Archive for November 28th, 2008
Well Done*, NFL
Last night, I had the opportunity (and by opportunity I mean “no other choice in the matter”) to use NFL.com’s feed of the Cardinals/Eagles game. I was glad the NFL had finally embraced this other distribution medium so I, the consumer, can actually watch their game and let them try to sell me things. Granted, watching the game on 17-inch monitor was annoying, but at least I had an option this year to watch the third game.
Everything began normally at 8:15 for the kickoff. I was somewhat surprised after the first drive that they cut back to the studio instead of going to commercial. This was the first surprising things. The NFL didn’t sell a second set of commercials for the online stream? The NFL? Who would call it the Scripps NFL Network if they thought it would be OK?
Imagine my surprise when the studio not only didn’t go back to the game when the commercial break ended, but instead talked incessantly about the drive we just saw and then started talking about the drive going on at that particular moment. Really? The NFL was advertising a live stream of the game on NFL.com and were streaming specific drives? And, on top of that, NFL.com was cutting your stream after like 20 minutes of inactivity. So, if you decided to actually hook up to the stream of the game, left it on like a TV, and backed away, the NFL would boot you off and ask you to reload.
So, not only could you not just watch the game on NFL.com, but you had to reload the page every few minutes AND you were stuck watching 3 studio guys talking about the game instead of actually watching the game. The NFL is seriously the most annoying, pigheaded, stupid company in the world. No one else goes out of their way to make their product so excessively hard to watch as the NFL.
Good job on your stupid network, idiots.
* – by “Well Done”, I mean “Die In A Fire”.