TECHNO BEAT 2
by Daren Foster

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TECHNO BEAT 2
By Daren Foster

A few Sundays back, in between playing a couple softball games, I was watching the men’s final at Wimbledon. From Wimbledon, I guess it should be. I mean, I’m not in England, watching tennis. The tennis is being played in England and I’m watching it here, 5 hours behind GMT.

And to be completely truthful, I’m not watching it in the traditional sense. The match has been recorded -- PVRed, to use the common vernacular -- hours earlier and we’re watching it long after the matter’s been settled. It’s already in the history books and we’re just simply trying to catch up.

Early in the fifth set, the announcers were calling it one for the ages. My tennis database is spotty so I have to take them at their word, assuming only a soupçon of hyperbole. Certainly what I’m witnessing seems to be some masterful tennis playing. While it’s most definitely a mug’s game to compare present-day athletes to previous generations, the feats I see Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer pull off on the grass at Wimbledon strike me as super human. No one could be that quick or that strong or that emotionally resilient. The tennis elite of my youth seem like rank amateurs in comparison.

Match ends. A new champion is crowned. History has been made. I realize that for the first time in a long time, I have thoroughly enjoyed watching a sporting event. There’s none of the usual nagging annoyance. No lingering resentment at having wasted my time. Yes, the action had been exceptional but there was something more. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

That’s a big fat lie. I most certainly could.

The simple fact was that I got in an hour or two of watching sports without the usual bombardment of overwhelming and overbearing corporate commercial excess. Maybe this doesn’t happen in tennis like it does the other major sports leagues in North America. Maybe the audience numbers and the game’s relatively low profile here combine to keep tennis free of the advertising deluge I’ve come to expect and loathe with other sports.

Regular readers of this column (hi mom!) will know of this particular burr up my backside when it comes to televised sporting events. So commercially driven (not to mention dependent) are professional sports that they allow advertisers to shape the very nature of the games to their money-grubbing wills. As I’ve written previously, the Super Bowl is now just an evening of commercials interrupted occasionally by a football game. What was once baseball’s October Classic™ is now so drawn out by commercial considerations that it has been re-dubbed the Fall Classic™. There’s big money to be had for everyone involved by selling out to corporate interests except, of course, the fans who have to deal with the crass commercialization. The Tostitos™ Fiesta Bowl, indeed.

But, there is light at the end of the tunnel. As I experienced firsthand with Wimbledon, it is possible to enjoy your favourite sporting pastime without constant commercial clatter. Just load it up onto the PVR and watch at your leisure. Go out, do some shopping for game time snacks and beverages to put some distance on the hard drive so that when you return and settle down in front of the TV, you can gleefully begin zipping through the commercials as soon as they appear on the screen.

One possible hitch to this cunning ruse is the possibility of inadvertently discovering a game’s outcome before getting the opportunity to see it first hand yourself. We had to nip any tennis talk in the bud after leaving the match at 2-2 in the final set to play our second ball game. Complete sensory deprivation would be the ideal state for this to work out in an airtight fashion. Failing that, however, you must stay away from radios, television sets and the computer, as well as people who just have to be the first to bray, “Did you hear..!!”, taking equal delight in announcing final scores as they do high profile assassinations.

Technology is at hand to eliminate even this slight hiccup from our lives. I’ve heard tell of glorious machines that will detect a commercial’s signal and stop recording immediately. Computers can be loaded up with software that will download, rip and/or burn television programs free of commercial blight although word has it that some people aren’t as keen on that reality as I am. Piracy, copyright infringement and all that sort of thing. While I sympathise or, at least, keep my nose relatively clean, I sense the fear that’s at the root of their litigiousness. The gravy train’s derailed and there’s no returning to the good old days of We Show, You Watch. Only the very young and the very old have that kind of relationship with their TVs anymore. Commercial television is terminal and its death can’t come soon enough for me.