I have an alias in my client that does

LL =
l n
l e
l s
l w

Having used this for a bit, I know the last result is always the west one, first is always the north etc. It works pretty well for me and if do up and down manually (in order to cut down on spam the rest of the time I use it).

For scan, what you propose does have big advantages in that I don't need to scroll back to determine what direction the creature at the top of my screen are in.

However, it also has disadvantages in some senses, because it adds lines of text and therefore will force you to scroll back in some cases where you otherwise would not have.

On the whole, I think I'd be in favor of the change so suggest (but I'd also like my "ranged" scan).