The Demise of Live TV?

I've always thought that anything with more than 60 seconds of delay should not be allowed to call itself "live".

Why would they delay sports events? Sure they could delay the non-sporting portions....but why the game itself? Lewd-ih-cruss.

I think, at present, what with the dramas of the last few months, that I am working on a permanent 60 second delay - am I still "live"?

*pokes da bunny*

Did you feel that?

Last year when they televised the war in Iraq, it was delayed by 15 seconds.

Censors, watching over the Oscars would really have to be on their toes to catch someone defying the rules, and then bleep it out quickly, in only five seconds.

I wish I could remember where I read about the delays of sporting events. In fact, I wish I could remember where I read the article that starting me thinking about this issue.

I don't know what the point would be to delay sports. The fact is that I think people got a bit too worked up over the Jackson boob and some bad language. I see no good reason to delay anything.

But that's just me.

Injuries, maybe?

I've seen some horrible, horrible injuries (knees bending backwards, necks crunching) that I'd really prefer not to see.

hmm. Interesting talk about live vs a few seconds of delay, so that idiots like Janet and Justin and that football player who pulled a cellphone from its hiding place by the goalpost couldn't make themselves look even more stupid than they probably are.
I'm old enough to remember the early days of TV, when it was all done live. I remember a show when the comedian Jackie Gleason took a nasty spill just as he was coming from stage right. The other actors covered with ad-libs until Gleason could recover. That piqued my interest in (amatuer) acting.
Many years later, there was a live play presented on, I believe, CBS. I forget the actor's name (he was on the TV show WKRP). The play was also forgettable but it was LIVE.
When I win the lottery I'm going to start a cable channel of live community theatre productions. 24-7. Sorry for the long and mostly irrelevant post.

I rather enjoyed your rambling prose, realjohnboy.

No need to apologize.

What I want is a one minute delay for baseball on TV and no delay on radio. Then in the playoffs next fall when Pedro is pitching and A-rod comes to the plate on TV, I, carefully concealing my earpiece, will bet you a million-billion dollars that he strikes him out.



There is a lot of live tv today, mostly news and sports, but very little else and, again except for news, nearly no live tv on the local level. At KTUL-TV in Tulsa in the early 70's we did almost two hours of live music and public affairs programming five days a week. The John Chick Show from 7am to 8am was live music and a local icon. We throughly beat the Today Show in the ratings year after year. The Betty Boyd Show which followed at 8:30 brought solid imformation and a little fun to the airways.

In the afternoon, KTUL aired the Uncle Zeb Cartoon Camp a live kid's show with games and races and magic acts. Try that today. Oh, and then we did an hour of news from 6-7 and a half hour at ten. It was live and on your toes TV.

Joe

There was a 5 seconds delay in Iran's TV during the transmission of the Football (Soccer) World Cup of 1998, so that every time the international signal displayed an inconveniently clad woman fan in the stands, the scene would be substituted by something neutral, like a general shot of the stadium.

Perhaps that will happen in America soon, with the new ayatollahs

Soz, There have been some horrible injuries for all of us to see. I certainly would have preferred not to see them. But is this what time delays are for? I doubt it.

realjohnboy, I'm old enough to remember live TV too. Dramas had the feel of theater. Comedies were were sometimes as funny for what went wrong as for what went right. I remember reading about a live TV drama in which one of the characters was shot and supposedly killed. He thought the camera was off him and got up and walked away in front of the camera for millions to see. Try ad libbing around that!

Hey Joe, I already thunk of that. One of the reasons why time delays in sports just won't work.

fbaezer, You may be right. I thought conservatives were supposed to eshew government interference. Live and loin.