I love television

The link above is to an interesting article on MSNBC about those vanity tags at the end of shows.

But what's really odd is what's on our TV right now... "Puppy Bowl" is a three hour program on link all day long on Animal Planet. They've built a small stage to look like a football stadium, complete with an astroturf floor painted with lines and a giant "puppy bowl" logo in the center and goal-posts at each end. A really bizarre fake background of people complete with little flashing lights arounds the outside. One wall instead of having people has a plexiglass wall behind which a camera man moves back and forth for a field-level shot. They have overhead shots, wide shots, a camera under the water bowls at each goal post and every so often a "ball shot" which is a rather large remote-control car chassis on which a wireless camera sits, which someone has cut open a football and stretched around. It seems like the ball cam could have been done much better, but hey.

Every so often they inroduce a new set of dogs, complete with the FOX-style animated graphics and pictures of the dogs with their stats. Worse yet, every so often there's an instant reply. But the worst is when a puppy makes a mess, some guy comes out on his knees in a ref's outfit to clean up the mess and declare a foul. Poor guy. Sometimes the puppies have fun and sometimes they fight with each other.

There's an inane and unoffensive soundtrack in the back and, except for the ref, no talking. Graphics every so often encourage people to visit their local shelter to adopt a dog. It's occasionally interrupted by commercials.