It’s a Wide, Wide World…

Old people like me probably remember ABC’s Wide World of Sports. It was a Saturday afternoon fixture, and, if my old brain recalls correctly, quite interesting.  It introduced people like me, who considered “sports” to mean “the Green Bay Packers,” to such a broader variety. Powerlifting. Hunting. Track and field. Boxing. I even recall an episode where a guy caught a bullet in his teeth.

Of course cable, and later the internet, changed things completely, and Wide World of Sports went off the air in January of 1998. I’ve got mixed emotions about that. I can appreciate the vast breadth of sports programing I can now view just about anytime and anywhere. But I also can’t help but think we’ve lost something. There was a certain degree of thought and care being put into the programming in its heyday.  They needed to find things that would appeal to a broad audience – even if it was obscure, it would have to be something that had people tuning in and thinking, “Hmmm – that’s kind of interesting.” They might not ever watch it again, but their lives were broadened just a bit more in the viewing. I mean, catch a bullet with your teeth? Who thinks of stuff like that?

Today we have what I’ve heard called the “paradox of choice.” That is, that we have too many choices and are thus more dissatisfied with whatever we choose in the end. Having just gone through some remodeling, I can really feel it. I think if they only gave us 5 choices for bathroom tile, I would’ve gotten it right. Twenty-five? No way.

Does this apply to sports? Hey, we should know what we like, I suppose. But is the ability to watch any sport, any time a good thing? Stream it live? Watch the replay? What can that say about quality? What does that do to seeing something you may have never watched before and maybe even liking it? Sure, it’s not like having 30 different styles of blue jeans from which to choose, but maybe if we could just sit back and let someone else pick the program for us for once…or, again.