Puppy Bowl = GENIUS!!!

I don't watch football. It is a stupid game, played by stupid people and often watched by stupid fans. OK, I'm probably wrong. All football players and football fans are MENSA members. Whatever, that's not the point.

While flipping through channels tonight waiting for the new episode of The Entertainer, Starring Wayne Newton (Gotta love bad reality television programming set in Las Vegas!) my wife stumbled upon the single most genius piece of television programming ever: Animal Planet's PUPPY BOWL!

Let me set the scene. From 8 PM to 11 PM the channel featured THREE HOURS of puppies frolicking and playing in an area made to look like a football field. That's it. Three hours of puppies playing on a fake football field. BRILLIANT!

Now there were some special amenities to this simple programming. The had aerial camera angles as well as field-level cameras capturing the action and nothing was as adorable as the "bowl cam". The bowl cam was a camera underneath a glass water bowl, giving you a great view of puppies drinking and playing in their water dish.

Let's add a little more fun to this. They also had instant replays, often of puppies sniffing, licking, or attempting other unspeakable things to another dogs ass. There was a referee that would come in and call a penalty any time a dog "did his business" on the field. The referee also had a napkin or pooper-scooper on hand. Every so often, from one corner of the field, a new puppy would slide onto the field and even more playful puppy fun would commence. Once again, BRILLIANT!

Periodically there would be ads for Animal Planet shows, and announcements for how you could adopt a puppy through a website. It was a great little show that was both soothing and entertaining. I am sure this did a lot to bring attention to the shelters and pet adoption agencies throughout the U.S. They even have a DVD of the program for sale, which you can imagine, I'm going to buy own!

What I really liked about this idea was the simplicity of it all. They knew that most people would be watching the Super Bowl and rather than waste the time on other programs, they chose to air the least expensive programming they could broadcast. I'm sure that there were actually quite a lot of people that saw this and I know they did some great work to promote pet adoption. I'd watch this if it were a regular show. Hell, I'd watch it if it were on from 2:00 AM to 5:00 AM! It was FUN!

So KUDOS to Animal Planet for the best programming available on the worst television day of the year; Super Bowl Sunday.