Even professional golf at the highest level is played at a glacial pace. The Masters broadcast was set to end at 7:00 EDT. My guess is CBS thought that by then the winner would have finished playing, signed his card and stood around in Butler Cabin to have someone drape a green jacket over their shoulders that hardly looks good on the wearer, considering the colors a golfer wears when heading to the first tee on a Sunday. But, it's the Masters tradition.
I gave up watching grass grow when Scotty Scheffler had a four stroke lead with two holes to play. I was hungry and dinner was ready. I don't need to stick around and hear Jim Nantz intone that we've just witnessed a Biblical event. It's golf Jim. You're lucky any of us watch it at all.
Of course 60 Minutes, the network's marquee news show, has to be shown in its entirety. The clock has now pushed past 7:00 and 60 Minutes, takes, well 60 minutes, otherwise also known as an hour.
I did tune in to enough of 60 Minutes to catch the piece on the Tazmanian Tiger. Back from extinction, or not? I love Australian accents.
What followed 60 Minutes I have no idea. I timed myself to tune in at 9:00 and catch some Billy. It's not like I've never heard the guy before. Been to a MSG concert; have probably every recording of his, starting with vinyl.
I'm 75 and don't stay up too late. I like to read before going to sleep. So what the hell was the scene of someone driving car to some waterfront location, and looking like every part of every cop show there is? I don't even know the show's name.
The INFO button gives me the chyron that Billy's show starts at 9:00. Clearly not. Rain delay? Some lame announcement that Billy is coming up next. Yeah, when, when this cop crap is over?
There's no need for me to stick around for a televised concert that's already been taped and one I've already seen. Live performances can add some nuances to the music, but in general, they could be lip synching too.
Thee aren't that many of us alive today who can compare the pre-empting of the Billy Joel concert to the pre-empting that NBC pulled when broadcasting a New York Jets-Oakland Raiders game in 1968. I can. I was 19 at he time and was leaving the house with my father with the conviction that the Jets had the game solidly won.
Only later when the final score was announced did we learn that no one saw the full game because NBC pre-empted the game for a telecast of a show about the story of Heidi, the orphaned 5-year-old Swiss girl who grows up with her grandfather. That's where the "Heidi" game comes from.
The firestorm from that one became legend. Even in 1968 the TV audience for an A.F.L football game would have vastly exceeded the Billy Joel faithful who were ticked off at the telecast cutting Billy off while singing Piano Man, his signature sone.
No one didn't know how their bets were going to come out watching football, as even a 1968 audience had a vested interest in the game,
Will heads roll at CBS? Will some poor technician take the fall for following the manual? Not likely if they're in the union. Was someone unavailable to make a command decision because they were in Nantucket waiting for their flight back to New York from their weekend home? My bet is no one at CBS was past 10 years-of-age in 1968.
The Heidi game got an unexpected sterling revisit in an obituary—of all places—when the director for the Heidi telecast, Delbert Mann, passed away in 2007. His obituary in the NYT was written by the peerless Margalit Fox who laid out the circumstances on the widespread kerfuffle over Mr. Mann's production being started at the "ultrapunctual" time of 7:00.
It's not likely the pre-empting of Billy's concert on CBS will ever crawl into someone's obituary, unless of course the schmuck who gave the order to pull the plug and head to the affiliates' 11:00 news is publicly identified and given lifetime industry pariah status.
Executives can be noted in their obituaries for accomplishments that we understand. Take Frank A. Olson who has just passed away at 91, on the same day as O.J. Simpson. They were otherwise linked in that Mr. Olson, as an executive at Hertz, put O.J. in the driver's seat in those Hertz commercials that had O.J. doing broken field running through airports. Go O.J. Go.
Decades ago on the show Laugh In, Dan Rowan and Dick Martin awarded a Fickle Finger of Fate to that week's numbskull. If the person responsible for pulling the lug were publicly known then they'd get the FFF award, or better named The Heidi trophy.
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