Last week during ESPN’s Super Tuesday college basketball coverage, ESPN tried a brand new camera angle – floor seats. The network showed pretty much the entirety of the Ohio State-Michigan game from the a camera on the sidelines instead of the traditionally elevated view.
The new angle was a disaster as it blocked much of the view of the action and featured lots of great shots of referees’ backsides. The reaction from fans watching at home was somewhere between “righteous outrage” and “pure hatred.”
So for this week’s game in Columbus between the Buckeyes and Michigan State, ESPN went back to the floor seats for opening tip before returning to the regular camera angle.
“Last week the Ohio State-Michigan game gave you floor seats. And it was so popular with so many fans, especially those of you in Columbus. Your response, social media, conversations on talk radio, we thought we’d bring it back this week… before tip-off. Now we’ll go back to regular coverage of the game…”
Well played Mike Tirico and ESPN. Give Bristol credit – they experimented with something that they thought might be a new, fun, and interesting way to watch basketball. It failed spectacularly. But at least they were brave enough to try and smart enough to realize it didn’t work. And now we’ll never speak of it again.
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