Must-Stop TV

By Kevin Gibson
March 3, 2007

I was in a local pizza pub recently watching a college basketball game with some friends when we noticed an amusing discrepancy in the timing on some of the TVs showing the game.

The small TV at our booth apparently was a cable feed, while the larger TVs over and around the bar appeared to be satellite feeds. The loud volume (this was a Kentucky game, so it had to match the volume of the fans’ yelling) also came via the slower satellite feeds – so essentially we were seeing everything in the game happen about five seconds before the blue-clad fans sitting at the bar.

Whenever UK would hit a three-pointer, we’d watch it, take a bite of our pizza, and then suddenly the place would erupt. If Kentucky turned the ball over (as it was wont to do during this particular game), we’d continue our conversation for about five seconds, then be hit with a loud groan interspersed with random vulgarities (as UK fans seemed wont to do during this particular game).

So we started talking about the ramifications of this delay. I mused that we could make a lot of money by watching a particularly long three-pointer swish, and then running over to the bar and betting some guy $20 that it goes in. It got so ridiculous at one point that my friend Rob said, “This feed we’re watching is so fast that it’s actually showing us the game a little before it’s really happening.”

Naturally, we expanded upon the possibilities of having a television that could tell the future. Think about it. For instance, I noted, if you watched yourself die on the small TV, you’d actually still have five seconds to live.

“Yeah, you’d have just those few seconds to change something before it was shown on the big TV and you were actually dead,” Rob agreed.

I wonder if that would prompt the other folks in the bar to cheer or to groan and curse? I guess the Brain Farts fans would be rooting for me to find a way to live, and the bastard at LEO who cut my column a few years back would be groaning and cursing if I somehow made it through alive. (I see a reality TV series in here somewhere.)

Whatever the case, it all points back to the fact that TV is just waaaay too powerful in our society. Britney Spears and Anna Nicole Smith are just two examples that spring to mind.

Or maybe TV isn’t as powerful as I think. I don’t have TiVo, but I’ve seen commercials that trumpet, “You can actually PAUSE live TV!” So, actually, that transfers power back to the viewer, doesn’t it? But is that really a good thing either?

For this reason, I’ve always thought TiVo was a big reason Major League baseball games take so long to finish these days. I mean, you have a stadium full of people and a group of highly-skilled and even more highly-paid athletes engaging in this nationally-televised game – and they all have to pause and wait while you go to the bathroom or get some more beer and bean dip? C’mon. Wait for the commercials like the rest of us.

Seriously, if it takes a baseball game three hours to finish now, wait until EVERYONE has TiVo and is pausing the game every other pitch. Baseball games will be NINE hours long, and all the players will be cramping up from being stuck in all those ridiculous throwing and hitting poses. (And how does TiVo get the ball to suspend in mid-air when it’s paused? Crazy stuff.) That’s not to mention all the fans that will ultimately piss themselves from being paused in their seats for so long, then not understand why. (They aren’t conscious during those pauses, are they?)

I guess I should just be thankful I don’t have my own TV show. If someone paused me and forgot, who would write these idiotic Brain Farts?

E-mail me at kgramone@aol.com. Wait … wait … OK, now.