After the Heidi game

CBS, you’re making me very angry.

Why? Well, for those of us who try and watch football games – and only have one CBS feed – watching NFL games can become a real pain. Due to what I imagine was rule that only some madman would think up, you cannot watch overtime games – unless you are in the local market.

And that stinks.

This isn’t the first time I’ve fallen prey to this rule. Last year, when I was watching the Giants play the Vikings in some regular season game the same thing happened – due to that very rule, FOX had to cut away to some other game and I was left waiting for The FOX Game Break (brought to you by McDonald’s) to see who won (As I recall, I’m pretty sure that the Giants won on a field goal).

See, after the Heidi game (When CBS infamously cut away from a Raiders/Jets game to show the movie Heidi – and viewers missed a huge comeback by the Raiders), I thought stuff like this wasn’t supposed to happen. But it does – it’s stipulated in the TV contracts for the NFL. Technically, CBS was supposed to say they were sorry and cut to the next game.

And that’d have been fine – if there was a game to cut to. Unlike the viewers who have DirecTV, my CBS feed (WIVB Buffalo) only had one game today so I got to see … Er, Shannon Sharpe, Dan Marino, James Brown and Boomer Esiason watching the Steelers game, with the occasional clip of game play. Of course they didn’t show the game-winning field goal or any of the overtime (I got to see the first attempted field goal towards the end of regulation, but missed the other two).

So this has got me thinking – what’s the point of a rule like this? Yes, I understand the rule as it stands toward Doubleheaders, but why couldn’t CBS show the game in its entirety for stations that only have one game? How different is it then having bonus coverage, like last week when I got to see the end for a total of four different games? What market are we violating? The Bills game had already ended – so there goes the home market theory. There was no other game to cut to – there goes the contractual obligations.

So why cut away? Didn’t we learn anything from the Heidi incident? Didn’t we learn anything from the days that the CBC would cut to news at 11pm, regardless of overtime? Didn’t we learn that people, such as myself, like to watch the whole game?

I suppose not. See you at the game-break-quick-score-update-highlight.