There is No Bigger Buzzkill than FOX Immediately Cutting to Commercial Break During a Review

There was a sequence during Sunday’s Eagles/Cowboys game when Luke Schoonmaker caught a Dak Prescott pass and was brought down right on the goal line, prompting a review. What did FOX do? They did what they always do, and cut to commercial break to show us some movie trailers and assorted trash before coming back and having the audacity to tell us that the touchdown call had been overturned, completing a game-changing goal line stop.

We didn’t even get to experience the thrill of the announcement because it wasn’t provided to us in real time.

Sadly, this is what FOX does and always has done. Whenever a play goes to review, they decide to dump out of the action and show commercials instead, then give us the result of the review and show the replay on the back end. Ultimately, we usually do get the call on the field, and the appropriate replay angles, but we have to wait through the ad break first.

What drives me crazy about this approach is that it kills the suspense of the moment. “Here’s a critical play in the game!” Oh wait, right to commercial break. It’s a buzzkill, because I’m invested in the game. I’m committed to the game. I’m engrossed in the game. I want to remain engaged, but FOX foments disengagement when they dump out immediately to break. What happens is that I then find myself rewinding on YouTube TV and watching the one pre-commercial replay we get, then fast forwarding back through the commercials to rejoin the broadcast on the other side. Or, I just leave the TV rolling and dick around on my phone for three minutes.

It creates a 3-4 hour event that’s ultimately less enjoyable than it should be, because you can’t reach and maintain a high level of engagement. There are already too many ad breaks as it is, which is a hallmark of our money and consumer-driven society, but sports fans accepted a long time ago that it is what it is. Unless you’re an avid soccer watcher, commercials are going to be part of your experience.

Where I think they can fix this, however, is by double-boxing reviews instead of dumping out entirely. This is very straightforward. When there’s a play like the Schoonmaker catch, and the refs are reviewing it, you put one box on the left with a set of commercials, volume up, then leave broll in the right box, volume down, that continually plays whatever angles you have available.

I can’t imagine the commercial in this kind of box would be any less effective than a full screen ad break, where viewers are liable to simply get up off their couch or rewind/fast forward through it anyway. I know that if I’m watching a double-boxed replay, I’m focused more on the TV and probably hearing more of the advertisement that way.

Dunno. Certainly I’m not the only person who feels this way. It makes me absolutely furious and lessens the experience.

We talked about it on Crossing Broadcast:

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