The Family Values Network
I decided to let my son stay up just a little later than usual last night so he could see the beginning of Game 1 of the Yankees-Sox American League Championship Series. The broadcast started at 8 PM Eastern time and the game at 8:20, so I thought he’d be able to see the player introductions and a few batters come to the plate. Instead what he saw was a series of exploding graphics and mercilessly unsubtle promos for Fox’s sex-oriented TV shows plus a few minutes of the announcers hyping the game as the introductions played out in the background, visible only in the small screen over their shoulders.
I’ve always loved the introductions and eagerly anticpated them as a kid. Baseball is a game of rituals and the introductions are a key part of that in playoff or World Series game. They serve better to build excitement than the announcers’ breathless bloviating. But Fox doesn’t understand that. Presumably Fox producers believe that stodgy slow-moving bits of theater such as introductions won’t hold the viewers’ attention. So instead we have sound-enhanced graphical representations of the clash of titans, as if the game were Japanese anime.
Then there are the promos - before the game, during the game, probably subliminally as well. They are mostly reality shows and sit-coms and mostly they are about scantily-clad morons coupling in various ways. The right-wing’s very own media company, the one whose news media insist that Republicans have the lock on “family values” and that the evil Democrats and Hollywood moguls are like peas in a pod, that very same media conglomerate is the one making it a risky endeavor for a dad to watch a baseball game with his seven year-old son.