Fox commits Bironas interruptus at end of Titans tilt
Save your emails. Here's my story for the Monday newspaper about the unfortunate end of the Packers-Titans game:
Rob Bironas was lining up a 41-yard field goal in overtime, aiming to keep the Titans unbeaten and offer a dramatic payoff for viewers who had invested three-plus hours in the game against the Packers.
Then, poof, Bironas was gone, replaced by nearly four minutes of a Fox promo, commercials and pregame chatter among the announcers before kickoff of Sunday’s Cowboys-Giants game.
It was the latest in a years-long series of frustrations for fans as networks work within the NFL’s quirky TV rules.
Fox was required to leave Packers-Titans in time to get to Cowboys-Giants for the home markets of the two teams involved, and in fact pushed things a bit further than it was supposed to.
Rather than leave the early game at 4:10, it waited until 4:12:08. Why, then, did it take until 4:14:30 to actually get to Giants Stadium?
Because the network needs the time during the commercial break to switch to the satellite that transmits late-afternoon games from the one used for early games.
What about that seemingly unnecessary 90 seconds of Troy Aikman, Joe Buck and Pam Oliver talking before the actual kickoff at 4:16:01? Fox must be live at the stadium by the official 4:15 kickoff time, as there is no way to know ahead of time exactly when the officials and kicker will begin the game.
Early in the Giants game, Fox went to the studio for a video update. Bironas’ kick was good.
E-mail
Facebook
Digg
Delicious
Comments (9)
The most important thing for any TV network is to show the commercials, not some silly football game. Ever see a news bulletin warning about a rainstorm ever interrupt a commercial?
I'm tired of the excuses for this stuff.
You dont cut away from a game that was shown all afternoon to start a new game.
Find a solution. Get another channel to show overflow stuff like this. There are no excuses.
NFL- keep f###ing over your fans. Keep it up and someday we will grow tired of this and stop consuming your product and stop watching your commercials.
Sometimes it's good to live in Nashville.
There is a solution already available:
It's called NFL Sunday Ticket.
1-800-DirecTV.
Enough said.
Unfortunately David over 50% of the population either don't have the proper south west view of the sky or have larger objects impeding visibility or live in apartments where landlords can prevent placement of dishes on their portion of an apartment and thus are unable to get directv.
But a nice advertisement nonetheless.
If it means enough to you Jeff, you will be resourceful enough to persevere.
If not, then I take it you just want the issue and are not willing to address it with your actions.
Either way is fine and all sides are entitled to the TV provider of their choice, I just get tired of the whining from the Cablevision crowd.
Bironas Interruptus. Is that some sort of STD?
You mean move David, right. Sorry, it isn't important enough.
But in 2011, the NFl will be forced to open up Sunday Ticket if they ever hope to have NFL Network see the light of day.
Until then, they will never get the subscriber base they want.
Wrong again Jeff. DirecTV will reup for 2011 and beyond.
You just don't get it, the cable crowd will never have access to Sunday Ticket as long as their are OTA partners.
The NFL would go with no deal before letting it go to cable.