I read in one of our local newspapers a column authored by Elissa Bass of The Day (of New London, CT) on television that makes me smile because whether I agree or disagree (or have even heard of the shows she's talking about, which usually I haven't), her whole approach cracks me up because she loves television and assumes you, the reader, does as well. On occasion, on line, she teams with the paper's 'arts columnist' (that must be a nifty business card), Rick Koster, for hysterical dissections of video offerings like American Idol. If you're familiar with any of their excellent efforts, sadly, what follows will remind you of NONE of that. Consider yourself warned.
I have at the moment, thanks to surgery and rehabilitation, a lot of free time and, I'm not proud to admit this, spend a decent portion of it parked on one of the couches in my living room watching ESPN SportsCenter.
Very close to my favorite topic, aside from consonant to consonant coverage of the Scripps National Spelling Bee (sorry kids, but spelling is a sport only if you have to run a lap or do ten crunches when you don't correctly spell 'archipelago') is the segment on Fantasy Baseball draft and picks. For about two weeks when I first started watching this stuff, I didn't catch on that this segment wasn't real--even though the reporter always closes with the reminder that you can 'play for free at' some variation of an ESPN website. I know if I lived on a couch in my mom's basement, that would be a huge selling point as all of my extra money would already be invested in Ronnie James Dio black light posters.
Hand on your heart: how can you not love a rubric called 'undroppables'? Here's a convergence question for you: did (or could) any of this exist before the advent of affordable personal computers and broadband? Notice I'm not going anywhere near the 'is this the highest and best use of this technology?' question because the answer to that one is just too weird for words.
The great thing for me about SportsCenter is that it's the informational equivalent of empty calories. I could open a newspaper or any of a thousand websites to tell me who won and lost last night in any given sport, or just tune to one of the twenty-one different ESPN networks that seem to now exist ('collect them all! Contact your cable operator today!') but SportsCenter is so easy on the eyes and ears, it's hard to realize that when the hour is over you don't remember the show's lead story that started us all off.
I had to look her up, because I'm usually at work for the daytime mid-morning SportsCenter (thanks, boss!), but the powers-what-am in Bristol, Connecticut have turned the show, it seems, into a vehicle for the effervescent and vivacious Hannah Storm. As the program rolls into a commercial break, the format never varies...there's a cut to a wide shot and as the voice-over tells us what we already know ("This is SportsCenter. Brought to you by Whatever!") a studio camera trucks towards the sports desk which Hannah shares with the sports stud of the day at a high rate of speed, locking on her as a medium wide shot while she plays to the camera and mouths any number of things while smiling. She could be saying 'help! I'm a prisoner here in Bristol, get my agent on the phone!' I have no idea-but she works it, she really does.
I think, based on her decades of work in the broadcast industry, I've seen her while she was at NBC Sports or even on CBS' Early Show. I don't recall her doing a non-stop Mary of the Fourth Form impersonation, but I am easily distracted. I will point out, as a viewer, it doesn't improve the bump on the 'Beckham returns to the LA Galaxy' or 'Middletown fifth-grader stumbles over anti-coagulant' stories. But it does make me grateful that the couch cushions are comfortable and my rehab is progressing so well that soon this type of daytime television can return to the parallel universe in which it existed for so long and the Elf Lords and ladies can welcome the Court of the Crimson King.
-bill kenny
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