Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Roundabout Now
Tuesday
October 1, 2002
"I know things will get better..."
-Tracy Chapman "Fast Car"
"They might make you think you're happy
Yeah maybe for a minute or two
But they can't make you laugh
No they can't make you feel the way that I do"
-Everclear "I Will Buy You A New Life"
We've reached October, and playoff baseball is here. Right now the Twins and A's are playing on, of all networks, the ABC Family Channel!?!?!
You know how often my TV is turned to that channel? Here's a clue -- the last time it was there for more than 0.005 seconds, it was last October when they had baseball and it was known as "Fox Family". I think there must be thousands of others like me who spent several minutes today scouring their selection of seldom-watched channels trying to find the game. Adding to the confusion is that they used the ESPN on camera graphics (complete with the ESPN logo -- couldn't they at least use the ABC Sports deal for this?).
ESPN Classic was showing a 2000 playoff game between the New York Mets and the Houston Astros last night. One thing that really stood out was that Fox had a normal looking scorebox in the corner, not the eternally annoying black bar across the top that they introduced in 2001. And I thought wow, the 2000 graphics looked good. The bar at the top really needs to go. UPN 44 (WTOG) in Tampa copied it for their Bucs pre-season coverage this year. Made me want to choke somebody out; I was not amused.
Now I differ from ESPN's Bill Simmons about liking the on-screen graphics showing the score and time. He detests it, though more because it makes impossible the faux argument of "oh honey there's only two minutes left in the game". Of course, being single, I can watch whatever I damn well please whenever I want, so perhaps different situations precipitate different outlooks.
Not much else to say right now... Go Yankees!
Okay, one more thing... Here's a look at the dramatic increase in traffic this site saw last month (July is slightly inflated from a short-lived poor decision to directly link a few pics on whatsbetter.com).
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