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Things I Hate About TV: Sunday sports running over into primetime

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Joe NamathLet me start this rant by saying that I like sports. No, I love sports. I'm a fan. I get the DirecTV NBA package and the major league baseball games. I can talk to you for hours about stats and players and great games. That said, I hate the way Sunday sports programming drifts over into primetime. This happens primarily on CBS and Fox with the NFL games in the fall and winter, but the other networks have been guilty of staying with the game and then still insisting on showing the primetime schedule after the game is over -- even if that means that an 8 o'clock show begins at 8:45 and your DVR gets all screwed up and you wind up with only 15 minutes of a show you wanted to see!

What I don't get about the reasoning of the programmers is that they don't use common sense. If a football game or golf tournament goes past 7 o'clock, why not trim the first show of your schedule? You can dump Andy Rooney and still show most of 60 Minutes. It's not a perfect system, but if I have to choose between a complete 60 Minutes or seeing Cold Case at the scheduled time, I vote for the latter. Otherwise the 10 o'clock show doesn't end till well past my bed time. (Gosh, I sound like such an old fart!)

The networks have to stay with sports now because of the most famous incident ever in the history of mucking up a sports broadcast. It was called the Heidi game. November 17, 1968. The New York Jets were playing the Oakland Raiders (when both teams were great, by the way -- Joe Namath was the Jets' QB). The game was being broadcast on NBC and the Jets were winning 32-29 with 65 seconds left on the clock. Thinking that there was no way the Raiders were going to come back to beat the Jets, NBC hastily switched from the game at 7 o'clock (EST) to begin broadcasting the special movie of the night, Heidi. Timex, who was sponsoring the special TV movie version of the Swiss children's classic, were promised 7-9 p.m. and that's what NBC delivered.

Sports fans were outraged, especially when the Raiders came back to score 14 points in nine seconds and won the game! What most people don't recall is that NBC had second thoughts after switching off the game. They were inundated with calls from football fans, but it was too late and too complicated to reconnect the feed for the broadcast. Because of that infamous game, NFL contracts with the networks include a provision that all games be shown in a team's market area to the conclusion, regardless of the score. There'll never be another Heidi game.

The networks, however, can alter their primetime lineups -- and that's why I hate spillover Sunday sports. Tiger Woods is great to watch in the afternoon, but by the time dinner's over, I want him in the clubhouse and my TV screen to return to regularly-scheduled primetime programming. Okay? Okay.

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