Reversed in & out

[Laurence Horn]

On Oct 20, 2011, at 12:04 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> In her NY Times 'The TV Watch" column of yesterday (Oct. 19) on the
> previous night's Republican candidates' debate, Alessandra Stanley
> writes "Mr. Romney looked a little like a country club tennis player
> dealing with a nonmenber guest who gauchely calls a ball in that was
> obviously out."
>
> When I remember playing tennis without line umpires at the country
> club, it was the player whose side the ball landed on who was
> supposed to call close shots.  A gauche nonmenber like myself (I mean
> I was a nonmember, not a gauche) would therefore call a ball "out"
> that was obviously in.  [Not yet corrected on-line by the chair umpire.]
>
> Ms. Stanley perhaps needs to attend a Sports 101 semester (as well as
> Creative Writing 153, "Overuse of Alliteration").  Later in her
> article she writes that "The introduction to the Las Vegas debate --
> with music, mountains, majesty and a montage of gambling images --
> was a cheesy blend of Caesars* Palace and 'Sunday Night Football.'"
>
> Surely the epitome of male sports-watching excess is "Monday Night Football."
>
> Joel
>
Well, technically, a case can be made for Sunday Night Football, since the great switch a few years ago when NBC bought the rights to Sunday Night Football (which now gets all the good games, or the ones predicted to be good) while ABC's longterm association with Monday Night Football was allowed to lapse.  And the primary A team announcer Al Michaels came over from ABC's MNF to NBC's SNF.  Monday Night Football is no longer broadcast (except locally to the two markets involved, on non-network stations), but rather delivered on cable to ESPN subscribers, as Sunday Night Football used to be.*  I don't know the figures, but I'd wager that the ratings are much higher for SNF than for MNF, especially since the games are usually much better, and it's preceded by an hour pregame show called "Football Night in America", a clear borrowing from (or ripoff of) "Hockey Night in Canada".  Whether the epitomization of male sports watching excess also shifted I can't say.

LH

*Actually, in the old days the second-tier Sunday night schedule used to split between ESPN and TNT.

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