Re: Look for the _opportunities_, people... think nonlinearly

[Todd <tdh@vbref.org>]

"Bob Carlson" <bob@rjcarlson.com> writes:
> L. Ravi Narasimhan <oski@physics.ucla.edu> wrote in message
> news:378B9DF7.9626CBE9@physics.ucla.edu...
> > Yes, there will be heated arguments.  How can we use this to grow the
> > game?
> 
> I think you are on to something here.  I don't remember if fights
> has ever come up in the endless discussions of why VB is not on TV,
> but it seems obvious.  There's clearly no other reason why hockey is
> on TV except for the fights.  Baseball has it's bench clearing
> brawls which get about 10 minutes of the 11 o'clock news when they
> occur.  The look at football, a mini fight at the line of scrimmage
> on every play!  VB is just too mild mannered to make in today's
> media market.

Perhaps...but now explain why we have to endure so much televised
golf.  


Turning again toward the topic of making volleyball exciting to gather
an audience....

I watched the Chicago AVP Open finals (in which Karch garnered his
140th open win) on Fox Sportsnet concurrently with the Women's World
Cup soccer final.

I'm not a big fan of soccer, but I have to be honest--beach volleyball
on TV really blows.  The scoreless soccer game was so much more
exciting...and with the incredible amount of down-time in the
volleyball match, I had plenty of opportunity to flip over to the
World Cup match between points, during commercial breaks, side
changes, etc.  Fox SportsNet dragged that one lame 15-point game out
into a 90 minute telecast.  Meanwhile, there's non-stop action
occurring in a scoreless soccer game.

The quality of the volleyball telecast didn't help matters.  They had
so little of the crowd and on-court audio mixed in that you were left
only with the announcers to generate any excitement.  Even exciting
rallies were lame because you could barely hear the enthusiastic
crowd.  

Perhaps it's not a fair comparison, but it was really a stark contrast
to watch the World Cup Final and an AVP event side by side.

--
Todd
http://www.io.com/~tdh/