Bill Maher’s “new rule” on the eve of the NFL championship game: “Enjoy the Super Bowl this weekend while you can because it’s probably one of the last ones to be shown on broadcast TV, which is a shame because streaming is ruining football. And that’s Taylor Swift’s job now.”
The “Real Time” host popped off Friday night about digital platforms like YouTube TV and Netflix dipping into live sports, delivering a razor-sharp rant about how digital technology is actually a “reverse improvement” over old-school, linear TV when it comes to watching live events.
“What’s so bad about streaming football, you ask?” he continued. “Well, OK, for one, I used to be able to switch between two games in just a second — just one second — by hitting ‘previous’ on the remote [audience roars]. Thank you. But on YouTube TV, I have to go back to the homepage, go to ‘sports,’ go to ‘NFL,’ then scroll across to find the second game you want to check on, wait for the circly thing to calm down … .”
Watch the video above to hear the audience crescendo as Maher walks them through that painstaking sequence.
He also had something to say about the cost of fragmentation: “When football first started moving to streaming, I thought, ‘Well, OK, at least I’m lucky enough to afford all the channels I’ll need. Too bad for you if you’re not. Sucks to be you. Get a third job.’”
And finally, Maher put a fine point on how commercials are somehow more intrusive on streaming, not less:
“At least there’ll be no commercials, right? Nope, plenty of commercials,” he went on. “Except, unlike old TV where I may have DVR’d the game to watch later after it’s over and could zip through the commercials, streaming purposely makes it so you can’t do that. They don’t let you see what you’re fast-forwarding through, so there’s no way to tell where the commercials end and the action resumes.”
Adding that an already-aired game is impossible to find as soon as it’s over, Maher firmly declared our emerging infrastructure for watching live sports “the worst of all worlds.”
“I have to watch it when it’s on, I’m paying for it, and I’m still watching commercials,” he said. “And I can’t zip through them. Boy, isn’t it great that things are better than the old days when we had to sit through commercials and watch shows right when they aired? Yeah, so much better.”
Maher said he’s sure he’s not just “a Boomer bitching” because “I checked Reddit. Kids of all ages hate this. They hate this, and they recognize reverse improvement when they see it.”
Maher said he first crafted his “reverse improvement” rant six years ago, “defined as when they make an upgrade that nobody wants, needs, or likes, and isn’t actually upgrading anything. It’s just making it different and often worse.”
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