Slightly Ticked

I love the sports ticker on top of the screen during games -- watching a ball game on-and-off today, and at a quick glance, about a second, I could tell the exact situation before the next pitch (Big Pappy down 1-2, 2 out, no runners, 3-1 Boston in the top of the 6th). It makes watching in a loud bar, or on mute, or in short surf-bursts a lot easier too.

What I don't like about the sports ticker is when it's overdone on the different sports networks during the highlight shows, CNN-style. It used to be I could watch a show's worth of clips that would carry some level of suspense. I thought that made the way they were edited and voiced-over more of an art form (Don Taylor on Sports Page was the best at that). Now, struggling to keep control of my my distracted eyes, I usually know all the scores before the first set of highlights are through. What's worse is when that bar along the bottom of the screen actually blocks something important -- I'm thinking of golf here mostly, but it happens in hockey too sometimes.

Lewis Black does a good rant on this: if you have 44 seconds!