brad garland

I don’t golf.

I don’t golf because I know how I am with other things I love. 100%. Full bore. Entrenched. And I just fear the money and time drain that golf could add to my life. However, I love a good competition and this past Sunday and Monday I watched the U.S. Open as Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate battled back and forth for the title. After an additional 18-hole playoff, played on Monday during the day, they finally claimed a winner. Tiger, despite a bad knee all week, pulled it off. (He’s amazing isn’t he?)

But what I noticed, was an interesting trend over the top of the golf was the amount of Twitter/blogosphere coverage it was getting. The playoff had to be played during the work day on Monday and my Twitter timeline had more about that than anything else. From people giving a hole-by-hole playback to links to where you can watch it stream live over the Web to people wishing they were home watching it. It was nuts.

So I began to think about the way we all consume television and how the ‘primetime’ shows are always shown in the evenings because the vast majority of people work during the day. Sure, we have Tivo/DVRs now but that’s mainly for skipping the commercials, right? And isn’t this mindset shifting anyway with increased usage of the Internet, flexible schedules, and virtual offices? Why do the shows have to come on at 7pm each evening? Does it still make sense to fit into that mold?

So what could we do to flip paradigm from how we have consumed TV media for the last 80 years? What would fast forward this mindset? Then, I got it…

Put American Idol on at 2pm on a Tuesday and watch what happens. :)

UPDATE: Article talking about how that how the playoff was the most watched 15 minutes block of the TV day.