This guy is not totally wrong but he is also way off about pretty much everything even just simple basic facts. He writes "Michigan Stadium, the third‑largest sports venue on earth." which is not even remotely true. Michican Stadium isn't even in the top 5 of venues in the US never mind globally[0]. And thats if you just take capacity counts at face value and don't try to include places that have huge standing room capacity like horse racing tracks.
Interesting, and I have also finished live football games thinking it would have been better to just watch it on TV at home.
However, his claim that a spectator would "automatically reframe what she saw into the way it would appear on television" is never supported other than him saying "trust me, it's true, if you don't believe me you are in the minority".
I think of football as one of the killer apps for tv. Baseball is one for radio: baseball is almost always better over radio; there’s lots of space to do something else at the pace of most baseball games.
Baseball is killer in-person but it's also pretty nice to just have on TV. There is nothing else like the tension of a critical at-bat.
Football is actually really really weird for a spectator sport and, I think, is generally presented very poorly. 80% of the game is deciphering opposing formations to determine what they each are predicting the opposing formation is about to try to do.
Football is just a really complicated sport; one reason I think it’s popular is that it’s fun on a visceral physical individual level (“Wow, look at that run/block/hit/kick”) for ‘beginners’ watching and is also intellectually engaging as you learn more, “wait, how did they shift the secondary just now??”
Baseball - I like it in lots of forms, too. But I think a good radio announcer can get you most of the fun out of a critical at bat narrating.
Lots of Olympic events seem well suited to the format. BMX racing, freestyle skiing, luge/skeleton, and a variety of track and field events all have runs that last for less than a couple of minutes. Not sure if there’s anything comparable in the realm of professional sports besides highlights
That's actually an interesting question. Table tennis, maybe? Each volley is the right length for a TikTok video, and some of them (certainly not all) have spectacular long-distance lob+smash plays.
Seems like it plays well with vertical video orientation too.
that may be. but that's like saying, "XYZ is a killer app for vinyl" haha.
football as a televised spectator sport? trending down. it's not dead, but where growth is measured, it is not good. the cultural thing this guy is talking about in the article, it's going away. fewer and fewer people every year value the aesthetic experience he is describing.
TV ownership? trending down. they've never been cheaper for a reason. trend for TV production since peak TV? down.
football as a gambling product? up. okay, do you see what i mean by bad growth? football mediated as betting stats on apps? up. draftkings, polymarket, ESPN fantasy app ARPPU? up. ESPN streaming app ARPU? down. comcast? hated, down, everyone is cheering for it to go down. do you see?
there is no way to talk about specific instances of football (and stadium sports') cultural weaknesses without sounding really cringe. maybe just, "who cares?"
Do you have sales or survey data to support this claim? I’m willing to believe individual households might be less likely to purchase TVs, but my understanding is that manufacturers are producing as many or even more screens than ever, though that might be for commercial or business use. Incidentally, it’s efficiency from this scale that allows manufacturers to sell televisions at such low prices, not a lack of demand.
haha well you wouldn't have thought that at some point in the past, tv set ownership was like 100%, so of course it has gone down, but it's still trending down. this also seems kind of obvious to me.
Hmmm. NFL revenue continues to grow, with something like half of it from media licensing. So, I think you’re wrong. My son watches NFL on his laptop, but there’s little to distinguish how he watches it from the experience he would have on a Samsung tv - he’s not like in some chat group trying to get Ochocinco to write his name on a jersey - he’s passively consuming an edited video feed of a football game with commentary.
i didn't say the NFL made less money, because i'm not stupid. i'm trying to describe a secular trend so i'm comparing the revenue growth in different media companies. looking at this table, a simple way to interpret this is, kind of obviously, netflix isn't really about presenting on TVs per se, they make a media platform, which performed way better than the NFL did, almost 10:1, which is really reinforcing my point no? for every 1 dollar someone gives NFL, consumers give Netflix 9. see? to me that is a trend going down, even if to you, it is a trend going up. depends what your benchmark is!
another POV: other people do a better job at making NFL content than the NFL does, which is what you are saying your son is consuming. and listen, honestly, ask him if he or his friends bet on football...
Whenever I think it might be worth it to finally go watch an NFL game live, and I start looking at those ticket prices, I start to question if it's worth it or not. Then I get to the seat view simulator and instantly close the tab because holy hell are the "affordable" NFL seats absolutely terrible to watch a game from. Can you even see the player numbers let alone the names? I guess you need to be a big enough fan to know all the players by number on offense, defense, special teams, and the full depth chart for every position in case there are injuries.
