"Do these announcers ever shut the fuck up? Don't ever say stuff just because you think you should. That's the definition of an asshole."
--from @shitmydadsays, 27 September 2009
In my hotel room last week I watched parts of what seemed to be the women's team handball World Cup from Denmark on Eurosport and one of the things that made it interesting (other than trying to figure out what the fuck the rules were) was that there was no commentary at all.
There were the sounds of the (very sparse) crowd and the players and screaming coaches, and during the timeouts they had microphones in the sideline huddles (speaking in Russian, French, Norwegian, and German), but there were no talking heads in the booth telling us what we should be watching or regaling us with the brilliance of their past athletic exploits (or announcing their relatives' birthdays, or talking about last night's steak at the hotel, or plugging their network's awful new sit-com). When's the last time an American football or baseball game was broadcast without a non-stop announcer, and sidekick, and sideline reporter? Wouldn't you love to see just one game in which you had only the crowd noise to tell you what's going on?
1 comment:
Back in the late 1980's NBC did a Jets-Dolphins broadcast with just the play-by-play. No color commentary. It was bliss...
Anyway, I agree with your general sentiment. Too often I find myself muting the TV when watching pro or college football. The banality and inanity of the commentary is sometimes not to be believed.
Keep up the good work on the blog!
Post a Comment