Boards Of Canada

There’s been a big change in hockey broadcasting this season: virtual board ads. That is, TV broadcasters can now superimpose fake ads over the real-life ads on the boards. This gives them a chance to do many previously impossible things, like animated ads, or changing ads during play.

Fans are pretty angry. I know, it’s something new in hockey, of course they don’t like it. But in this case, they’re crying wolf with justification. It is pretty annoying. Yes, the advertisers are on their best behaviour, keeping movement to a minimum, but we’ll see how long that lasts. We’ve seen some of the distracting sideline advertising in soccer, and that can’t be far away.

Though I have a couple more complaints: first, this suffers from the same problem as the virtual ads behind home plate in baseball; no concern for insulting our intelligence with geographically-unlikely ads. Like yes, I’m sure Tim Hortons really did pay for a stadium ad at this game in San Diego.

Also, the tech is apparently expensive enough that they can only apply it to the one camera. Switch to a close up, and we have to suffer the old analog boards. I don’t know about anyone else, but I find it disorienting when I see a player pasted against the Hyundai sign, but then from the other angle, he gets a face full of Dunkin’ Donuts.

Having said all this, I have to admire how well it works: 

• They stay in place very accurately, unlike the on-field ads in the CFL, which — hate to say it — look pretty amateurish, sliding and spinning  around the field.
• They rarely bleed over top of player uniforms, even white ones, unlike the on-court ads I’ve seen in basketball.
• Unlike virtual ads in baseball, they don’t suffer from looking crystal-clear, on a field that we’re viewing through 400 feet of rain. Although they sometimes look unnaturally bright, almost like they’re lit up. 

It’s also strange how technology doesn’t work out the way we expect. Soccer and the CFL have had electronic ad boards on the sidelines for years, and I assumed it was only a matter of time until someone made a version of those screens that was durable and flexible enough to be used as hockey boards. But no, virtual technology swoops in for the win. Somewhere out there is an engineer with a half-finished flexible LED panel and a broken heart.