• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, January 14, 2025

Old habits die hard -- and in this case, the habit is the ability to aim my remote at the TV and change channels at the press of a button during a commercial break whenever I feel like it.

It dawned on me while watching Saturday’s Ravens-Steelers game streaming on Amazon Prime that grazing elsewhere during the commercial breaks was not quite impossible, but at the same time, the “effort” did not seem to be worth it.

Is this part of the new world of live sports on streaming -- no escape from commercials in the manner we have long been accustomed to? 

And if we opt not to bother changing channels (if a streaming destination is really to be considered a “channel”), are we not then a captive audience for the commercials?

If so, then this streaming sports scenario would seem to represent a victory for advertising, which is something I will not complain about here on this website serving the ad biz.

Still, the football game on Amazon Prime had this lifelong remote-control nomad staying put.  

For all intents and purposes, the games on Amazon --called by Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit --look, sound and feel like NFL games seen anywhere else on networks with decades more experience.

That’s not too surprising, since Amazon has been streaming NFL games for several years. Most notably, during the time that I watched the game on Saturday, I detected no irregularities in the production and delivery of the game at all.

By contrast, the Netflix game I watched on and off on Christmas Day (one of two that Netflix presented that day), was beleaguered with pixelation and buffering -- with the former far more omnipresent than the latter during the time I watched.

In the wake of the Ravens-Steelers playoff game on Amazon on Saturday, there has been some chatter online about Al Michaels, who is now 80 and in the opinion of some, should call it a day.