Nah. A one time purchase of a 77" TV with surround sound was absolutely the better option.
I went to go see a Broncos game once about 10 years ago, it was $400 for a single ticket. I was in the top section, 3 rows from the back, I needed a Sherpa to help me get to my seat. I could tell there was a game of football being played down below me, but that was about it. I couldn't see the ball, I couldn't read any of the players' numbers, I couldn't see the refs hand signals. A beer and a hotdog was $30, and there was a 10-minute wait for the trough urinal in the bathroom. I was just watching the game on the jumbotron, which based on the distance was comparatively smaller than the TV in my living room.
The atmosphere was great, cheering with 75,000 other fans is exhilarating, but I haven't felt the need to go again. Soccer, hockey, basketball, baseball, I've all been to multiple times, the Denver stadiums for them are great, and the tickets and concessions aren't too expensive. Football is the only sport I really follow, but I'll never go to another game. The local high school is within walking distance, and a ticket is $5.
I used to go to Rockies games over the summer with coworkers after work and buy cheap seats in the rockpile and everyone would drink and eat and just leave when they felt like it. It's probably the best live sports experience I've ever had.
Maybe, but soccer doesn't have very many situations where there are ~14 players standing in spitting distance of each other and a 6 inch shift in the position of the ball or a single player has huge implications for the outcome of the game.
It's the LA Times, a clearly American newspaper, so of course the reader must assume football = "American" football. This is not contentious.
Further, the contention of the article is simply that there are many perspectives to a game like (American) football, and every perspective is limited in some way, not receiving the full information of everything happening simultaneously, and this also applies to any video source. Not sure how that relates to fascism, but somehow it apparently does. Regardless, the contention is just as applicable to soccer (aka the shortened name the brits made for Association Football)
I'd be interested in what kind of eSports game is condusive to VR spectating.
I tried doing Dota spectating before, and rigged up a mod for Minecraft vlogging/spectating, and concluded it wasn't quite like being at a stadium, or watching it on Twitch in a way that was interesting.
I am convinced that there is an absurd amount of unrealized potential for spectating in eSports. But everyone seems to just deliver an experience that is more-or-less "like playing the game yourself, but worse, and with forced-hype commentary" rather than an actually engaging spectator product.
>During the college football playoffs, ESPN’s family of networks will sometimes show the same game on multiple channels, with one channel broadcasting the whole affair from the Skycam camera. This is a remote camera hovering above and behind the line of scrimmage, replicating the perspective one sees in a video game. Coaches call this the “All‑22” view, because all 22 players on the field are simultaneously observable.
We watched some games last year on the all-22 (because it was the only way we could watch it on ESPN+).
You definitely lose a lot by not having the close-ups, the slow motion replay, etc. That said, you actually get to see many more of the little things that are kind of cool - what teams do to set up for a play, what coaches are doing between plays, how players and officials interact, etc.
I stumbled across an all-22 broadcast during this recent CFP and really liked it, however they didn't have any commentary at all. I do like to hear the color commentary from people who know how to analyze the game (usually former players).
I've never heard this called all-22, and I've been around a lot of football. I played from middle to high school, and my dad has filmed all but 1 high school game for the same school for 37 years. I've exclusively heard this referred to as "wide angle" by filmographers and coaches alike.
It's often pointed out that the ball is only live for about 18 minutes of every game. But what makes football so fascinating is that for every play there are 22 different jobs being executed at the same time. And the jobs change every play.
For something like baseball, you can basically see everything happening in frame the whole time. But for football, the game is so information dense that you can spend hours unpacking the game afterwards to see what was going on. That's why replays and highlights are so much more satisfying. And that's what makes it fun to analyze and or watch videos during the week - you can find all sort of unique or interesting aspects just watching the same play again and analyzing a different personnel group.
It also explains why cameras are everywhere (besides them being just flat out cheaper for high school games, etc). Film study is a crucial part of the game for players - more than in any other sport.
I kinda went into this article hoping he was gonna touch on a topic i find distasteful about modern televised football.
