Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Falling Off The Map
Monday
August 22, 2005
"Why are you phoning
What am I to do when you're miles away"
-James "Tomorrow"
I caught some of the Cowboys/Seahawks game on ABC's Monday Night Football last night. Naturally, they had to mess with the graphics and put the score and the time/quarter info in a bar at the bottom of the screen. Couldn't they leave well enough alone and leave it the way it was? I despite the "all the way across the screen" bar (versus the "in the corner" approach that only CBS seems to have retianed). FOX screwed it up by going with that awful looking "FOX Box" about 4-5 years ago, and the copycats jumped on the bandwagon. I don't get it. Meanwhile, this has to be the worst decision graphically for MNF since they tried to be too clever and put "Fins" for Dolphins and put nicknames for the team nicknames, which I don't think lasted even an entire season.
With the bottom of the screen bar, this will surely be screwed up with severe weather crawls, local station bugs (the logo for the station) etc. as the regular season approaches. Naturally, this was likely overlooked by the powers that be at ABC. I know this sort of thing first-hand from my time in TV, but the people who work in graphics typically overlook the big picture, since they are working so hard at making the graphic itself look good and not thinking about how it fits into the overall presentation. This isn't directed at anyone in particular; I saw that at WEHT and WSAZ and WTSP. It's just the nature of the beast. I happen to be very observant of that sort of thing (and that dates back to when I was a little kid; it's just an intrinsic part of my nature). Unfortunately my art skill is shit (though I think eight years of criticism under the late Sister Janet Marie at Overbrook in Art class didn't do anything to improve my medicore-at-best talent), but I can see the big picture and point out what looks good and what doesn't in a given TV broadcast. Sometimes people get tired of hearing that sort of thing, I'm sure, but I really don't care.
The show Six Feet Under on HBO is over, and I'm with Bill Simmons; I couldn't care less. Notice that I didn't say "I could care less", which some people say. I hate when people say that. If you could care less, you're saying that you do care to some degree. I like to ask people who say "I could care less" what would make them care less... and then enjoy the confused look on their face. Idiots.
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