So I’m watching a news show on TV. It could just as easily happen during a sporting event but this time it happened to be a news show. There are several expert commentators sitting at a table with a moderator directing questions to each. What happened when they came back from a commercial break and began their session annoyed me so much I can’t even remember what the hell it was they were talking about.
It started with an innocuous crawl (I believe that is what the media calls a narrow band at the bottom of the TV screen with a moving message going from right to left) going across the bottom of my screen. Naturally, my eyes are drawn to it as it has some kind of flashing lights indicating it is an alert of some type. I try to catch a few words to get the drift of what the alert is and then quickly glance back to the main part of my screen to follow the commentators riveting answer to a question from the moderator. I find during my mental absence I have missed a few key words and thus have no clue as to the context of the discussion.
Returning my eyes to the crawl line I come in just in time catch a few critical words that must have been preceded by some very important words, which I missed. I do a quick rewind to backpedal to those words and pick up from there. I invariably go too far, have to forward to where I want to be, go too far again but eventually get to the right place. Now I can follow through on the crawl line train of thought but have lost all mental contact with the panel discussion. I think I need to get a piece of black tape that covers the bottom part of my screen so the crawl line is not visible or a big piece of cardboard I can tape across the big portion of my screen so all I can see is the crawl line.
I’m not saying I have trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time but it is hard enough digesting a verbal or a written statement of any importance all by itself without trying to digest both at the same time.
To make matters worse, this particular show then began streaming some kind of charts and graphs or something on one side and then later some video of someone talking on the other side and pretty soon all I could see in the middle was the face of one of the commentators. God knows what they were saying because there were 2 voices talking at the same time and all the other stuff and the crawl line, I just changed channels.
Do you feel me?
HAHAHAHAHA! That is SO TRUE! And so hilariously put. That tv crawl annoys the heck out of me!
ReplyDeleteEspecially when you're watching the news... talk about overkill! I can't remember when that all started, but it was probably around the same time that having one business phone number and one home phone number became extinct.