often has very little media time (it's not uncommon that he doesn't watch tv all week) and is still Lost In Space when you ask him to do something like unpack his backpack or put on his jacket. So, that's my two cents... it may be that he's just not absorbing the verbal part of the instruction as much as any visual props or cues that might give him something more concrete to focus on.