Monday, March 26, 2012

Where Do I Begin?

No, I am not dead, nor am I hospitalized with two broken legs and a fractured pelvis. I have just been buried under a pile of work that would make Hercules pause a moment, pull out his bandana, and wipe his brow in anticipation. Sometimes I feel like a postal worker, toiling away on one emergency and seeing, out of the corner of my eye, a never-ending line of other people and projects who need my attention. Fortunately, I had the good sense to move to the online end of my business, so I, unlike the U.S.P.S., am unlikely to ever become obsolete because I didn't foresee what was coming down the pike.

Which brings me to the point of this post. I actually have been pondering for a couple of weeks which of the nearly intolerable issues with the current PBR season I should tackle first. They gather 'round me, friends, like so many hungry puppies, nipping at my sleeves and begging pathetically for Pupperoni snacks. But one of them is growling now, and growling loudly, so I guess I better put down the tools of my trade and feed the bulldog.

And that bulldog is the damned broadcast schedule. I have thought about this seriously, and I cannot for the life of me see how the Powers That Be at PBR headquarters could possibly have made it any harder for us to watch the sport. And since I can search for "bull riding" via my DVR, I am more fortunate than most fans, who have to go to the website and poke around (and we all know how user-friendly and helpful the site is) to determine what network will be broadcasting the event, and when, and then translate that to their own particular time zone.

Honestly! Do the dolts who caused this mess not understand that the broadcasts are the ONLY reason the PBR has managed to gain a decent fan base outside of the NASCAR-loving, Stars-and-Bars waving, redneck, fundamentalist, snake-handling, right-wing demographic? Maybe that's straying from the main point, which is this: Take away the broadcasts, and the number of attendees of all persuasions at live events will plummet. You (and the PBR accountants) can take that prediction to the bank.

So here we are, with only ONE broadcast per event on most weekends, if we are lucky, and it is a not infrequent occurrence that the programming immediately before the PBR runs over, thus truncating an already abbreviated experience. I literally cannot count the number of times I have recorded the event, only to discover that the end has been lopped off because some eighth-tier basketball game slopped over into the PBR timeslot.

Just consider the atrocity perpetuated on us this past weekend--the Albuquerque event was a three-day event, and in the end, J.B. Mauney won for the third time this season, but all we got to see was one hour--the 15 on 15 on Sunday afternoon. How can any sensible person consider that a fair representation of the sport?

I hope somebody in Pueblo is working on solving this problem, because it is rapidly sapping a lot of my enthusiasm for the sport. It just makes me weary, and I assure you that I am not alone.