Flashes of Panic

I went to the Bruins-Canadiens game at the Garden last night with this lot (and others). I noticed something about the Garden between periods which explains a lot to me about why hockey is definitely the fourth sport in Boston now (and may be on its way to fifth, with the Revs in the MLS Cup yet again.)

The new Garden has a nice, big scoreboard with massive video monitors on all four sides. There’s a ring of narrow video displays around the top and a smaller ring around the bottom. Then, at the front of the balcony, all around the Garden, is a matching ring of video displays, creating a seamless “crawl” around the entire arena, with this glowing, dancing thing in the middle. When the sponsor on those displays changes (or even when the blue beer-logo display fills up with golden beer) the entire color scheme of the area changes.

We’re motion-watching animals. We focus on the biggest, brightest moving thing in our field of vision. And the builders of the Garden deliberately put a lot of bright, moving advertisements in to grab the attention of the captive audience (which, let’s not forget, paid good money to be there.) The advertisements were a constant distraction from the game we’d paid to see. If I hadn’t been making a conscious effort to watch the game on the ice, it would’ve been so easy to watch the video screen on the scoreboard the whole time, including ad after ad after ad. (You’ll notice that I’ve carefully avoided using the name of the bank which is the “naming sponsor” of the Garden.)

At this point, why not stay at home and watch the game on TV? Heck, why watch the game? When you pay attention, the Bruins are pretty pathetic; they pass, as Bostonist said, “like they just met each other yesterday.”

And it’s pretty obvious that the team and Garden management don’t really care if we’re watching, either, as long as they get paid for the ads.

Now Playing: He’s Got An Answer from Wholesale Meats And Fish by Letters To Cleo

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