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 Stories of the Mountain West.
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:
The graphics were outstanding, period. They had tons of videos, pictures and statistics to go around. In particular, the videos had very good quality. There was one drawback though, the graphics for the show don't nearly standout like they do on ESPN. Many times the graphics on ESPN seemed better since ESPN has animations with tons of things going on in the background for their show introduction while The Mtn. just simply has a picture.
Graphics Grade:
A
Analysis:
In the show they actually brought in an analyst to give some perspective on a couple of the stories and once again he knew what he was talking about. They were things that I had no idea about and that really helped me understand a lot more about that specific story.
Analysis Grade:
A
Quality of Interview Questions:
For one of the stories, A Mountain West reporter sat down and interviewed Vincent Brown and Demarco Sampson about how they had changed from the "Okay" wide receivers on a bad team to the great wide receivers on a good team. The questions were more about how they acted off the field and that really didn't appeal to me as a whole.
Quality of Interview Questions Grade:
C-
Smoothness of Show:
During the story about Shaky Smithson and his relationship with his brother, the clips rolled along quite smoothly, without glitches as did the transitions between the show and commercials. Although in between commercials the screen would go black as if it was about to come back to the show, only to go to another commercial.
Smoothness of Show Grade:
B+
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? | A |
| 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? | C- |
| Smoothness of Show | How smooth is the transition between camera angles, in and out of commercials and graphics? | B+ |
Final Grade:
B+
Stories of the Mountain West is basically three inspirational stories on teams from the mountain west, mainly football teams. Today's three stories was an interview of Demarco Sampson and Vincent Brown, a video documentary of how Wyoming is working to overcome the loss of Ruben Narcisse, and just how awesome Shaky Smithson's relationship with his brother really is. I liked watching this show a lot more towards the end, but you might want to check into just the beginning of the show to see what the stories actually are. Otherwise you might find yourself wasting your time.
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