I’m guessing my brother-in-law was underwhelmed by the recent earth-shattering announcement from ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery.
I mean, he’s the family member who posted a Facebook meme of Snoopy joyously dancing under the headline “This is me not caring about the Super Bowl.”
Back to the trio of media powerhouses: in case you haven’t heard, they announced an as-yet-unnamed joint streaming service app that would provide programming content from all the major sports leagues, plus college football, college basketball and more.
The breathless declaration was tempered by the fact that the bundle won’t be able to provide the games that have been contractually locked in by NBC Universal, CBS or Amazon. Sort of like a local merchant promising, “We pride ourselves on one-stop shopping – as long as you don’t count swinging by MacNamara’s Hardware and Ernestine’s Florist and catching Zeb before he closes the bait shop…”
Even in light of that, the app would still be a godsend for sports enthusiasts who have long sought to simplify the ordeal of locating all their favorite games out there in Streaming Land.
Granted, it’s ironic that people who expect athletes to “walk it off” and “give 110 percent” want their own endeavors to be “easy peasy lemon squeezy.”
More power to the folks who are salivating over the new service, but they need to be considerate of others. Viewers raised in a sports bubble have a tendency to see neighbors who DON’T eat, sleep and breathe sports as un-American, testosterone-challenged or in need of reprogramming after an alien abduction.
Like it or not, sports enthusiasm occupies a spectrum: from rabid fan to avid fan to casual fan to “If you don’t silence that minor league squash exhibition game on your cellphone, I’m going upside your ex-jock head with my bird-watching binoculars!”
Copyright 2024 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.