Jim, with whom I failed to see a baseball game last week while I was staying with him in Los Angeles, alerted me to a USA Today story about those hip graphics Fox uses for their football coverage.
Fox, known as the NFL’s most flamboyant carrier, is even cutting back on its glitz.
The network surveyed viewers, Fox senior vice president Gary Hartley says, and found that Fox’s many sound effects, blinking lights and animated graphics were seen as “pointless and annoying.”
So they’ll be reduced. However, he says, Fox is bringing back the
on-screen robots that pop up on its coverage: “We found we’ve lost some
of the attitude we’ve projected in the past. Robots are sacred ground
for that.”
Did they really need to survey more than one person to come up with “pointless and annoying?” Could baseball be next? I can think of a certain talking baseball that I would describe with just those words–if I you limited me to family-friendly language.
And what the hell do they mean by “robots are sacred ground for [attitude]?” These people are very, very strange.