I haven’t done a sports media thoughts post in a very long while. I keep telling you life is getting into the way of my posting and this has been the case for the last two months. One of these days, it will clear up.
Here are some quick thoughts for you on this Sunday. As usual, they’ll come in bullet form.
- We’re in Week 11 of the 2013 NFL regular season and the Super Bowl is less than three months away, but you know Fox is in the planning stages of its coverage. We’ll find out that pregame coverage will probably begin around 10 or 11 a.m. ET. I’m wondering if Fox will find a way to place its Fox Sports Live program somewhere in Super Bowl Sunday. If I’m a network executive and I’m nowhere near to being one, I find a way to promote a signature studio program on the Big Day. Why not? Putting an edition of Fox Sports Live on Super Bowl Sunday on the Fox mothership would be a way to give the show a new audience and promote Fox Sports 1 at the same time.And for CBS and NBC, why not think outside the box and give two hours to their morning shows? Why not Today at the Super Bowl or CBS This Morning in the 2-4 p.m. hours and then hand off the 4-6 p.m. hours to the NFL pregame shows? The first two hours of a Super Bowl pregame show usually are forgettable and rarely provide any substance. I know the networks will argue with me on this, but I can’t remember the segments from the early portion of any Super Bowl pregame show.
Today and CBS This Morning are used to filling two-hour blocks and in the case of Today, a four-hour block. Let them handle two hours with the cooking segments, celebrity interviews and maybe even a Royal Family segment during that time before letting the NFL pregame panels handle the heavy lifting of the X’s and O’s of the game. It’s an idea. That’s why this is a thoughts post.
- This holiday season means the return of the silly Jared Jewelers ads and Lexus December to Remember commercials. If any guy goes to Jared, the home of some of the worst jewelry known to man to buy a Christmas gift for his significant other, he should not be allowed to return home. Seriously. Have you seen their products? And putting a red bow on a car? Who does that? These ads are extremely bad and get burned in our collective minds because the ad agencies buy so much time in sporting events during the holiday season. A network needs to stand up and reject them to keep the public from starting a revolt.And don’t get me started on those hideous Cialis ads which used to have bathtubs outside. Who hauled two 600 pound bathtubs into the woods? Those are very heavy. And who filled them with water? That’s a lot of work. No wonder the man is tired.
- The last few weeks, Tennis Channel has stepped up with coverage of the year-end events on both the ATP and WTA Tours plus the Davis Cup Final between Serbia and the Czech Republic. And while it has unveiled a new studio show, Tennis Channel Live which debuted last week, the channel has been hurt by not sending its announcers to the events and having them call matches off a monitor in Los Angeles. Productions can be faked by having announcers back at home soil, but the crew can’t get a feel of the crowd or see anything off camera. ESPN2 sent Cliff Drysdale, Brad Gilbert and Darren Cahill to London to call the ATP World Tour Finals and you got the feel of the event as they were able to talk about the atmosphere in the O2 Arena.Tennis Channel does good coverage of the preliminary matches, but still should send crews to the bigger tour events, not just the Grand Slams.
That will do us for now.
