History in the Making...But You'll Have to Wait Until Tomorrow to Read the Full Story!

We live in an age of instant gratification. The world is at our fingertips, or so the saying goes. I’m a big sport fanatic and the one thing I love, as do all other sports fans, is when you get to enjoy a historical moment while it’s happening. When you know for a fact that what you’re watching will be front page news material the following day, or even hours from that moment. What’s hard to understand, then, is the lack of attention some of these events receive. If I were promoting a product or service to a target audience that I knew for a fact would all collectively be tuned in to one specific event, I would do whatever it takes to please that audience.

On Thursday April 5th, 2012, major league baseball witnessed the longest opening day game in history (http://tsn.ca/mlb/story/?id=392368). The Toronto Blue Jays were playing in Cleveland, the home-opener for the Indians. Being a Jays fan I was following the game but I wasn’t able to watch the game on TV or follow it inning by inning. So I wasn’t exactly glued to the game at first. Once I got home from work I checked the score only to realize the two teams were locked in a tie and the game was headed to extra innings. Any game, be it baseball, hockey, basketball or the like, that goes in to extra time is always exciting to watch. I normally tune in to TSN (The Sports Network) to watch games, especially those featuring Canadian teams, and this time around was no different.

When the game reached its pinnacle the network decided to switch over to a hockey game that had just started. I’m a hockey fan too, sure, but compare a game that has reached its most exciting point to another that hasn’t even gauged the interest of the super-fan yet. Frustrated I switched over to ESPN, no luck there. I tried MSNBC Sports, no luck there either. These are arguably the three biggest sports networks in North America that decided not to show a developing story that had already made history (being the longest game and all) and would undoubtedly cover it the next morning as a front-page news item. Even stranger, both TSN.ca and ESPN.com had the developing story on the front-page of their website. Logic would suggest that as a network or business you try to capture the interest of your viewers through one medium (the internet in this case) and translate that into action. In this case, both TSN and ESPN did well in recognizing an important sporting event that was in the process of making history but failed to cease the opportunity and maximize their network’s viewership at that moment in time.

I don’t have a deep understanding of how these networks operate. I do understand they have certain contractual rights they must honor by showing certain events and not being able to show others. Having said that, in the case of TSN where they had been showing the game but decided to switch over to a program (a hockey game in this case) that had very little value comparably was beyond me.

Interestingly enough the comments from other viewers shared the same sentiment as I did; I wanted to witness a sporting event making history and not be cut off at the moment I was at the edge of my seat to be directed to something I wasn’t interested in. It’s too early to get hard numbers on the viewers for either sporting event, but TSN, being a Canadian network, should’ve done better to show the end of a game featuring a Canadian team making history rather than a sporting event that featured two non-Canadian teams in the early part of the game that wouldn’t have been fatal if missed.

Although none of the three major networks mentioned above were showing the game, I believe if the other two had switched over to the end of the baseball game a lot of TSN viewers would’ve flocked to that network to enjoy the game.

TSN and ESPN both do well in providing fans up-to-date information online but could do better to direct people to a live stream either online or to their networks for events such as this one.