Sports in a Time of No Sports

This could likely be made brief enough for Twitter, but it’s a little off-brand for there, so it’s here.

With all the sports on hold, many teams are re-running their “greatest hits”; I can imagine a number of reasons for this: stations need to do something with the already-scheduled time slots (hoo, boy, the Olympic-sized hole in the TV schedules this Summer will be interesting), the teams have a clear interest in remaining in mind, and people absolutely need all the diversions they can get. A thing about that last one, though, is that it requires that people enjoy watching games again. And while there are some movies and TV shows I’m happy to revisit repeatedly, and there are even some goals—perhaps even highlight packages—I am unlikely to tire of, the notion of watching an entire game over again does not much appeal. Especially on broadcast. I guess this will be an opportunity for broadcasters to learn how much of the audience draw of live sports is the live and how much is the sports; for me, it’s almost exclusively the former.