If you were trying to enjoy some exciting college basketball on the networks of Fox Sports over the weekend, you were likely treated to something unexpected.
Fake snow.
On the bottom third of the screen, Fox placed a “festive” and “seasonal” graphics overlay of snow around their scorebug. But that wasn’t all! No, there was also animated snow lightly falling on either side of and above the scorebug. The result was that the bottom third of the screen was covered with the stuff. It was needless, distracting, and just plain weird. After all, basketball is played indoors.
Viewers were not impressed with Fox Sports’ tribute to the frozen kind of precipitation…
https://twitter.com/chuCKeenum/status/546404408805048321
https://twitter.com/_JimBeck/status/546398068904849408
Here’s a video from Fox so you can see the animated snow for yourselves. The only thing missing was the red streaks from the days of the glow puck.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrADrNYFiVo
The fake snow wasn’t just on the Syracuse-Villanova game on Fox. It was on Fox Sports 1 as witnessed in Louisville-WKU.
A little holiday cheer isn’t such a bad thing… but this? I’m trying to watch a basketball game here. If I wanted to watch it snow I would… well… go outside and watch it snow. Sure, it’s cute and seasonal, but what’s next? Are we going to show fake leaves falling in fall? How about fake radiating sunlight for NASCAR next summer.
Not to get all Scroogey, but for a network that’s had its fair share of awful broadcast innovations (RIP Scooter) this may be the worst. I actually tried to adjust my television set because I thought there was something wrong with it – like I traveled back in time to the pre-HD days and there was some nasty static fuzz on the screen.
It’d be one thing if the snow graphics were small and out-of-the way. But the fake snow (I still can’t believe I’m typing this out) was intrusive and constant. Even when Syracuse and Villanova were going back and forth in the dramatic final seconds, we had to be subjected to superfluous animated snowflakes on our screen. Does Fox not realize how easily distracted the average American is in 2014? “Try to catch the fake snowflakes” is not a game I need to be playing in my head while trying to watch sports.
Sports broadcasting innovations should be geared towards making the viewer experience better for fans at home, not showing off the latest trick you learned in Microsoft PowerPoint. Bah humbug.
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About Matt Yoder