Years ago, TNT for NBA games had this annoying habit during live action where they would follow a player after they scored or whatever and cut back to broadcast view, but it was so late, you would lose considerable amounts of context into the next possession and the players would already be in their actions(sometimes the player being followed would be involved in this action to make it even more stark that you were missing important context).
the NFL, has this pretty much every single play, for a game where the setup matters a lot. they'll cut to the fans, the sidelines, a player's face... and then with a second before the ball is snapped, they'll show the broadcast view, and you'll have to make a quick read into what the offense/defense is showing.
Kinda kept hoping he'd lead there with the funny "fascism" statements, but it never really led to a criticism of the broadcast, and he just kept harping on the same point that anything besides broadcast view is trash, and how he assumes everyone forces broadcast view in their mind instead.
I'm pretty negative about the modern sports broadcast experience, so i guess i was pretty let down seeing an article with a title like this... and instead of it being a critique, it was a celebration of it.
He even kinda setup the point about important context with his skyview cam stuff, and just still comes back to the same point, that broadcast is best...
I also don't wanna pretend everyone would want the same experience I do, but that brings me to another issue i have with the broadcasts in general. The generalist broadcaster is the beloved announcer in modern broadcasts, but it just feels lazy.. why is there not 4 different broadcasts for major games that deliver products catered to casual viewers, enthusiasts, kids? The casual viewer would probably prefer to see a fan wearing a funny hat, but the enthusiast would prefer to see the formation 5 seconds sooner.
> why is there not 4 different broadcasts for major games that deliver products catered to casual viewers, enthusiasts, kids? The casual viewer would probably prefer to see a fan wearing a funny hat, but the enthusiast would prefer to see the formation 5 seconds sooner.
CBS Paramount directly explored that space a bit. They experimented with showing the same games on CBS or CBS Sports and on Nickelodeon. The Nickelodeon version would include things like "slime cams" and silly sound effects, you know for kids. (Or for adults watching a playoff game with less interest in who won and more interest in background viewing and distractions from other party topics like politics.) It was an interesting experiment. Possibly something to replicate, but also certainly with as many channels involved in Sports as serious business not something that will be easily replicated.
> Soccer is exclusively about atmosphere and identity, so the experience of being in the crowd and the experience of the game itself are only nominally associated, in the same way going to see the Grateful Dead in the late 1980s was only nominally about music.
This man has absolutely no idea what he's talking about x)
Bit silly considering the scoreboard typically has a TV that shows the most important bits that would have been seen at home anyway. His argument may have made sense in 1980 before TVs were introduced in stadiums.
For an actually interesting topic worthy of your time, check out how 1st down markers are calculated and shown on screen at home. It’s much more complicated than you’d think.
The article presents its thesis ad nauseum, the idea that "everyone is always mentally reframing the game into the TV view, even if they think they aren't", but never makes any effort to prove the thesis or provide supporting evidence. I'm not convinced he even defines what "reframing it in my mind" even means. Throughout the entire article, the question in my mind is "in what way? What does 'reframing' it look like? What exactly are you claiming I'm doing?", and at no point is that question answered.
A hypothetical is set up where a woman gets to see one great play close up, but the rest of the game happens nowhere near her seat. If your thesis was that "football is better on TV because you get all these unique angles and instant replays that you can't get from the one seat's position", this would be a solid argument. But the thesis is that "we all imagine the TVs camera angle in our heads", and at the end of this hypothetical, you simply assert that this is what she's doing the rest of the game. "It must be true because it must be true", this is just a circular argument.
There is a bit about how every game in modern day is being recorded on cell phones, which is truly irrelevant. That games are being recorded by audience members is a. true of all sports and b. unrelated to what each person is thinking about in their heads in the moment, whether they are or are not the ones doing the recording. That recording, after all, is only from the perspective of the one seat, their present view of the game is unaltered by the presence of cameras in the audience.
There's another point, perhaps meant to follow from the previous irrelevant point, about memories of a party vs a video recording of a party. The idea is that if you watch the recording for a month, that recording will be the only thing you remember, but it's extremely unclear in what way this is meant to relate to the thesis. What you supposedly imagine in your head in the perceptual present has nothing to do with what you remember a month later, and it's not remotely surprising that reinforcing the memory of a recording over the course of a month will cause it to be more easily recalled than memories from the event itself. It's common knowledge that the human brain does not commit every detail and every moment to memory, and it's trivial to demonstrate that this is true: simply attempt to remember what color shirt you wore last Wednesday. There is interesting psychology here, but its simply not related to the premise in any way.
