Sports

The TV that switches itself at kickoff

OlloVue·4 min read

The most common way a bar misses a game is not that nobody wanted it on. It is that the person who wanted it on was carrying plates at kickoff.

There is a class of thing a venue always wants: the local team, whenever they play. It is not a schedule, because the fixture list changes, the kickoff moves, and a Thursday night comes out of nowhere. It is a standing instruction. When they are on, put them on.

Follow a team

Tell the agent, or the app, to follow a team on a set of screens. From then on the hub watches that team's games. When one goes live and its broadcaster is a channel in your library, the screens you chose switch to it. When the game ends, they go back to whatever they were doing before. Not to a default, not to a blank. To exactly the loop they had.

It is a rule, not a reminder. Reminders go to a person. Rules go to the screens.

The switch is bounded on both ends on purpose. Pre-game shows do not count, so the wall is not hijacked at noon for a one o'clock game. Full time lets go, so a Tuesday's quiz night is not sitting behind a post-game desk nobody asked for.

When it cannot, it says so

Sometimes the team is live and the channel is not one you carry. The system does not guess a channel. It tells you: they are on, on such-and-such a network, and that is not in your library. Add the channel once and the next game goes up on its own.

This is the part most automation gets wrong. Silently doing nothing looks identical to working. A message that says why nothing happened is the difference between a rule you trust and one you stop believing in.

Live scores and lines on a screen above a bar
Tonight's games with lines and totals. Follow one team and the wall handles the rest.

Zones, not screens

A follow can target a zone, so the bar follows the Giants while the dining room stays on menus and the patio keeps the weather. Screens in a zone move together. When two rules could both claim a screen, the first one wins, and the app shows you which rule is holding which television, so there is never a mystery about why the patio is showing football.

The point is not that the TV can change channels. It is that a standing preference of the house stays true without anyone in the building having to be free at the right moment.

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Follow the home team.

The screens you pick swing to the game and let go at full time.

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