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Honolulu Lite
ON Guam, everyone knew about Cal Worthington and his dog Spot. Cal was a quirky Southern California car dealer. On his commercials he'd say, "I'm Cal Worthington and this is my dog Spot!" Then the camera would pull back and show him sitting on an elephant or water buffalo or some other strange animal. KITV fumbles
live football callWe knew Cal because back then, in the late '70s, the local television station played daylong, week-old tapes of shows from the states, including all the commercials. It was too expensive or technically impossible in those days for real-time broadcasts. So Cal Worthington became an unlikely celebrity on Guam and we lived with the fact that we couldn't watch live sporting events.
Hawaii isn't Guam, but we still suffer certain Third World indignities, like having to wait a week longer than the rest of the country to see some movies, having to pay nearly $5 a pound for a red bell pepper and having to watch many sporting events on a tape-delayed basis.
While most of America marches boldly into the 21st century, we play "close-your-eyes time" with local news anchors so we won't know the score of a game.
It's ironic that we now can watch a bunch of "Big Brother" bozos discuss zits live but we can't see the Monday Night Football game until several hours after all the players have gone home to bed or out to commit various felonies.
Well, we could see the game live if our work schedules allowed us to sneak out to a local bar or club with a satellite dish. Not anymore.
KITV, which owns the right to broadcast Monday Night Football, says it will sue any establishment that broadcasts the game live on Monday afternoon.
THEY have every right to do that. But why create unnecessary bad will for no substantial upside return?
KITV president Ken Rosenberg said the tape-delayed Monday Night Football game gets about an 18 rating, which represents roughly 70,000 Hawaii households. Assuming several people per household are glued to the tube, you're talking about a quarter-million viewers.
If they showed the game live in the afternoon, it would hit only about 15,000 households. Obviously, the station makes more money delaying the broadcast and the delay is more convenient to many people who have bothersome things like daytime jobs.
I'd guess that probably one or two thousand people, at the most, repair to smoky hideaways to watch MNF in the afternoon.
While the bars and restaurants may technically be violating the copyright by airing the games, it is a fairly harmless offense and provides a public service.
Stopping the bootlegged afternoon broadcasts will do nothing for KITV except make a segment of the island angry and take away revenue from the saloons that sell a couple of extra plates of buffalo wings during the game.
It seems kind of petty. If you assume that even 2,000 people have been watching the game live and are now forced to watch it tape-delayed, that does not even amount to one rating point. (More likely, they'll stop watching KITV altogether.)
By letting the bars continue to broadcast the game, KITV doesn't lose anything and creates a reputation as a company with aloha. Cal Worthington, who knew a thing or two about creating good will among viewers, would be proud.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to charley@nomayo.com or
71224.113@compuserve.com.
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