Then there's the throwaway comment about it being "fascism", where you seem to reduce the definition to just "mild behavioral conditioning". This is both based on your premise, which you have not provided proof for, and goes nowhere. It doesn't lead to any further point or conclusion, it's just an aside, "by the way I think that means it's fascism because I think that word means mind control". Even if we assume your premise is true, its more than a little bit of a stretch to say that counts as "mind control". All you've done is dilute the meaning of the word to the point of banality.
The essay is a great example of a mindset that devalues the subjective and strives to rebrand it as objective. Paradoxically it shows insecurity. "My experience doesn't count unless it's The Truth."
You like a thing. That's fine. That's enough. There's no need to prove the worth of your own enjoyment by fantasizing that it conquers everyone else's brain too.
You're the adult now. You're allowed to like it just because you like it.
To me, this is the only real football game: https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football.
(No spoilers please!)
Better on mobile browser.
This guy is not totally wrong but he is also way off about pretty much everything even just simple basic facts. He writes "Michigan Stadium, the third‑largest sports venue on earth." which is not even remotely true. Michican Stadium isn't even in the top 5 of venues in the US never mind globally[0]. And thats if you just take capacity counts at face value and don't try to include places that have huge standing room capacity like horse racing tracks.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sports_venues_by_capac...
Interesting, and I have also finished live football games thinking it would have been better to just watch it on TV at home.
However, his claim that a spectator would "automatically reframe what she saw into the way it would appear on television" is never supported other than him saying "trust me, it's true, if you don't believe me you are in the minority".
I think of football as one of the killer apps for tv. Baseball is one for radio: baseball is almost always better over radio; there’s lots of space to do something else at the pace of most baseball games.
I spent a summer building a car in a garage with baseball on the radio. That was the most I’ve enjoyed the game by far.
Baseball is killer in-person but it's also pretty nice to just have on TV. There is nothing else like the tension of a critical at-bat.
Football is actually really really weird for a spectator sport and, I think, is generally presented very poorly. 80% of the game is deciphering opposing formations to determine what they each are predicting the opposing formation is about to try to do.
Football is just a really complicated sport; one reason I think it’s popular is that it’s fun on a visceral physical individual level (“Wow, look at that run/block/hit/kick”) for ‘beginners’ watching and is also intellectually engaging as you learn more, “wait, how did they shift the secondary just now??”
Baseball - I like it in lots of forms, too. But I think a good radio announcer can get you most of the fun out of a critical at bat narrating.
What’s the sport for short form video?
Lots of Olympic events seem well suited to the format. BMX racing, freestyle skiing, luge/skeleton, and a variety of track and field events all have runs that last for less than a couple of minutes. Not sure if there’s anything comparable in the realm of professional sports besides highlights
I wish it were chess boxing. I love chess boxing.
Basketball trick shots and single plays?
That's actually an interesting question. Table tennis, maybe? Each volley is the right length for a TikTok video, and some of them (certainly not all) have spectacular long-distance lob+smash plays.
Seems like it plays well with vertical video orientation too.
that may be. but that's like saying, "XYZ is a killer app for vinyl" haha.
football as a televised spectator sport? trending down. it's not dead, but where growth is measured, it is not good. the cultural thing this guy is talking about in the article, it's going away. fewer and fewer people every year value the aesthetic experience he is describing.
TV ownership? trending down. they've never been cheaper for a reason. trend for TV production since peak TV? down.
football as a gambling product? up. okay, do you see what i mean by bad growth? football mediated as betting stats on apps? up. draftkings, polymarket, ESPN fantasy app ARPPU? up. ESPN streaming app ARPU? down. comcast? hated, down, everyone is cheering for it to go down. do you see?
there is no way to talk about specific instances of football (and stadium sports') cultural weaknesses without sounding really cringe. maybe just, "who cares?"
>TV ownership? trending down.
Do you have sales or survey data to support this claim? I’m willing to believe individual households might be less likely to purchase TVs, but my understanding is that manufacturers are producing as many or even more screens than ever, though that might be for commercial or business use. Incidentally, it’s efficiency from this scale that allows manufacturers to sell televisions at such low prices, not a lack of demand.
haha well you wouldn't have thought that at some point in the past, tv set ownership was like 100%, so of course it has gone down, but it's still trending down. this also seems kind of obvious to me.
[1] https://www.tvtechnology.com/news/ces2024-smartphone-ownersh...[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/
[3] https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2020/nielsen-estimates-121-...
