Just got back from a sports bar where I watched the Red Sox in the World Series take a 3-0 game lead on the Cardinals.
One thing I noticed: there was lots of text floating around. In fact I thought it ironic that a loud sports bar is one of the few places left where you can have a multimedia experience that includes text.
Usually I would watch the big-screen TV. But I couldn't hear very well. Which was fine because there was plenty of text on screen to look at, during the coverage of the game. There were always little bits of text popping up to read. (This was true, of course--perhaps moreso--during the commercial breaks).
A particular example would be when the "reporter in the stands" would find someone of some renown to interview. Usually explanatory and contextual info would appear below the interview. Like when the reporter found a guy wearing a Red Sox cap in the stands and interviewed him. I didn't recognize the guy, but text popped up to inform me he was a hockey player for the St. Louis Blues, but was born and raised in Massachusetts.
After I realized that there must be people on hand--probably on computer, Googling away--who's job was to look up information on these random interviews. Once again, the database makes an appearance at coverage of a sporting event.
But that's an example of non-stationary text. The stationary text was on screen all the time, at the top, with information such as batter, batting history for the game, pitch-count, etc. It closely resembled a navigation bar on a webpage. In fact, the whole set up closely resembles a web page on a computer monitor. Which, I'm guessing, is anticipatory to when most of our television will be watched on computer, presenting information, in database form, that is queryable, as well as lay-out that can be manipulated (foregrounding video, backgrounding text, or, later, the opposite.
Special text appeared on another TV, which brings me back to the bar setting, and its advantages for multimedia--including text--consumption. Since the big screen TV was too loud, sometimes when there was special commentary, I would consult another, smaller, TV, that had--as bars are wont to do--textual transcription. An example would be one of the new Miller Lite commercials that feature football refs bursting into everyday scenes to call a penalty. They are very funny, clever commercials, but relying more on dialogue than most. I had to read the script (though I still didn't get it; I was expecting the commercial to air again twenty times but, proving to be contrary, it only aired once).
Then there were, as I mentioned in this blog a few days back, signification happening in the stands. One sign said "May the Force Be With You." I thought it might be a Red Sox fan, since that sort of quasi-religious sign epitomizes the superstitious Red Sox fan; but there was no recognizable sports team logo on the sign (at least I didn't catch it). Then underneath "May the Force Be With You" there were some numbers. Initially I didn't know what the numbers referred to. Were they the numbers from a Powerball drawing? An ISBN number? A DNS number (which is close to my suggestion that someone put a URL on a sign at a sports event broadcast). No, I eventually figured out (because I'm a long-time baseball fan), that they were the years the Cardinals won the World Series (I just went online to confirm that: first the MLB.com site, which was only marginally of help, then Googled "St. Louis Cardinals history" which brought me to a page, cbs.sportsline.com, that quickly gave me the info I wanted).
Before I quit, let me mention one more sign which I was surprised to find in the stands at Fenway Park in Boston (Game 2), that very Catholic city. It was a sign of the resurrected Jesus Christ with Johnny Damon's head (helmeted) attached. The sign said: "Johnny Saves." Certainly sacrilegious, but to which I must intone, "Amen."
Posted by jeb at October 27, 2004 12:57 AM | TrackBack