Watching TV is difficult

I recently saw Sky Sports for the first time.  It was mesmerising!  This appeared to be a general sports programme (there wasn’t actually a match taking place at the time), and I was just overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information that was being provided.  Here is a picture:

 

I didn’t understand how to make use of it.

First let’s look at what is provided:

1]  The time and date.  This was fine - it was always there and so I could ignore it unless I particularly needed to know either of these.

2]  League tables.  It is currently showing the Darts Premier League rankings, then moved on to Basketball and had previously shown Rugby, Football, etc.  This appeared to be on a cycle.

3]  An advert for something Sky-related, which zoomed around and changed when the league tables updated.

4]  ‘Breaking News’ - a couple of news headlines that cycled round on a tickertape.

5]  Slightly more detailed news stories about particular sports.  There were several stories about each sport or competition.

6]  A list showing which news stories were due to appear next.

And then, in the main part of the screen there were presenters talking about a news story and providing analysis.

I initially tried to take all of it in.  It was impossible to read everything all at once.  The league tables changed fairly frequently so I couldn’t read it all in time, the news stories were fine unless I wanted to focus on a different element on the screen in which case I missed one of those and while the tickertape didn’t seem to update very often my eye was still drawn to it because it moved.

After a while I changed tack and focused just on a single thing.  I found that there are only so many league tables I can cope with!  Most of them were completely irrelevant to me (darts, basketball) but then those in which I did have an interest zoomed past before I could read them in full (Prem).

Later I tried glancing up every now and then.  I caught the odd news story, the odd bit of tickertape and the occasional league table.

Which was most satisfying?  The final version, where I glanced up occasionally and picked up the odd bit of information.  But this was also rather unsatisfactory because it meant I didn’t actually have control over what I was finding out about, and the information I was gaining was really rather scattered.

Conclusions

There are several possible conclusions that could be drawn from this.

1] Maybe I am too used to being able to choose my own information rather than being fed what someone else has programmed.

2] Perhaps this is designed just to give the impression that it is telling us lots of things, whereas in reality there is little of interest going on and no-one is taking any of it in anyway.

3] Or maybe I am too unfamiliar with this style of TV to know how to watch it effectively.  

The last of these possibilities bothers me a little.  If I can't understand and take in information presented in this way because it is unfamiliar to me, how will people who are used to this style of delivery of information cope in the classroom?  Will they have a similar difficulty?  If so, how should I try to deal with this?

Does anyone else find this difficult to watch, or is it just me?