Did you enjoy the music Fox played during the replays, timeouts, reviews, etc. in Sunday's 49ers-Seahawks game? Here's a sampling (a very small sampling) of the responses I received via Twitter during the broadcast.
• it is horrendous!
• Its p---ing me off it sounds like a wannabe college fight song
• I hate the replay music. Hate
• Worst. Idea. Ever.
• Actually wish they'd crank it up to drown out Billick.
• Its like they accidentally spliced the game audio with Lord of the Rings.
• can you knock on the glass and tell them to turn that crap off?!
The guys down at Fox Sports headquarters received similar feedback from both 49ers and Seahawks fans, although VP/Communications Dan Bell put it a lot more diplomatically. He said the network monitored the commentary on social network sites like Twitter and Facebook. "Let's just say they were a little surprised by it," Bell said. "The intent was to let the first half play out and see if the fans noticed a difference. They noticed."
Bell said the intent was to give the game the same type of drama that a great musical score provides a sports movie like "Rocky" or "We Are Marshall." He said that the 49ers-Seahawks game was the first time the music was unveiled (yes, you were the guinea pigs) and stressed that at this point it was still in the experimental stage. Bell said the network would continue to "tweak" the concept this season but that he didn't know which future games would include it. "Even though this is in the experimental stage at the moment, we see a definite future for a sports broadcast to be musically scored in some way," Bell said.
The dramatic score is the brainchild of Fox Sports Chairman David Hill, whose list of pioneering ideas include the constant-score-and-clock graphic and the yellow, first-down line. Bell noted that those ideas weren't all that popular when they were first unveiled, either. "They said he's crazy," Bell said. "There's no way anyone is going to like this."
-- Matt Barrows
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