{ March 11th, 2010 }
The Saddest Television(s) In Atlanta
As a lifelong National Basketball Association fan, I consider Atlanta a great pro basketball city. Our hometown heroes, the Atlanta Hawks, are one of the most exciting young teams in the league. And unlike other major cities- where tickets are either impossible to find or prohibitively expensive- gaining entry into Philips Arena for a Hawks game is almost too easy. At my most recent pilgrimage to “the highlight factory” I sat in $70 seats for a mere $8 a ticket (thanks, StubHub).
While I’ve got plenty to say about the game experience, I’ll leave it to the experts. What I do want to talk about is the television that was hanging from the upper deck, above my seat:
The view from my seats- the blinding light below represents the game, the impossibly small and ancient blip above courtesy of Philips.
See, Philips Arena has these televisions throughout the arena, in areas where the jumbo-tron is obstructed by the upper level. The idea- or at least I think- is to update fans on the game’s box score. Rather than utilizing one of Philips snazzy HD 50-inchers, the arena still relies on old school 19″, cathode-ray sets, most likely installed in 1999 when the arena was first constructed. The resulting product looks like a cross between an Atari 2600 and one of those bus-terminal style televisions that feeds on quarters.
Clearly, Philips knows more about manufacturing and marketing televisions than I do. And yes, I know that they do not own Philips Arena- they simply pay for naming rights – but when you’re paying over nine million dollars per year for said naming rights, don’t you think you should also provide a product that might actually excite consumers enough to- I don’t know- maybe want to purchase it someday? Philips can probably get a pretty sweet deal on their own televisions, and I’d imagine that replacing the same television that I once crowded around to watch the last episode of Seinfeld, might just be worth it.
Rant over. Let’s Go Hawks!
