What's the deal with Australian Rules Football? Back when channels dedicated to sports first appeared, they couldn't afford the rights to the popular sports, so they had to get creative. Aussie Rules was one of the more extreme attempts to get something affordable on the air. But as ESPN and TSN got richer, they went with the sports popular with the local audience, and the Australians were elbowed off the schedule.
But lately, it's making a comeback. Usually it's late at night, but you are seeing it appear occasionally. It does look like an entertaining sport, with a lot of scoring, big momentum swings, and I'm assuming some interesting strategy.
Of course, without knowing what's going on, its entertainment value is limited, but I want to watch it just because it contains one of the greatest innovations in the history of televised sports: when they're showing a replay, they keep a live shot in the corner of the screen.
How is it that no one has thought of this before. Soccer needs this more than any other sport, because there are fewer interruptions in the play. So surely someone, somewhere in the world would have tried this. But it would be great in virtually all sports where the TV directors insist on showing the reactions of players, coaches or fans. I don't know how many times we've missed seeing a basket while the camera stays in a close up of the player who made a bad play at the other end. Haven't they noticed that basketball players never have any expression other than an intense frown?
Probably the picture-in-the-corner developed first in Australian Rules Football because they want to show the coolest thing in the whole sport: the two-armed point the officials make when a goal is scored. I don't have any reason to want either team to win, I just want them to score to watch that.
Anyway, I call on the people covering all sports in the world to look into this technology. Now that we have big TVs, we might as well use that acreage.
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