Hmmm. NFL revenue continues to grow, with something like half of it from media licensing. So, I think you’re wrong. My son watches NFL on his laptop, but there’s little to distinguish how he watches it from the experience he would have on a Samsung tv - he’s not like in some chat group trying to get Ochocinco to write his name on a jersey - he’s passively consuming an edited video feed of a football game with commentary.
okay, let's look:
i didn't say the NFL made less money, because i'm not stupid. i'm trying to describe a secular trend so i'm comparing the revenue growth in different media companies. looking at this table, a simple way to interpret this is, kind of obviously, netflix isn't really about presenting on TVs per se, they make a media platform, which performed way better than the NFL did, almost 10:1, which is really reinforcing my point no? for every 1 dollar someone gives NFL, consumers give Netflix 9. see? to me that is a trend going down, even if to you, it is a trend going up. depends what your benchmark is!another POV: other people do a better job at making NFL content than the NFL does, which is what you are saying your son is consuming. and listen, honestly, ask him if he or his friends bet on football...
[1] https://www.footballscoop.com/news/report-nfl-rakes-14-billi...
[2] https://www.sportspro.com/news/nfl-revenue-2024-financial-ye...
[3] https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2016/10...
[4] https://www.sportsvalue.com.br/en/nba-teams-surpassed-us-11-...
[5] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NFLX/netflix/reven...
[6] https://www.wallstreetzen.com/stocks/us/nasdaq/nflx/revenue
[7] https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl
Whenever I think it might be worth it to finally go watch an NFL game live, and I start looking at those ticket prices, I start to question if it's worth it or not. Then I get to the seat view simulator and instantly close the tab because holy hell are the "affordable" NFL seats absolutely terrible to watch a game from. Can you even see the player numbers let alone the names? I guess you need to be a big enough fan to know all the players by number on offense, defense, special teams, and the full depth chart for every position in case there are injuries.
Nah. A one time purchase of a 77" TV with surround sound was absolutely the better option.
I went to go see a Broncos game once about 10 years ago, it was $400 for a single ticket. I was in the top section, 3 rows from the back, I needed a Sherpa to help me get to my seat. I could tell there was a game of football being played down below me, but that was about it. I couldn't see the ball, I couldn't read any of the players' numbers, I couldn't see the refs hand signals. A beer and a hotdog was $30, and there was a 10-minute wait for the trough urinal in the bathroom. I was just watching the game on the jumbotron, which based on the distance was comparatively smaller than the TV in my living room.
The atmosphere was great, cheering with 75,000 other fans is exhilarating, but I haven't felt the need to go again. Soccer, hockey, basketball, baseball, I've all been to multiple times, the Denver stadiums for them are great, and the tickets and concessions aren't too expensive. Football is the only sport I really follow, but I'll never go to another game. The local high school is within walking distance, and a ticket is $5.
I used to go to Rockies games over the summer with coworkers after work and buy cheap seats in the rockpile and everyone would drink and eat and just leave when they felt like it. It's probably the best live sports experience I've ever had.
College is a good alternative. I go to one of my almae matres' games every year. To me, it's way more fun than NFL for a fraction of the price.
I agree NFL is best at home. Hopefully OTA broadcasts remain a thing for a long time to come.
One time purchase? How are you watching?
Since I would maintain an NFL+ subscription regardless of my attendance at a game or the purchase of a large TV, I don't factor it in.
I got the TV specifically with the money I redirected from an NFL tickets budget line.
Probably an OTA antenna and/or streaming
I’ve only ever seen Klosterman do friendly interviews. I think his work would improve if it was challenged more.
It wasn't until he mentioned 'soccer' that I realised football meant American football.
I guessed American when it was compared to Hockey, Baseball and Basketball.
In Melbourne, Australia, Football is again another sport (but it not being called Footy gives it a way).
Surprisingly, the natively english speaking world is about evenly split on "soccer" vs "football".
Most of what he writes (including the part on the skycam) applies to soccer as well.
Maybe, but soccer doesn't have very many situations where there are ~14 players standing in spitting distance of each other and a 6 inch shift in the position of the ball or a single player has huge implications for the outcome of the game.
Soccer fans also miss out on an hour of commercials each game (it's easy to skip the ones at halftime).
It's the LA Times, a clearly American newspaper, so of course the reader must assume football = "American" football. This is not contentious.
