h a l f b a k e r yBaker Street Irregulars
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I just finished watching a great game that I think would have been 10x better with the sound off.
My wife knows as much as the play by play announcers, and she doesn't even like the sport.
What's even worse was their noticible bias towards one team - which happens a lot, but is more foregivable
when there are knowledgable announcers.
I think the viewers should be able to call in and have the play by play announcers sacked for being unknowledgable about the game.
1-800-the-axes. Or some such nonesense ought to put the fear enough into the broadcasters so they won't mail it in or openly root for one team, I suspect.
I don't want to see the QB's facial expressions when you showed me a half a second of a man in motion! I want to see the defensive adjustment to the motion!
I don't want to watch the team I want to lose's cheerleaders, I want to see who the substitutions for the play are.
If It were feasible, I'd propose a 2nd string NETWORK that could be voted off the air so a competent one could take their place - FOX!
Bill McLaren
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_McLaren
[calum, Jan 20 2010]
[link]
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I've not seen a football game on the BBC in a while but they
used to offer the choice of audio tracks through their digital
stream (tv commentators, the concurrent radio service, or
just the crowd & game sounds). Sky also used to have a fans
commentary, with two local (biased) punters giving their
idiots' tuppence. |
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Seems like you have an issue with the whole coverage (e.g., director's choice of what to show), not just the announcers.
So, yeah, you really *would* have to "fire" the network. |
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I wonder whether there are lots of people who are happier with crappy coverage that explicitly takes their side, and this is really a problem of you being in a minority market segment that wants information. |
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Internet and fan-supplied commentary to the rescue? Those cheerleader shots might be quite fun with commentary from someone who clearly roots for the opposing team. |
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An interesting idea would be to ban the exclusive selling of sports events so that broadcasters would end up compteting on the quality of delivery.
{Of course, there are many other factors that scupper this logic, but still...} |
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The reason, however, that the second string commentary team are the second string is that they are not as good as the first string (barring the evident special studio sofa-dispensation for jug-eared model-diddling "national treasues"), which means that, even if we use some sort of "[Nation]'s Got Talent" lambseyhook mechanism to remove the commentators, the replacements will only seem better for the short time that the memory of their predecessors lingers (e.g. Dougie Vipond) before they slide even further along the despicability axis of the Great Big Graph of Commentators. |
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NB: comments above in rounded parenthesis are of limited geographical applicability. |
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The 2nd string would be worse than the 1st string, but... |
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I know I didn't get your reference, but when the announcers fail to recognize a well known standard offensive play - THE SCREEN PLAY - in the sport they are announcing, perhaps a hungrier more prepared backup announcer can whack them down a notch? |
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Either learn to recognize that play, or your understudy Joe, here, who CAN will be the one calling the games in the future. |
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Especially if 200 thousand people call in to sack you for someone they don't even know! |
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I suspect that there is a slight disjunct here between the manner in which the sport you favour watching on telly (seemingly American Football) and the sports that I favour watching on telly (soccerball and rugby union) are played, in that the two I favour tend to have a less rigid structure (this is particularly the case with soccerball) which leaves gives the commentators a double-edged sword: more leeway to focus on punning on player names and historical statistics ("Leicester haven't won more than 2-0 away to Crewe since the days of Clement Attlee") but less of a framework on which to hang their chat, which can often reduce soccerball commentating to entirely redundant ball-following name chains ("Ferguson... to Reyna... to Tugay ... back to Reyna ... finds Ferguson ... back to Klos"). American football on the other hand, does seem to allow the commentator more opportunity to bone up, as it were, on classic plays and counterplays, the action being more easily broken down into component chunks and analysed. Maybe this would work for yr favoured sport. |
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Incidentally, I shall now pour one out for my homeboy Bill McLaren: never in the 2nd string. |
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[calum] nice anecdote on R4 this morning during a discussion about Bill Maclaren's death: someone recalled Eddie Waring commentating on a football match in which a player missed a penalty. Instead of jumping in with lots of words and analysis, Waring just said "poor lad" - the point being it's sometimes better for commentators to keep quiet. |
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Taken to the next level, cheerleaders would be rotated in and out in response to the other teams cheer patterns. Referees would watch for illegal formations. |
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Second and worse string announcers are evident in Minor
League Baseball. Their increasing ability is as evident as the
players they describe as they move up through single,
double, and triple A baseball leagues.My experience is only
with radio
broadcasts. |
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