h/t @vlime286 for the naming convention.
Backchannel messages expressing disbelief that I’m delighted by HIGH NOON’s move to 4pm? I has them.
I’m not talking about idiot minions who follow intellectually dishonest doofus “Boobs” characters on the Internet either. I’m talking about reasonable people who I know and like asking me why I’m shilling for ESPN about HIGH NOON moving and getting shortened to 30 minutes.
I’m not doing the work of Soltys, Krulewitz and Hofheimer here. I’m shilling for myself, Robert Seidman!
These changes are perfect for me. Both in moving it later and shortening it to 30 minutes. I understand if fans of the show aren’t happy about the reduction in time and I enjoyed how Bomani & Pablo used the extra time. And I wound up watching every episode.
BUT…
Creating new habits is hard. And I struggled both with trying to watch the show around noon ET and with the show being an hour.
Why? Because creating new habits is hard and I wasn’t in the habit of watching TV at around noon ET Mon-Fri and I’m not in the habit of regularly watching hour-long shows in the afternoon either. “How’s that any different than watching ATH & PTI back to back?” I don’t know! I only know that it is different. For me.
Sometimes a focus group of one might just be a focus group.
I think ESPN execs wound up asking “If people are habituated to watching SportsCenter around noon and the (30 minute) Rydholm shows later in the day…in THIS TV environment, why swim against the tidal forces of people’s existing viewing habits?”
Why indeed? Sometimes the trick is just to ask the right question.
As a bonus to the ESPN PR folks, for all the interest in HIGH NOON being “canceled” into a much better time slot, none of ya’ll yapped at me about SportsNation being outright canceled. That’s kinda weird.