I love Bomani & Pablo and no matter what my personal opinion of their show is I’m rooting for their success.
The debut show’s production aesthetic triggered my 1992 Wolfenstein 3D brain. Where do I have to run? What’s trying to kill me? Where do I have to shoot? Even the soundtrack of the first segment had a Wolfenstein vibe.
It completely distracted me from the most important part of the show: hearing what Bomani & Pablo had to say and enjoying their interaction. In the absence of having some virtual Nazis to shoot at I wasn’t too happy about it.
I chalk it up to being OLD. On Twitter I saw similar kvetching but I also saw plenty who enjoyed the audio and visual effects. I’m confident that team Rydholm will tweak the show for the better. But I don’t think it’s their problem to solve how easily my brain gets distracted, especially if a lot of people like the aesthetic and extra especially if those people are younger than I am.
I finally got around to listening to the debut show as a podcast. Without the visual effects the persistent soundtrack didn’t distract me from hearing what Bomani & Pablo had to say and enjoying their interaction. From a content & chemistry perspective I thought they had a great debut.
I’m going to try to watch the live broadcast of the 2nd episode on my phone instead of the big screen to see if the visual effects are less distracting for me on a 6″ screen than a 60″ screen.
Ratings note: BEWARE ratings comparisons to last Monday at noon
Last week Cavs/Celtics game 7 aired on ESPN the night before and Monday was a holiday. If you don’t think that makes a difference, not only did the Monday, May 28 “Get Up!” get to 300,000 viewers it averaged over 500,000 (538,000). First Take had a much better than average day with 778,000 and the noon SportsCenter more than doubled the previous week’s 356,000 with 747,000.
There are no great comparisons but the 356,000 on Monday 5/21 is probably the best one. Comparing to last year’s number doesn’t work well without knowing (I don’t) how the noon SportsCenter had been tracking versus last year.