Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Three Channels
Monday
June 1, 2006
Thoughts while channel-flipping between the National Spelling Bee on ABC, Game 7 of the Sabres/Hurricanes series on OLN (hockey), and Game 5 of the Suns/Mavericks series (basketball) on TNT:
-I'm suspicious of the spelling bee showing up on ABC this year. My suspicious nature was doubled when Robin Roberts said at the beginning that this was "Live, Unscripted Television!" So far they've had a girl (Saryn) who looks suspiciously like the girl who won in 1997 (the one who went crazy shouting -- I remember seeing that on the ABC News feed when I had just started working in the TV news biz at ABC 25) eliminated for misspelling a word, then conveniently let back in when it was realized that the judges made a mistake. I'm close to calling shenanigans on ABC on this. If we were in sweeps, I'd go ahead and say that the fix was in.
-As they seem to do almost every night, ABC 33/40 fouled the screen with a weather update. This time they put up a graphic that told me that there was a thunderstorm in Tishomingo County. That's in Mississippi, mind you. After living in Tampa, perhaps I'm just jaded to the whole thunderstorm phenomenon, but I think warnings about small storms end up causing major storm alerts to be underestimated by the general public.
-Buffalo tied their game with Carolina at 1-all, then went up 2-1 while I was watching the spelling bee. I've finally gotten used to watching hockey on OLN, though hockey on TV without Gary Thorne doing play-by-play just isn't the same. The big "FOX Box" banner at the top of the screen annoys me to no end. It must be okay to the general public, since the wide banner style has become widespread, but I pine for the 1998 era of TV scoreboards. They've overthought the process now, with oversized logos and ridiculous banners covering up too much of the action.
-Going over to TNT quickly, they get it right with their presentation. My bro Matt is a big fan of TNT's crew over ESPN's, while I think ESPN does alright (though sister network ABC has a scorebar on the bottom that annoys me.) I can't let TNT off the hook for when they do things like coming back from commercial break with a large on-screen promo for The Closer (and let's just say that the woman who's the star of the show comes across better on non-HDTV sets), then squeezes the game into a smaller box to put stats on the screen when the action has started back up. Like I said, again it's overthinking the process.
-I do like when TNT pops up small stats, like just now when they showed the free throw totals for both teams at the bottom as Dallas brought the ball up the court. Simple, non-intrusive. That's more like it.
-What's with all of the words in the spelling bee that are of Persian origin? They take words from all sorts of origins, but when I heard three words from Persian origin in one and a half rounds, I thought something was odd.
-I'm pulling for Rajiv Tarigopula, the guy who isn't smiling. I've seen Randy Moss smile more at a press conference. This kid is stone cold. And you know what? I think it's great. The announcers told us that he even checked out of the spelling bee hotel so he could be away from the rest of them (okay, they didn't put it like that, but they might as well have.) He finished fourth last year. Rajiv's no-nonsense on-stage demeanor would make a great prototype to base an antagonist from if they ever make a Spelling Bee movie. If they do, William H. Macy must play the role of the main judge.
-How is it that TNT went to commercial, I flipped to ABC (OLN is in a commercial vacuum during the second period intermission), and ABC was in commercials for the duration of the time TNT was in its break? Phoenix's Leandro Barbosa was at the free throw line before ABC came back from the land of the sponsors.
-It's messed up to flip over to OLN and see the crowd cheering and hear the horn going off... only to find out that it was a replay of Carolina's lone goal. Don't play with my emotions like that. ESPN wouldn't have done that. And OLN, you're no ESPN.
-Did I mention how annoying the OLN banner is? It's even worse with the "East Final - Game 7" sub-banner underneath it. I suppose I can pretend my TV is broadcasting in widescreen but that it's just misframed.
-While I was typing up all of this complaining, I saw Carolina tie the game. The red light didn't come on, but the replay reveals that the puck went into the Buffalo net. With how fast the action moves, I don't understand how they normally flip on the light so quickly as it is. Game 7, tied up in the final period: this is exciting.
-Syringadenous looks much easier to spell when you see it written on the screen. It knocked out the kid from Illinois; earlier the color commentator jinxed him by saying that no one from Illinois had won in the past 75 years. The competition is down to four, and guess who's still in it? Both Stone Cold Rajiv... and Saryn the ABC ringer girl.
-Now's probably a good time to point out that it's been three years now and two NHL seasons (since we lost an entire season due to last year's work stoppage), but I'm still not used to NHL home teams wearing dark jerseys. The switch happened the year that Tampa Bay won the Stanley Cup, but it throws me off when I see Buffalo in white and I have to override my instincts which tell me that they're playing at home. It used to be simple: baseball, basketball and hockey teams wore white at home, and football squads usually wore dark at home (with some exceptions, i.e. the Dallas Cowboys.) Then the NHL had to change it up and confuse everyone.
