On Friday I received an email from the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network ("ESPN" to its legion of watchers) with a survey in regard to the new national championship game, asking what I thought of it, did I watch it, did I think the championship's new "playoff system" was fair, all of that. They also asked if I could remember the sponsor (I couldn't).
They didn't, however, ask the fundamental question "Did you actually see the end of the game?", but I answered it anyway, in the essay section, since it was the only reason I bothered to answer the survey.
The answer, by the way, was "no, I did not see the end", and that was not because I wasn't interested in the outcome. The answer was "no" because the game didn't start until some time after 8:30pm Eastern time, and didn't end until, well, some time after 11:30pm Eastern time and, let's not forget, that is on a Monday night. Like many people, I work for a living and have an obligation to be perky and chipper at 8:00am on Tuesday mornings, which is not made easier by being awake and wound up by a (hopefully) exciting football game that ends some time at o-dark-thirty the night before.
This is one of those cases where scheduling inordinately inconveniences some to the benefit of others. Those who live in the Pacific time zone joyfully celebrated the victory of (pardon me while I look it up ...) the Ohio State Buckeyes, or mourned the loss of the Oregon Ducks, had a drink to celebrate or mourn their loss (in California, dragged on their weed) and eventually went off to bed at a civil hour.
So let's ask ourselves the two logical questions:
(1) Why play the game on Monday rather than Friday or Saturday?
(2) Why start the game close to 9:00pm Eastern time on a weekday?
Well, start with the FTM principle -- follow the money. The money is in two places of interest; that is, the television networks (in this case, ESPN, which means Disney) and the National Football League. The NFL controls the weekends, which is why there is college football on Saturdays and the NFL plays on Sundays and Mondays, with a Thursday here and there.
But the NFL is not stupid about the times of its games. They don't do playoff games at 9:00 at night in the East; they don't do the Super Bowl at 9:00 at night in the East either. Their game times for the playoff weekends with four games are essentially (EST times) 4:00pm and 7:00pm Saturday and 1:00pm and 4:00pm Sunday. The two conference championship games on the last playoff weekend are 3:00pm and 6:00pm.
When the final whistle ends on the second game, it is about 10:15pm on a Sunday night, a mild stretch but perfectly reasonable for working folks. When the Super Bowl ends, even with all the attendant spectacle, it is no later than 10:30pm in the East.
But the NCAA, no it still doesn't get it and neither does ESPN. For that matter, Major League Baseball, which puts World Series games on at 8:30pm Eastern even if they're played in late October in freezing places like Boston, Chicago or Detroit, doesn't get it either.
If you take a huge population like, say, the entire football-watching populace living in the Eastern time zone, there will be, in ascending order of numbers:
(1) Those who will watch the college championship game to the bitter end regardless of who's in it
(2) Those who will watch it to the bitter end if they have a rooting interest
(3) Those who will watch it to the bitter end because they're not working the next day
(4) Those who will be asleep at the final whistle (I'm in that group)
(5) Those who will not watch it at all because they don't care enough to plan to stay up that late
Why, we have to ask, would you schedule games such as to alienate a large percentage of your fandom and make them wonder if you even care?
Of course there is a corresponding population set in the Pacific time zone, where the 'late" game starts at 5:30pm and we can't forget them -- but they have a comfortable pair of alternatives, one being just to watch the game live, in daylight, and the other called the DVR, which not only allows them to start the game an hour or so later, when they're ready, but to speed past the commercials. That is not an option for those in the Eastern time zone, since by the time they could sit down the next night, the entire news cycle would have slammed the results in their face.
You know, and I know and the executives at ESPN and Disney know that they're not going to do anything about it. But I said my piece to them (at least they asked) and, like the reason for this medium in the first place, things that needed to get said got said.
And for once, Al Sharpton wasn't involved.
Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
No comments:
Post a Comment