Further, the contention of the article is simply that there are many perspectives to a game like (American) football, and every perspective is limited in some way, not receiving the full information of everything happening simultaneously, and this also applies to any video source. Not sure how that relates to fascism, but somehow it apparently does. Regardless, the contention is just as applicable to soccer (aka the shortened name the brits made for Association Football)
Unless LA stood for Latin America haha.
I'd be interested in what kind of eSports game is condusive to VR spectating.
I tried doing Dota spectating before, and rigged up a mod for Minecraft vlogging/spectating, and concluded it wasn't quite like being at a stadium, or watching it on Twitch in a way that was interesting.
I am convinced that there is an absurd amount of unrealized potential for spectating in eSports. But everyone seems to just deliver an experience that is more-or-less "like playing the game yourself, but worse, and with forced-hype commentary" rather than an actually engaging spectator product.
>During the college football playoffs, ESPN’s family of networks will sometimes show the same game on multiple channels, with one channel broadcasting the whole affair from the Skycam camera. This is a remote camera hovering above and behind the line of scrimmage, replicating the perspective one sees in a video game. Coaches call this the “All‑22” view, because all 22 players on the field are simultaneously observable.
I remember there being discussion here about coverage of when the NFL first made all-22 available for public viewing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4549832
We watched some games last year on the all-22 (because it was the only way we could watch it on ESPN+).
You definitely lose a lot by not having the close-ups, the slow motion replay, etc. That said, you actually get to see many more of the little things that are kind of cool - what teams do to set up for a play, what coaches are doing between plays, how players and officials interact, etc.
I stumbled across an all-22 broadcast during this recent CFP and really liked it, however they didn't have any commentary at all. I do like to hear the color commentary from people who know how to analyze the game (usually former players).
I've never heard this called all-22, and I've been around a lot of football. I played from middle to high school, and my dad has filmed all but 1 high school game for the same school for 37 years. I've exclusively heard this referred to as "wide angle" by filmographers and coaches alike.
Plenty of analysts call it the all-22, eg:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sp2sVfSAlM
It's colloquially the all-22.
It's often pointed out that the ball is only live for about 18 minutes of every game. But what makes football so fascinating is that for every play there are 22 different jobs being executed at the same time. And the jobs change every play.
For something like baseball, you can basically see everything happening in frame the whole time. But for football, the game is so information dense that you can spend hours unpacking the game afterwards to see what was going on. That's why replays and highlights are so much more satisfying. And that's what makes it fun to analyze and or watch videos during the week - you can find all sort of unique or interesting aspects just watching the same play again and analyzing a different personnel group.
It also explains why cameras are everywhere (besides them being just flat out cheaper for high school games, etc). Film study is a crucial part of the game for players - more than in any other sport.
reminds me of a friend of mine who turned his alabama football passion into a cameraman career
I kinda went into this article hoping he was gonna touch on a topic i find distasteful about modern televised football.
Years ago, TNT for NBA games had this annoying habit during live action where they would follow a player after they scored or whatever and cut back to broadcast view, but it was so late, you would lose considerable amounts of context into the next possession and the players would already be in their actions(sometimes the player being followed would be involved in this action to make it even more stark that you were missing important context).
the NFL, has this pretty much every single play, for a game where the setup matters a lot. they'll cut to the fans, the sidelines, a player's face... and then with a second before the ball is snapped, they'll show the broadcast view, and you'll have to make a quick read into what the offense/defense is showing.
Kinda kept hoping he'd lead there with the funny "fascism" statements, but it never really led to a criticism of the broadcast, and he just kept harping on the same point that anything besides broadcast view is trash, and how he assumes everyone forces broadcast view in their mind instead.
I'm pretty negative about the modern sports broadcast experience, so i guess i was pretty let down seeing an article with a title like this... and instead of it being a critique, it was a celebration of it.
He even kinda setup the point about important context with his skyview cam stuff, and just still comes back to the same point, that broadcast is best...
I also don't wanna pretend everyone would want the same experience I do, but that brings me to another issue i have with the broadcasts in general. The generalist broadcaster is the beloved announcer in modern broadcasts, but it just feels lazy.. why is there not 4 different broadcasts for major games that deliver products catered to casual viewers, enthusiasts, kids? The casual viewer would probably prefer to see a fan wearing a funny hat, but the enthusiast would prefer to see the formation 5 seconds sooner.
> why is there not 4 different broadcasts for major games that deliver products catered to casual viewers, enthusiasts, kids? The casual viewer would probably prefer to see a fan wearing a funny hat, but the enthusiast would prefer to see the formation 5 seconds sooner.