-Stone Cold Rajiv just had a feature on him hit the air. Now how did ABC know that he was going to last this long? Uh oh, a German-native word, heiligenschein, has him rattled. It had me rattled just typing it on here, and I just had to copy it off of the screen. It's a good thing that the thunderstorm warning in Tishomingo County, MS has passed so I could copy it all down. And, oh no, it got him! Down goes Rajiv. He finally let down his icy demeanor and smiled with his family. What a moment. Now it's just three girls remaining. Oh well.
-Perhaps it's just my timing, but it seems like every time I flip to hockey, Carolina is knocking on the door. Still 2-2.
-I can't see one of those hockey beards without thinking of that Beavis and Butt-head episode where they cut their hair and tried gluing it to their face and were asked by a girl at the mall, "Don't you know that beards went out in the 80s?"
-TNT has a feature tonight where they have a microphone on Dan Crawford, one of the officials for the Suns/Mavericks. I'm not sure how I feel about that. The chance to listen in I like, but the idea of the refs talking up for the TV exposure I don't like. Like in Game 4 of this series, I saw Steve Nash do the Howie Mandel fist-punch greeting to a referee after they had a conversation. Then again, I'd be doing that too if the refs weren't calling moving picks on the guys getting me open.
-Saryn the ABC Ringer girl is out. She gave it a good run, but so it goes. My conspiracy theory is up in flames. Note: I couldn't have spelled icteritious, either. Or most any of the words that are being thrown out there tonight.
-I flipped to OLN just in time to see the Carolina fans celebrating, as the Hurricanes had just scored. Of course, after the false alarm earlier, I didn't believe it at first. I'm pulling for Edmonton in the finals either way, but I've been cheering for Buffalo in this series. Why? Because an Edmonton/Buffalo finals just feels right for the sport. And because tortured Buffalo fans got screwed in Game 6 of the 1999 Finals by the infamous Brett Hull "no goal" triple OT goal where he was in the crease when he scored.
-Incidentally, Buffalo played in the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium until 1996, which was too small for a modern-sized regulation NHL rink. I always found that funny, much like how the Orlando Arena is too small for a full-sized Arena Football field and has the end zones slightly cut off.
-Buffalo is on a power play, down by one with less than four minutes to play, and I can't turn away.
-Did I read the on-screen correctly: the first two games of the Stanley Cup Finals will be on OLN?!? NBC wouldn't even spring for airing all of the Finals? Good grief. Meanwhile, Buffalo can't get anything going, and they just called a timeout. I love the obscure hockey timeout.
|  | Hockey beards: yes. Touching the trophy: no.
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-Oooh, the spelling bee is still going on, and it's 9 PM Central. ABC is shilling hard for ABC PrimeTime Live, the words are coming fast, and they just pulled out an arabic word. Somebody is giving the producers a hard wrap. But both girls are staying strong.
-I flipped to OLN, saw Carolina score to seal the game (up two with less than a minute to go), and managed to get back to ABC without missing a word. My remote control skills are strong.
-They're down to 11 words left now in the spelling bee. You'd think they'd have hundreds of words on standby. I know that there's a protocol for what happens when they run out of words, but still it makes me laugh. At that point they should make them start naming international NBA players' last names. "Great, I get Nikoloz Tskitishvili, and she'll get Nenê."
|  | Beavis & Butt-head, fresh from an eating contest.
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-Another Beavis and Butt-head moment: when the word wetscmerz came up in the spelling bee, I couldn't help but think of the episode Eating Contest with the line, "That is not eating bratwurst," (guy downs an incredible amount of bratwurst) "That is eating bratwurst." I'm slap-happy from all of this.
-The Canadian girl pronounced the letter "Z" in wetscmerz as "Zed", which is the international pronunciation. Hilarious stuff. Too bad she misspelled the word.
-The New Jersey girl won the bee on the word ursprache. On ABC, the Spelling Bee trophy is being presented. On OLN, the Prince of Wales Trophy is being presented to Carolina. Apparently in the NHL, there's some sort of jinx about not touching the conference championship trophy.
-There was a prominent ad for Imitrex displayed in the on-board advertising in the Carolina/Buffalo game, which was kind of cool to see. Considering how much that medicine has helped me in overcoming migraines, it's one advertisement I don't mind seeing.
-It's halftime of the Mavs/Suns game. I could write about the thrilling Papa John's new fajita pizza commercial on TNT, but I've had enough. As it is, I might need to pop an Imitrex after jumping back and forth from all of that action. My head is about to explode...
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