Okay, so NBC has a revamped Sunday Night Football show. And it’s exec produced by Dick Ebersol. This is the guy who MADE Saturday Night Live work again. (Yes, there was a time when Lorne Michaels wasn’t involved!) This is the guy who created Monday Night Football. This is the guy who made the Olympics interesting to watch.
But this is also the guy who created a piece of prime time crap for Sunday Nights.
A couple of new features for the show this year:
–The Player’s Room vs. the Commentators. For some inexplicable reason, they have separated the ex-players from Costas and Olberman. They are only a few short feet away and they talk to each other but it’s so strained. What’s the idea behind this one? Also, Jerome Bettis, great bus, bad analyst. Tiki Barber? Media Savvy! The Bus constantly makes analysis based on the running game. I suppose that’s what you would expect. Defensive coaches always focus on defense, offensive, offense. But that’s what makes Tiki cool—he sees the whole game. Not just the run.
–“Lost In Translation”. Horrible little segment where they have something a coach or player says and then someone translates what that means. You can tell that the commentators hate this segment. Plus it lasted for all of two seconds. Do you even bother to name something if it is that short? Also, can a segment be that short? There should be a name for something shorter than that. A segmentette or something.
–The Best Plays sponsored by Sprint. These are highlights, and they maintain this squiggly line art the time it’s playing as a border around the clips. It’s distracting. It’s unnerving. It has no point!
–The theme song. Apparently, Ebersol decided it worked for MNF so why not just repeat it by having another country artist do a big cheesy theme song. Only this time let’s make it three times as long and pepper it with lots of shots of people watching football games on cell phones. I like this little bit of fairy tale. Does anyone watch football games on cell phones? I didn’t think so.
The only thing that they can’t screw up is Madden and Michaels. Thank God. But other than that, this show blows! Who’s with me?
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