Do you recall being consulted on this? Anyone running it by us for our approval?
When did TV decide for us that it was going to further limit the view of events — provide even more things to read and less to watch — by pumping in a pile of Tweeted Twits and Twitted Tweets?
As if NBC needed to further hide the Olympics from U.S. audiences, these have become the Twitter Games. Are we watching on TV sets or reading books on Kindle?
TNT’s live coverage of the first two rounds of the PGA Championship often demanded — we had no choice — that we cease paying attention to the major that was being played to pay attention to tweets.
At one point on Thursday, TNT abandoned live play to post and discuss a full-screen graphic showing 10 players’ scores — not golf scores, but how many times they had been tweeted as compiled on the “Daily Social Leaders” scoreboard.
Dustin Johnson was in eighth place, with 323 tweets, 56 ahead of Graeme McDowell, for what it was worth. And, as far as I could tell, it was worth nothing. Less than nothing.
Moments later, TNT again abandoned coverage to post a tweet, one sent by Dan Marino, who apparently was in the gallery. And this is what Marino had to tweet:
“What a great day for a PGA Championship at Kiawah Island.”
Yes, and what a great day to be watching it rather than reading tweets!
TNT’s Bill Kratzert provided a good, concise show-and-tell insert demonstrating how the rules at Kiawah allow players to ground their clubs and remove loose matter from sand traps before they played the shot. Great.
But then, live play again was lost to a tweet posting, this one thanking TNT for explaining this course-specific rule. Hooray for us!
Friday, more golf lost to more needless and even just plan silly — one seeking marriage advice — tweets. And another full-screen tweet leaderboard. Neither Johnson nor McDowell this time were in the top 10.
Of course, the tweets TNT chose to transcribe were carefully monitored. It’s like the telephone testimonies of home shopping network customers — you never have heard a complaint and never will. It’s all peaches and cream.
Otherwise, we would have seen at least one that read, “Wake up, you bozos! Do you think we tuned in to read tweets or watch golf?”
And, surely, for every tweet seen and addressed, a live shot of a contender hitting a shot in the PGA Championship was missed.
Wake up, you bozos! Do you think we tuned in to read tweets or watch golf? It’s television!
Serena critics racist? Ain’t that a Crip
Why did some folks get so bent out of shape when the USA’s Serena Williams did a “Crip Walk” after winning the Olympic gold medal at Wimbledon?
It’s not as if the Crips are a murderous street gang, or as if our prisons are stuffed with them, not to mention that our morgues are swollen with Crips and their victims.
It’s not as if Williams’ half-sister and single mother of three, Yetunde Price, was shot and killed by Robert Maxfield, a 25-year-old Crip, as she sat in a car parked on the gang-infested streets of Compton, Calif.
And it’s not as if Williams had ever before demonstrated an ugly side on a big tennis stage.
Thank goodness that criticism of her behavior was so simply explained and dismissed as the thoughts and words of “haters,” racists.
* Nike continues to do a great job turning the colors of U.S. Olympic uniforms and warm-ups from red, white and blue to red, white and black.
Of course, the USOC could insist on red, white and blue, but that would risk Nike money, and, just as colleges have allowed Nike to remove their traditional colors in favor of Nike black, well, follow the money!
Nike money’s unholy presence is endless, relentless. Consider that Joe Paterno never allowed any school ID, school logo or player name on Penn State’s uniforms. The only thing he eventually allowed were Nike swooshes.
* On the blind, I’d bet $50 a man that:
a) TNT’s PGA Championship host Ernie Johnson never has walked into a room in which golf was on a TV set and asked, “Who’s setting the pace?” He would ask “Who’s winning?” or “Who has the lead.”
Only on TV would he identify the leader as the man who “is setting the pace.”
b) TNT’s Bill Kratzert, ex-PGA tourist, never, while playing golf, ever referred to a green as “the putting surface.”
Only on TV.
c) Teaching pro and CBS analyst Peter Kostis, on loan to TNT, when not on TV, ever referred to another golf pro as, “A great striker of the golf ball” or spoke of a putt as “finding the bottom of the hole.”
d) CBS’ Jim Nantz, also on loan to TNT, never, while playing golf, said that he or a player in his group has a shot “to negotiate.”
Only on televised golf is such crazy golf talk heard.
NFL loves to gouge
Although Roger Goodell claims that the NFL is “all about the fans,” he doesn’t seem to mind that NFL teams continue to try to steal from them.
For example, those who wish to buy tickets for the Oct. 15 Denver (Peyton Manning) at San Diego game, must purchase tickets to at least one other Chargers’ home game.
In other businesses, such practices are commonly known (and prosecuted) as extortion.
* Braves at Mets, tonight at 8:05 on ESPN. MLB and ESPN could have chosen a more attractive game for viewers — Nationals at Diamondbacks, Tigers at Rangers — and one that would’ve started at a far more reasonable time for ticket-holders, but Braves-Mets, tonight at 8:05. Baseball in the Age of Bud.
* ESPN Radio-NY’s Ryan Ruocco’s presence on YES continues to increase. In addition to being Ian Eagle’s sub on Nets telecasts and a college basketball play-by-player, he now will host YES’ “This Week In Football.”
* Golf bud Rich Ippolito says Jim Furyk’s “Five-Hour Energy Drink” cap “looks like something you pull out of a goodie bag at the Chamber of Commerce golf outing.”
* Associate sports editor Dave Blezow is having a little trouble reconciling this Olympic fact: “The man or woman who teaches a horse how to dance receives the same gold medal as the athlete who wins the decathlon.”
LOOKALIKES:
Joe Corrado, Newburgh, N.Y., submits Yankee Raul Ibanez and Jiminy Cricket.