On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 5:11 PM, Mark J.<[email protected]> wrote: > I still wonder why no one has at least made a try at getting the > hardcore sports fan (at least since FSN shut down "The National Sports > Report" and CNN/SI went bust). If Versus wants to really go big on > sports, how about doing a hard-nosed, cynical scores-and-highlights > show against "SportsCenter?" Is Comcast afraid that they'll get shut > out of rights or lose the NHL? (Which is why HBO has always said it > can do "RealSports": They don't have anyone to kowtow to except the > scumbags who run boxing, who seem not to mind as long as their names > are spelled right.)
I don't think a phrase like "hardcore" sports fan is precise enough to describe the kind of viewer Joe and some of the sports blogs are referencing. What makes them distinct is not that they watch more sports than the average ESPN-lover, but that they have a particular attitude about their sports. I won't dive into the Joe Morgan controversy, which can get pretty intense (I like Joe), but it is a good example of the point. It is obviously not true that Joe Morgan knows nothing about baseball; it is that he stubbornly sticks to an old fashioned, or traditional approach to baseball that is informed more by gut, feel, intuition and tradition than it is by highly processed and tightly validated empirical data. I guess a Sabermetric guy might be tempted to say that Leo Durocher or Casey Stengal didn't know anything about baseball, but that would be to hijack the definition of baseball knowledge and tie it exclusively to one recent and narrow approach. And that is my point I guess, while I don't mean they are all stat-freaks, the kind of audience being described here is very narrow (it would make the channel devoted to video games players look mainstream in comparison). That is not a defense of ESPN, which deserves a very high percentage of the criticism it receives. And I actually read a lot of those Sabermetric books and journal articles, though I am not smart enough to one of them, and as much as I like Morgan I sometimes tire of his sometimes willful anti-intellectualism about his sport. It is just that the critics of ESPN are very diverse, and it may be that the only two things they have in common is that they like sports and watch ESPN. It is hard to program a channel aimed at that demographic - unless you are ESPN. What is an intriguing idea is a program on ESPN that is all about criticism of ESPN - that would be a real ratings winner. I like ESPN's baseball coverage, but detest their basketball coverage; I like their game presentation of the NFL, but detest their pre and post game programs.I like SportsCenter, except for the parts that I hate. I like the World Series of Poker, but am not interested in X Games. Which is to say I am exactly like 95% of all ESPN viewers - except each viewer would have a different list of what they like and do not. It all comes down to SportsCenter, and how much they want to pimp that show out. I feel about SportsCenter almost exactly the way I feel about CNN - much of it sickens me, except that when I really want to know what is going on, I still tun to them. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
