As a fan of American football, I very often get frustrated at ABC, CBS, Fox, and ESPN for showing me ONLY the ballcarrier or quarterback during plays. What if I want to see what the wide receivers and defensive backs are doing? For all I know, they're off playing checkers while everyone else around the ball is actually working hard.

So I propose, solely for a digital broadcast system (channel 9.5, here I come!) a multiple-channel broadcast of a sporting event.

On the main channel for a sporting event, the broadcast would be the same: John Madden droning on about how the point to scoring is crossing the goal line, while the cameras remain focused on the ball and its immediate vicinity.

On the next channel up, four cameras, each taking up a quarter of the screen, would remain focused on the recievers.

Next channel would be a a split view from just above eye-level towards one end zone from the other.

This way, if I don't care about Vinny Testaverde or whoever the hell is playing QB for the Cowboys this week, I can watch Keyshawn Johnson battle it out with Lawyer Milloy in real time, just like I could at the stadium, without caring about the line of scrimmage.

And, of course, it presents the option of many more advertising sales for each network that owns a channel block in your local broadcast area.

With a DVR, you can also very easily record specific actions by specific players for those of you who are super-player-study dorks.

Admittedly, this is more interesting for sports where many different people are doing many different things, so this might not be all that interesting for baseball. But for football, ice hockey, and perhaps rugby, I think I'd flip from channel to channel for the full course of the game.
-- shapu, Aug 30 2004

This could also be applied to, say, the State of the Union addresses (an All-Ted-Kennedy channel, for example), protest coverage, et cetera. I merely focused on sports since it's my primary diversion to an otherwise sad, lonely life.
-- shapu, Aug 30 2004



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