SO-LONG SPORTS
Solar Sports, the exclusive carrier of the Manny Pacquiao - Erik Morales fight (you couldn’t even see it on ESPN) suffered a major embarassment when everyone learned of the result before they could broadcast the match, losing a lot of viewers who would have otherwise lapped up their sponsor’s ads.
Solar obviously hadn’t heard of the internet, text messaging and in some cases, International Direct Dial. The less fortunate fight fans even had the pleasure of hearing the fight live blow for blow on radio, harkening back to the ’40’s and ’50s.
There obviously is no end to corporate greed, but this time, Solar Sports’ plot backfired on it.
In order to expand advertising time, carriers of major fights delay the broadcast so that they can expand the time in between rounds (1 minute) to around 15 minutes.
Thus, come fight time, the unfortunate Filipino viewer who doesn’t know better is treated to the undercard.
By pretending that we still lived in the dark ages, however, Solar Sports lost a lot of viewers when word had spread that our boy Manny had lost.
If I remember correctly, what Solar Sports did is illegal. Mr. Ferdinand Marcos was a fight fan and banned this nefarious practice.
Now when I was a little boy before greedy TV stations discovered this trick, the way to make advertising time was to generate excitement by gathering a bunch of boxing experts who would analyze the strengths of the boxers and show documentaries about the fighters’ lives and careers, both of which would allow for lots of advertising, but, come fight time, the broadcast would be LIVE, even if the quality of the video was as good as that of Apollo 11’s landing on the moon. Heck, we even got to see those pretty "round girls".
All that however, has disappeared in favor of G-R-E-E-D.
They should change the name to SO-LONG SPORTS, for thinking that they could make the fight fans wait for so long.