CBS Paramount directly explored that space a bit. They experimented with showing the same games on CBS or CBS Sports and on Nickelodeon. The Nickelodeon version would include things like "slime cams" and silly sound effects, you know for kids. (Or for adults watching a playoff game with less interest in who won and more interest in background viewing and distractions from other party topics like politics.) It was an interesting experiment. Possibly something to replicate, but also certainly with as many channels involved in Sports as serious business not something that will be easily replicated.
> Soccer is exclusively about atmosphere and identity, so the experience of being in the crowd and the experience of the game itself are only nominally associated, in the same way going to see the Grateful Dead in the late 1980s was only nominally about music.
This man has absolutely no idea what he's talking about x)
Ah yes, of course, The Beautiful Game is clearly not at all about the actual game...
i like thinking of tv as an art form, and football as the artist that perfected it
Bit silly considering the scoreboard typically has a TV that shows the most important bits that would have been seen at home anyway. His argument may have made sense in 1980 before TVs were introduced in stadiums.
For an actually interesting topic worthy of your time, check out how 1st down markers are calculated and shown on screen at home. It’s much more complicated than you’d think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_%26_Ten_(graphics_system)
The article presents its thesis ad nauseum, the idea that "everyone is always mentally reframing the game into the TV view, even if they think they aren't", but never makes any effort to prove the thesis or provide supporting evidence. I'm not convinced he even defines what "reframing it in my mind" even means. Throughout the entire article, the question in my mind is "in what way? What does 'reframing' it look like? What exactly are you claiming I'm doing?", and at no point is that question answered.
A hypothetical is set up where a woman gets to see one great play close up, but the rest of the game happens nowhere near her seat. If your thesis was that "football is better on TV because you get all these unique angles and instant replays that you can't get from the one seat's position", this would be a solid argument. But the thesis is that "we all imagine the TVs camera angle in our heads", and at the end of this hypothetical, you simply assert that this is what she's doing the rest of the game. "It must be true because it must be true", this is just a circular argument.
There is a bit about how every game in modern day is being recorded on cell phones, which is truly irrelevant. That games are being recorded by audience members is a. true of all sports and b. unrelated to what each person is thinking about in their heads in the moment, whether they are or are not the ones doing the recording. That recording, after all, is only from the perspective of the one seat, their present view of the game is unaltered by the presence of cameras in the audience.
There's another point, perhaps meant to follow from the previous irrelevant point, about memories of a party vs a video recording of a party. The idea is that if you watch the recording for a month, that recording will be the only thing you remember, but it's extremely unclear in what way this is meant to relate to the thesis. What you supposedly imagine in your head in the perceptual present has nothing to do with what you remember a month later, and it's not remotely surprising that reinforcing the memory of a recording over the course of a month will cause it to be more easily recalled than memories from the event itself. It's common knowledge that the human brain does not commit every detail and every moment to memory, and it's trivial to demonstrate that this is true: simply attempt to remember what color shirt you wore last Wednesday. There is interesting psychology here, but its simply not related to the premise in any way.
Then there's the throwaway comment about it being "fascism", where you seem to reduce the definition to just "mild behavioral conditioning". This is both based on your premise, which you have not provided proof for, and goes nowhere. It doesn't lead to any further point or conclusion, it's just an aside, "by the way I think that means it's fascism because I think that word means mind control". Even if we assume your premise is true, its more than a little bit of a stretch to say that counts as "mind control". All you've done is dilute the meaning of the word to the point of banality.
The author keeps restating their thesis without offering much to support it. It's infuriating.
The article repeats itself several times without any new substance, and then drivels nonsense — TV is psychological fascism?
He uses the word "fascism" without any relationship to that word's meaning.
No evidence or supporting material, just continued insistence that the author is correct.
“I can’t crawl inside your skull and prove you wrong. But this is how it works for most people, including most who insist it does not.“
Consider this direct excerpt of 2 back to back sentences and how 1 contradicts the other.
You can’t crawl inside my skull, but you can crawl inside everyone else’s?
The essay is a great example of a mindset that devalues the subjective and strives to rebrand it as objective. Paradoxically it shows insecurity. "My experience doesn't count unless it's The Truth."
You like a thing. That's fine. That's enough. There's no need to prove the worth of your own enjoyment by fantasizing that it conquers everyone else's brain too.
You're the adult now. You're allowed to like it just because you like it.