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Just tell the truth — A Super Bowl Anecdote
Just an anecdote from this evening, that might have a lesson or two in it for all of us.
Like one or two other people, I saw down earlier tonight to watch the Super Bowl. I had not seen any of the 934 hours of pre-game stuff (who needs it?), I just tuned in right at game time.
I was immediately surprised to see how terrible the picture looked on our city’s FOX station. Not even remotely high-def. Maybe standard definition, but I was hard pressed to believe it was even that good.
Made sure I was on the HD cable channel… check. Texted with my senior editor who confirmed it looked equally bad at his house. Check. And he was watching off air with an antenna.
I pondered about this for a while (and did notice that the locally inserted breaks were indeed in high-def). Then I decided to check the TV station’s Facebook page.
Well, as you might imagine, they were being crucified by people complaining in no uncertain terms about the situation. The posts were coming in fast in furious, sometimes several a minute.
Then suddenly, around halftime, all those comments disappeared. Then there was a new post from the FOX station saying…
“For some viewers, depending
on your service provider, our HD
signal is of reduced quality.
Engineers from both FOX and the
providers are working on the issue.”Well that was a smokescreen, obviously. It had nothing to do with which “service provider” one was using for viewing, as all viewers were seeing standard-def only, including off-air viewers. Our city is crammed full of techno-geeks and rocket scientists who do know the difference. And they called them on it.
Sometime in the third quarter the signal went dead for a couple of minutes, then came back in glorious high definition, as the Good Lord intended.
I’m betting though, that someone is heading to the woodshed there tomorrow.
Judging from the posters’ (and my own personal) opinions, plenty of people were hopping mad about the situation. But just as upset (maybe even more so) that no one was really owning up to the problem, with double talk about “some viewers” and “your service provider.”
The station just screwed up, and should have just said so.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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2 Replies
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Just glad it was not the most riveting Super Bowl. We started channel surfing after the halftime show.
At least they kept the lights on this year!
So what was your favorite spot? I didn’t see that many of them, but liked the Cheerios a lot.
Bob C
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The dad saving his kid over and over in Hyundai’s spot was good for me. I also liked the “prom” turbotax spot. Chevy’s anti-cancer spot was moving. The Bud spots were uninspiring this year. Bob Dylan hawking Chryslers, that was kind of a shock. Chrysler and Maserati are owned by Fiat now. The Pepsi CGI intro to the halftime show impressed me a LOT.
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