Don't Read This Blog! Look At My Friends And Family!

Today I had one of those careful-what-you-wish-for moments. Last week I praised the telecasts of Australian Rules Football for showing replays and reaction shots in a little picture-in-picture box on the corner of the screen. Today, the broadcasters of the Indianapolis 500 made use of the technique to show the wives and girlfriends of the contending drivers in the final laps of the race. I hated it, and even other sportscasters hated it:

Wonderful finish Indy 500..and TV shows me wife and girlfriends..I don't care..All those in car cameras and that's all they used..terrible
— Vic Rauter (@TSNVicRauter) May 25, 2014

I have to admit that it was not as bad as their usual practice of breaking away to show the significant others full-screen, sometimes in between every camera change. Trouble is, they decided that the facial expressions of the partners - while not worth ignoring the race for - was at least of equal importance to the race. So they showed each shoot side by side. That is, they showed the entire widescreen view of the race, with the widescreen view of the partner beside it. So with the graphics and borders included, we end up seeing the race on less than a quarter of the screen. I assumed that would be temporary, but they held that dual-view all the way around the track for the second-last lap. Fortunately they came to their senses then and at least gave us the final lap fullscreen.

What makes it extra silly is that on a sunny day, everyone at the track is wearing sunglasses, so we have to watch these oh-so-important reaction shots based entirely on mouths. Castroneves loses the lead - and look, his girlfriend is frowning. Oh, but Hunter-Reay's wife is smiling. Aren't you glad we have this human connection instead of just guessing what everyone is feeling during the race?