Saturday, October 01, 2005

FOX Box

Here's a little rant about the awful coverage that FOX has provided today's Yankees / Red Sox game.

At present, the fourth inning has just ended.

So far, throughout the game, there have been live cut-in score updates of the White Sox / Indians game at the rate of about one update per half inning. That's understandable because there is a direct Yankee / Red Sox playoff implication from that game. Of course, but the score updates have been updating the fact that the score is 0-0, and also interrupting game play! In addition, the screen already contains a graphic with continuous updating of the White Sox / Indians game scores. So when they go to game break, we know it won't show any scoring because the live score update still says 0-0.

The biggest abuse of all was in the bottom of the fourth, the Yankee / Red Sox game was relegated to the little FOX Box and we were forced to focus on the Chicago / Cleveland game, which was 0-0. Who cares! Nobody watching the Yankee / Red Sox game cares about the specifics of the Chicago / Cleveland game other than the results. While the FOX box would have been annoying regardless, why did the main game we all tuned in for get relegated to see in the tiny box (and audio of the Chicago / Cleveland game)?

As I finish this post, A-Rod has just hit a non-clutch, top of the 5th, one out, solo home run to put the Yankees up 6-2. Fortunately, there was no FOX box to be seen.

Hopefully one of my favorite tabloid news sports media columnists will complain about this in the next day or two, because this was a horrible misuse of the FOX box.

2 comments:

4rilla said...

Most annoying thing ever!

The nerve that Fox has to do that when so much is on the line. Your right, Yankkee and Sox fans only cared about the score. Of course we want to watch our own damn game!

Blogman said...

Cue Phil Mushnick

http://www.nypost.com/sports/28791.htm

October 2, 2005 -- BY NOW we should come to expect — if not accept — the ridiculous. We should know that on the day of the big game we’re going to see everything except what was advertised, everything except the big game. Thus, aggravating as it was, it should have come as no surprise that Fox, on two lengthy occasions and several shorter ones, turned yesterday’s Yankee-Red Sox telecast into a soundless peep show in order to turn the White Sox-Indians into the primary game in New York. Yanks-Red Sox wasn’t out of the fourth inning before Fox unplugged the video, shrunk the view to perhaps one-eighth of the screen and dropped the game into a box in the lower-right-hand corner of the screen so that we could see and hear a half-inning of Chicago- Cleveland via the latest advancements in TV technology. In the land of the blind . . . “Both games were of great interest to at least three of the teams’ fans, and we said all week that we were going to provide viewers with constant updates from both games, and at meaningful moments,” a Fox Sports spokesperson explained yesterday. “We provided just that kind of coverage.” Next time, don’t be so good to us. All we needed here ere frequent and brief updates from Cleveland, not extended live coverage that turned the Yankee-Red Sox game into a rumor. .