I’m not really sure how it came to pass, but I just can’t record sports to watch later. The new Lost. The odd Cities Of The Underworld. Even the occasional old Hardy Boys episode. No problem. I’ll watch them when I get a chance. But football, baseball, curling, any form of racing… it just doesn’t work. If it’s not live, I just lose all interest. That, of course, means that my weekend schedule will be shot to hell for months to come.
F1 has returned, and the races air live on SpeedTV. Qualifying for the Malaysian Grand Prix kicks off at 2AM tonight/tomorrow morning, and I’ll be on the couch looking to see how the latest chapter in Diffuser-gate unfolds. As a side note, if you aren’t watching F1 (come on, the fact that it’s on Speed at 2AM tells me a lot of you aren’t) now is a great time to start. Changes in regulations this year are making for the most competitive season in years.
That’s a bit out of left field though. What I would really like to know is if anyone else has this same aversion to recorded sports. And if so, why? I suppose part of it for me is the availability of information. At this point, we can get up to the minute results for just about anything on the computer or the phone. Major League Baseball has even released an iPhone application that will let you listen to every game this season, choosing which play by play team you want to hear.
Sports are also their own special culture where results are concerned, and there is no such thing as a spoiler. If we do a headline for what the big twist in the Lost finale is, even days later, there are those that will be up in arms. But every newspaper and television station will be screaming the results of the Superbowl to you the moment the clock expires. Did I just compare Lost to the Superbowl? It is awfully early here on the west coast. At any rate, sports is a strange subset of TV, with its own unique rules. So, I ask the question, “Live, or Memorex?”
Clacked by Brett Love 
on Apr 03, 2009 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
F1, Basketball – no way I’m going to watch a recording. For one those shitty channels over here tend to cut down the live feed to fit into their programming scheme – 2 hours max meaning that you lose at least 30 minutes of every BB game. F1? How are you supposed to get around the news all over the (german) Internet who won, what happened et cetera.
And it just doesn’t feel right. Live is as if you attend the game. There are mandatory breaks – I need to see the 12 minute clock counting down during basketball, I need to know that if there’s a race on that it will take 72 times 1:15 (or whatever) minutes to finish and if it rains it will take longer or shorter or what the hell it needs to feel as if it is happening RIGHT NOW.
I remember when I was a kid and set my alarm clock to 2 in the morning to watch Boris Becker play in the Australian or US Open. Or watch the german Olympic Ice-Hockey team beat sweden for the first time in 37 years in the 1/4-finals. Or when I went to school in the morning at 7am and came home at 1pm and Becker was still playing in Australia due to rain delay and it was standing 8-7 in set number five.
Ah what the hell – it’s as if you go to a concert and don’t arrive five to eight hours early to be able to stand in the first row. What’s the use? Live or bust. Front row and center!
I watch football live, but that’s about it. I’m a big F1 fan but I record the qualifying and races and watch them the next day. I have to be up at 6:30 during the week for work so staying up till 4:00 AM on the weekends just doesn’t work.
I wasn’t a big fan of the twilight race in Australia (and I believe Singapore is doing the same thing). The in-car shots towards the end were almost useless with the sun and I hate the idea that a race is decided not by drivers ability or the machines themselves but by the convenience factor for someone in Europe.
*POST AUTHOR*
Andy, I agree with you on the timing of the race. It was certainly less than ideal. But for me that was overshadowed by having so many teams competitive out of the gate. It made for a fun start to the season. Ya know, except for all the after-the-fact rulings shenanigans.
Well Duh. Let’s talk Olympics then. 10am swimming finals in Beijing anyone?
And it’s not like NASCAR or Indycar races aren’t done in those conditions.
F1 has become insanely competetive this year. Who would’ve thought that Ross Brawn would be able to go into the season with a head start with a team that was done for half a year ago? The return of the Boost, the reduced downforce – it all makes for an extremely competetive environment and honestly I don’t really get what picture quality has to do with whether you want to watch a race live or recorded.
I mean the picture still sucks if you watch it timeshifted, hm?
Besides, we didn’t the race anywhere near a watchable time either. It was on at 9am on a sunday and the re-run was at 2pm. It’s not really as if there was a need to start the race at that time for us Europeans, I honestly think it was more or less done for the Asian market to get it into prime time over there.
Baseball season starts on Sunday, so I either watch the games live, or listen to them live. I couldn’t watch baseball taped, cause I’ll already know the results a second after from someone texting me. If there’s a play I missed, I’ll catch it on sportscenter or look it up later.
I have to watch sports live or else I will just go to the web or ESPN and find out the score. I am a huge Nascar fan and if I miss it on TV, then oh well, I will just wait till I can get online or find out the next day. I have a cousin that likes almost every sport out there, and if I come to visit and he has a game recorded, we can’t watch anything until he watches the previous games. Take Nascar on ESPN on ABC for example, they have that ticker that will tell you everything and he gets mad if he catches a glimpse of it, or I will say something about a game and not know if he DVR’d it or not. I could understand things like the Olympics; I was way too confused during the summer to even know what was going on or when my favorite game would be held. Bottom line, it’s too complicated to record something when we all know ESPN, newspapers, and the news will scream who wins soon as the game is over.