Friday, September 4, 2009

Tweet this, FOX!

We were watching some not-so-great scifi last night on the local FOX affiliate here in the Bayou City. It was "Fringe," to be precise - some senseless, derivative show about an FBI team that investigates paranormal happenings (hmmm, that does sound familiar...). Not long after the opening credits had rolled and a sweaty blonde had spontaneously combusted, splattering all over the screen, FOX popped a double bar into the bottom third of the picture; just above where close-captioning would go but still pretty much covering the bottom third of the image.

It wasn't a weather alert. It wasn't a warning that the Terrorist Alert had gone to code RED. It wasn't anything important like that... It was FOX broadcasting their twitter stream. On-screen.

I have a question, dumbasses at FOX: did it occur to you that anyone who actually cared about tweeting to people about the show already was tweeting to people about the show? And that the rest of us found the overlay as distracting as a pop-up ad about Smilin' Bob's Envite supply?

Gotta admit that I don't know how long they continued broadcasting that crap, 'cause I had a sudden desire to turn off the boob tube and read a good book. And I did. Tell that to Neilsen, Rupert!

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