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More fun with tape-delay

Published Thursday, September 16, 2004 by seanlmccarthy | E-mail this post

The press always makes such a big deal out of NBC's delayed broadcasts of the Olympics. But the more I think about it, the more I wonder why that is. After all, most game shows (including Jeopardy and Survivor) are contested months before broadcast, and no reporters and editors are all up in arms about that. And the biggest "new" sport to take TV by storm -- poker -- had its 2004 World Series of Poker finale delayed from May 28 to ESPN's airwaves on Tuesday. I was all prepared to write something this week on the powerful pull of poker. Prepared, that is, until I watched the SportsCenter anchors interview poker champ Greg Raymer on Tuesday night as if he had won that night. Let me repeat that. They interviewed him, not as if he had won in May, but as if he had won that night. Shocking but true. My media colleagues are letting me down again. What's next? Will a university pay Jayson Blair to talk to its students? Oh wait. That happened this week, too? Argh.