I don't think it could have been used or executed more poorly.  All they ever said was, "oh hey look, you can see it now."  Not another word about it, no breakdown, no discussion, no images of fresh oil and then transitioned oil, and it wasn't dark enough by a long shot.  Every pattern looked the same, and it looked how you might imagine it anyway.  The differences that they should have been intending to show weren't featured or shown at all.  The oil being blue did absolutely nothing for anyone.  Even someone brand new to bowling could have imagined it looking like that, and seeing a lane graph is much more help than seeing the blue oil.  Especially for the Scorpion pattern last week.  47 feet, but you just saw a mess of it in the heads, and on none of the patterns could you see any blue past 30 feet.  Maybe they realized it just wasn't going to go well, and as a result didn't put much effort into it, but if that was the case, they should have just scrapped it. 

And as for saying the dye didn't stain, anybody happen to look at Ciminelli's Endless?  It stained the crap out of it.  Now it would be nice to have the color to more easily get someone's axis point or something, but that's the only use I can think of.  I don't see tinted oil ever returning to telecasts or ever coming to your local center.  Just a miserable failure all the way around.  IN MY OPINION.  What does everyone else think?

I think it would be easier if they just took tapes before practice, after practice and in between games and display that graphically on screen instead of depending on the blue dye.

Part of the problem wasn't their fault.  Get it too dark and all the sudden you can't see boards or arrows, so I get that, but they didn't even try to explain anything.  Just in the way they tried to do it, really no way for it to work out. 

This is all exactly what I was hoping that they would show. 

This weekend's World Championship might have been their best chance to show it properly.  All four bowlers were right handed and throwing in the same part of the lane.  The earlier telecasts showed some head wear, but this show probably would have showed it best.

It would also have been nice to see the warm up lanes with the dye to see how bad they got beat up after 5/10/15/30 minutes of practice.

You are right about the dye (especially for Scorpion) looking a little too light.  When Ciminelli was playing outside of the "normal" expected area of play, it would have been nice to see how much he changed the pattern with his practice time.

Tom Clark said it was very hard to see the differences in volume.  I imagine that up close and personal you can see it, but since it wasn't very dark, the lighter volume areas would have been hard to see even in person. 

My boss at the pro shop had an idea though, if they added an ultraviolet dye to it, it would be clear unless you shined a blacklight on it, then you could see everything. 

Does any one know how it looks in person?
I think we're taking it for granted that how we saw it on TV is exactly how it looks in person. That may or may not be true.Looks at how many variations we see just in the color of bowling balls in person versus on TV. Heck, most times we barely recognize the balls.

Yeah exactly, they'd be able to show it in between matches, and could show you the difference from game to game to game. 

Quote from: Gizmo823 on December 30, 2013, 10:22:29 AM

And as for saying the dye didn't stain, anybody happen to look at Ciminelli's Endless?  It stained the crap out of it.  Now it would be nice to have the color to more easily get someone's axis point or something, but that's the only use I can think of.  I don't see tinted oil ever returning to telecasts or ever coming to your local center.  Just a miserable failure all the way around.  IN MY OPINION.  What does everyone else think?

Esoterically, it was less of Ciminelli's ball that shocked me; it was the Eruption Pro that Barnes was throwing that had me wondering WTF. The dye picked up into the track of his ball. And with as bold of a colour that ball has, it stood out like a child who had his class pictures taken after falling on the pavement and scratching his nose causing it to bleed the day before.

It actually may be better to keep it clear and make it that invisible demon again.

Quote from: Gizmo823 on December 30, 2013, 01:19:39 PM

Tom Clark said it was very hard to see the differences in volume.  I imagine that up close and personal you can see it, but since it wasn't very dark, the lighter volume areas would have been hard to see even in person. 

My boss at the pro shop had an idea though, if they added an ultraviolet dye to it, it would be clear unless you shined a blacklight on it, then you could see everything. 

Now that may be a good idea. The only drawback to that would be that it puts it close to cosmic bowling, unless they only showed it between actual finals play. For example, when Pedersen was talking about when they were building a track during Cheetah, and how the oil had carried down. That would be a good time to show it. But during actual play, no.

BL.

Possibly, but lol I don't think there's any "somebodies" here that could get that accomplished.  Rico maybe, but I don't know what his involvement is with things anymore.  I'm only 32, so nobody listens to me . . or they misread my intentions.  Nobody hears me out and I get condescending rebuttals, so I generally keep my mouth shut around the "somebodies." 

I don't think it worked as well as they had hoped and I think they really quit trying after seeing just how little it was showing up after the first week. That first week they tried to show the difference, and you could see some in the head oil, but that was about it.

Frankly I think the segment they did during the summer where they threw the same shot and ball on the different patterns and showed the difference in reaction it caused did more than the blue oil did.

I didn't catch the shows in the summer, but I agree that it hasn't worked as well as they were expecting. I do think an ultraviolet would do better, but I honestly don't see this being used anywhere else outside of the PBA shows. Seriously: imagine how many people would be upset at a blue track on their IQ Tour Pearl, that would take an entire resurface to get the bulk of it out.

It wouldn't work well at Nationals. It really wouldn't work well overseas. If I remember right, this was only a Brunswick thing, and not anything Kegel put together, so I really don't see this catching on.

BL.