Many of us, the fans, may just be able to help the Mountain West schools, literally. It's a longshot, but here is my logic: Right now, almost nobody watches The Mtn. except for football and basketball games. If we start watching the shows, then the network can report more viewers which helps with advertising and also helps with showing Comcast why the reach of The Mtn. needs to be bigger.
The advertising will in turn make the network quality better and give even more reason for Comcast to make The Mtn. a channel available nationally on their cable service. That creates a huge jump in subscribers to The Mtn. (TowerPower pointed this out to me in another thread. People don't have to subscribe specifically to The Mtn, all they have to do is subscribe to the package Comcast offers it with. i.e. With the new reach in Atlanta, The Mtn. is in the same package as NFL Redzone. Without knowing it, tons of people will subscribe to The Mtn. as well as NFL Redzone and the MWC makes money off of it. Put that on a national scale with the largest cable provider in the nation and the amount of money made off of subscribers jumps through the roof) that in turn actually helps provide money to the schools we consider ourselves fans of.
If there is an issue with that logic, please point that out in the comments for me as I am not even sure that us watching more of The Mtn. will actually follow this train of thought.
With that, here is today's review of this week's installment of A Conversation With - A Conversation With Jim Livengood.
Alright, since this is a grade system, that means I have to have a series of things to grade on. Here is my grading rubric:
| Graphics | How well the graphics look. i.e. how good are the video clips, do they have good statistics, do the graphics stand out? |
| Analysis | How much does the analysis make sense? Does it seem like the analysts are saying something you and I have already come up with or is it something that's new? |
| Quality of Interview Questions | Are they questions that everyone is wondering or are they meaningless? |
| Smoothness of Show | How smooth is the transition between camera angles, in and out of commercials and graphics? |
Graphics:
A Conversation With doesn't show many graphics due to it being basically a thirty minute interview. The Mtn. definitely dug up some gems for today's show, being able to find at least 10 photos of Jim and his grand kids when he talked about being a fairly new grandfather. Other than that, they didn't show any videos or statistics, but I do think that there was no statistics due to it being a 30 minute interview, so I'll give them a pass on that.
Graphics Grade:
B
Analysis:
I can't remember the name of the person who interviewed Jim Livengood today, but he seemed to understand what he was talking about at all times and make a dialogue of it. There really isn't much to analyze when it comes to an interview, so since he understood what Jim was talking about, I'll give him an A in this area.
Analysis Grade:
A
Quality of Interview Questions:
When interviewing an Athletic Director instead of a head coach, the questions aren't going to be very pertaining towards things that interest us although some of them did keep me from falling asleep such as what is it like to be a grandfather, why did you come to UNLV, etc. Other than that, these questions were more about the everyday life of an athletic director.
Quality of Interview Questions Grade:
B
Smoothness of Show:
This show wasn't live, so it can't be accredited for fixing mistakes on the spot like some ESPN shows do, but the smoothness of camera angle changes, going in and out of pictures and commercials really impressed me. There never was a hiccup during the show and occassionally a ticker bar would pop up letting me know where the MWC teams were going bowling.
Smoothness of Show Grade:
A+
Let's take another look at that rubric, this time with the grades:
| Graphics | How well the graphics look. i.e. how good are the video clips, do they have good statistics, do the graphics stand out? | B |
| Analysis | How much does the analysis make sense? Does it seem like the analysts are saying something you and I have already come up with or is it something that's new? | A |
| Quality of Interview Questions | Are they questions that everyone is wondering or are they meaningless? | B |
| Smoothness of Show | How smooth is the transition between camera angles, in and out of commercials and graphics? | A+ |
Final Grade:
B+
This show might have impressed me better had it been a coach or player since questions for an Athletic Director are not all always going to be the most interesting, but I was very impressed with particularly the camera quaity and smoothness of the show. I would only reccomend this kind of show to you if it was a coach or player from the Mountain West Team you are a fan of.
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