Oh, Big Brother!

I know networks and content providers have a vested interest in pushing the games and athletes they carry, but it seems like ABC/ESPN went overboard in Game 1 of the NBA Finals Thursday night ... overboard as in "Titanic."

ABC/ESPN owns the rights to the NBA Finals and has spent the better part of a week hyping the appearance of LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers against the San Antonio Spurs. The previews were on every ABC/ESPN platform, including ESPN News, which carried a ticker that counted down the hours until the opening tip.

Considering the financial investment involved, such over promotion is understandable. But then ABC/ESPN decided to go "all in" as they say on the networks' countless hours of poker programming (a subject for another day--how networks can make money by showing people playing cards). The opening tip and first 20 minutes of Game 1 were shown simultaneously on all ABC/ESPN platforms! That's ABC, ESPN, ESPN News, ESPN 2 and ESPN Classic (that's all the ESPN I get on DirecTV. I wonder if the game was also shown on Deportes?).

ESPN commonly roadblocks commercials across its networks to give advertisers maximum efficiency, but this is something entirely different. For a few moments I felt like Winston Smith from George Orwell's 1984. Big Brother ABC/ESPN was everywhere, just like critics of media concentration have warned for years. For the most part I have believed that new technologies would open up more channels and give viewers more options. But for a short time Thursday night ABC/ESPN showed all of us what it's like when content and distribution are concentrated in the hands of a sprawling media empire. I don't read anything especially sinister in what happened; but it does seem like we've crossed some Rubicon and there's no turning back.