Globex Corporation Newsletter

Normally I'm able to avoid sports on the Fox Network. The last couple of weeks have been tough, though with the World Series, watching Vikings games for new Tice material and the Broncos playing Philadelphia at home. Yeah, after two weeks, I realize why I avoid sports on Fox, it gives me a headache.

I'll start with the World Series and baseball in general. I'll start off by making a very non-Mega-Bitch Tuesday comment, I love Fox's primary baseball team of Joe Buck and Tim McCarver. I probably like ESPN's Sunday night team of Joe Morgan and John Miller more, but Buck and McCarver approach the game with a sense of humor that reminds us that it is just a game. In an era of multi-million dollar contracts we sometimes seem to forget that. And for real fun, catch them on ESPN's PTI sometime.

A fine announce team can't make up for the complete CF that Fox has turned their baseball games into. First of all, it's the hype. OK, it's hard to overhype a World Series game, but in July for instance, I believe it's impossible to have a "Battle for the ages" between two third place teams. You've got talking baseballs and graphics everywhere. The graphics wouldn't be so bad, they provide information that allows the announcer not have to note the count on a batter, but every graphic has it's own sound effect. Never mind that you've got a walk off home run (and I hate that term - maybe next week...) and the crowd is going nuts, we have to hear the Bling-Bling-Bloop as the score of the game changes in Fox's graphic in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

It's turned into a video game. Someone, more likely a committee of idiots, at Fox Sports decided that baseball would attract a younger, hipper, more affluent demographic if baseball looked and sounded more like a damn video game, and Fox Sports has done everything in their power to make that happen. You still hear the "crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd" promos for games on Fox, unfortunately when you watch a game you can hear neither because of all the damn sound effects. In my opinion, Fox is ruining baseball and that would be cause for alarm except that baseball with over-expansion and it's lax attitude toward steroids is ruining itself.

Now football lends itself a little more to this type of nonsense. I don't like it any better, though. Football has always been the perfect game for television. There's action for about 10 seconds then there's 30 seconds for replays and analysis. It's worked pretty well on TV for the entire Super Bowl era. Fox got an NFL television contract in the early 90's and promised to deliver "Football with a Fox Attitude." Unfortunately for us, they followed through on that threat. All the sound effects and all the graphics and all the hype, I just hate it.

The biggest sin of Fox Sports' Football coverage is their use of the "Game Break." It's a long standing tradition in TV Football coverage to show a highlight from another game that's going on, "Denver's ahead here, but let's take a look at what's going on in San Diego, where the Kansas City Chiefs are trying to keep pace with the Broncos in the AFC West." These "Game Breaks" used to actually have a meaning, now we see end zone celebrations, we see plays from games that mean nothing to anybody. Worse yet, we see highlights, not from games in progress, oh no, we see highlights from games that have been completed for an hour or more. Look, you've only got 30 seconds or so before the next play in our game, talk about our game or something that's happening now. Don't show me something that happened two hours ago. I saw that two hours ago, or at the very least, during halftime of the previous game.

The very worst example of this was last Thanksgiving when Fox, who had the early game, broke into their game to show highlights of games that had occured FOUR DAYS BEFORE!!!!!!! We live in a highlight crazy culture, Fox is not to blame for that, ESPN is, anything you show from four days earlier, well, we've already seen it - about 40 times. Why would you bother? Why would you take me away from a game in progress to show me something I've already seen ad nauseum? You've got 30 seconds until the next play, show me something I haven't seen. Maybe something from the game I'm watching now. Maybe the last play, from a different angle. At the very least, give me some analysis, why did or didn't that play work?

I pick on Fox Sports here. They aren't the only ones pulling this crap, but they pretty much started it and they are by far the worst at it.

BOJ