Dear Dave,
When you made television history on 14 January 1952, not only did you host the first Today Show program on NBC, the first of the morning news and talk show genre, and now the third-longest running American television series behind Meet the Press and the CBS Evening News, but you also showed the first news ticker in the history of television broadcasting. By doing so, you really got the ball rolling for something that I'm sure you never thought would make a soccer fan, 57 years later, mad as hell.
A history lesson that you didn't ask for.
It all started with the ticker tape. It was the American stock market that saw fit to use Edward Calahan's 1867 invention of the first stock telegraph printing device, developed further by Thomas Edison with his Universal Stock Ticker in 1869. For decades, these news-transmitting machines had lengthy delays between actual event and transmittion of information. Even in the 1960s, the newer and better tickers had a delay of 15 to 20 minutes.
It was not until 1996 that a ticker-type electronic device could operate in real time. But back in the 1960s the stock tickers were being replaced by computers.
It was television that revolutionized the ticker-tape idea that had manifested throughout the world for over a hundred years.
According to Wikipedia, it was you, Dave, who used a news ticker for the first time as part of a regular broadcast. Your ticker was nothing we would recognize today – it was a piece of paper with typewritten headlines superimposed on the lower third of the screen.
Apparently it didn't last– as a communication tool it was dropped not long thereafter. But several years later, local stations would implement a news ticker to pass along information such as school closings and severe weather warnings.
Then CNN in the 1980s perfected the idea with its regular usage of a news ticker as part of its Headline News station. That ticker showed stock prices during the day and sports scores during the evening and weekend. CNBC and FNN also used this method for transmitting stock prices.
That was what we know today as the crawler, the more modern name for a news ticker.
And that brings us to ESPN. The famous sports network used a crawler to update sports scores and news every 30 minutes, and in 1996, ESPN2 implemented their "BottomLine" as a non-stop crawler of sports information around the clock.
Now, crawlers are everywhere – street corners, bars, casinos, atop places of business, our computer screens and PDAs. I wouldn't be surprised that one day, we'll be able to get one implanted in one in our eyes as part of the Lasik surgery procedure.
Is there a point to any of this rambling?
Oh yes, Saturday morning. This morning.
I just couldn't get out of bed last weekend to watch the first Premier League game broadcast in HD. Anything on TV at 4:30 in the morning is just too early to even contemplate. The only things that exist at that time are bizarre mental images that Freud made a legacy of analyzing and interpreting.
So, it had to wait until this morning, when ESPN2 broadcast live the Wigan Athletic vs Manchester United match from that gawdawful stadium in northeastern England town of Wigan. Game time, 7:00 am PT. Now I can handle that.
The game of interest for me today, however, was to be played at the same time as the ESPN2 match, and to be broadcast on Setanta Broadband. So I knew I could watch that one on my laptop at my leisure when I had more time, didn't have to feed and walk my dogs, eat breakfast, and then go into town for a haircut.
Sometime this afternoon, when I could really absorb it all.
Knowing that my game was waiting for me later in the day, I sat on my sofa this morning and got my first taste of the Premier League in high definition. Pretty stunning. I don't think I'm going to be able to watch games anymore on the crappy resolution that is Fox Soccer Channel and GolTV (I hear that at least FSC is going to HD broadcasting January 1).
Well, as I knew would happen, coffee had to be brewed, breakfast had to be eaten, dogs had to be fed and walked, and a shower was a must after last night's sake binge. So, to say the least, I was pretty distracted until sometime early in the second half when I was back on the sofa with a good half hour to just watch in peace.
G*d d*m! M$%he$ f*ck@* s&n of $ b&%c$
Manchester United scored twice to put the game out of Wigan's reach. Shortly thereafter, ESPN2's news crawler appeared at the bottom of the screen, seemingly designed specifically to put me out of my mind. There it was, in white lettering on a red background, the second-half score of the game in progress that I was planning to savor during the upcoming lazy afternoon on a delayed basis.
Ruined. Nice score. But absolutely ruined.
I like my sports like I think most people do – in the dark as far as the eventual outcome is concerned.
Apparently ESPN2 doesn't get that.
When you watch a Premier League game on Fox Soccer Channel, there are no scores of other games put on the screen or mentioned by the match announcers. I am sure that is by design. With respect for their viewers. They know that today, most people can quickly monitor the score of another game with other means.
But not ESPN.
Thanks, ESPN, for bringing my favorite viewing pastime to American Television. But you've got a bit to learn about your viewer's habits.
Dave, if you were alive, you'd be amazed by the world of today's television.
And, if you had developed a love for watching European soccer on TV, you'd be as bummed as I am.
Regards,
Despondent Premier League Viewer
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