NBC Sports covered the Arnold Palmer Invitational today - which was damn lucky for them since it can pretty much be called the Tiger Woods show, and a dramatic Tiger performance is just about as assured as Jack Bauer heroics on 24. Today's Final Round was a true thing of beauty.
I have a strong feeling NBC took a step to not alienate their TiVo viewers. They never mentioned TiVo or DVR, but they did announce early, and then repeat often, that the tournament had been delayed a couple of hours, and that they would be staying on their air until the end of daylight in Florida. I had already padded the ending by an hour, but after the second repetition I took what Dan Hicks was saying essentially as the following warning: "if you are recording this, you better make sure you extend it till at least 8:00 Eastern TIme or you will miss the end". By then I was lagging real time by about 90 minutes. I went back and extended till 5:00 pm Pacific Time. And boy was I glad that I did - TIger rolled in about a 20' putt on the 18th hole with the last light packet extinguising, and there were about 8 minutes left on my recording. There was just time to watch about 8 NBC replays, a quick interview with Tiger, and I was out of "green". I would have been so pissed at NBC if I had missed that, and they knew they were going to go long, and had not warned the viewer. In contrast, I am now very grateful to them - though I wonder if there is some obligation to their advertisers to not explicitly acknowledge DVR viewers, otherwise they could have just come out and said it. One other thing about what really was a great broadcast by the NBC golf crew - just as Tiger's putt went in they had very clear audio of someone saying something like "Oh My God! Are You Kidding Me? UNBELIEVABLE! HO HO HO!" I don't know if it was just some spectator who happened to be close to the crowd mikes, or someone from the technical crew, but it was unusual to get that distinct an audio reaction from ambient sound. One other observation about the tournament - Arnold Palmer still has "it", in terms of charisma. His best days were long behind him by the time I was old enough to pay attention to golf, but I know him from his commercials and being around the game in later years. He was on the Golf Channel coverage the first 2 days and told some fantastic stories - some of which seemed spontaneous, as the announcers interviewing him seemed genuinely surprised by what he said. He was less good on NBC over the weekend, mostly because the time was more cramped and they over-produce the hell out of everything, but he was still pretty good. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ TV or Not TV .... Smart (TV) People on Ice! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
