ESPN Ombudsman on Announcing
Don Ohlmeyer took over the ESPN ombudsman position this year, and his posts are generally worth a read for those who like sports and have vague interest in their coverage. He did an interesting piece during his most recent installment on announcing and the general problems he sees with broadcast.
He specifically talked about the Notre Dame/Purdue game from a few weeks ago in this one, specifically the announcers missing a crucial drive by ND to talk with Wilford Brimley Joe Tiller, and then following that up with "Todd's Taste of the Town" during another crucial drive late in the game.
Also talked about scheduling and games that overflow, taking away coverage of the scheduled programming. While he mentions college football taking away from NHRA racing, he had two points that really stood out to me:
- About 25% of college football watchers stay to watch NHRA. I can understand bars, but that seems high.
- He neglects to mention anything about NCAAFB games that are already done and decided, but are finishing their last 2-3 minutes of game clock, taking away from the start to games that haven't been decided yet.
October 26th, 2009 at 7:47 PM ^
I think the one thing that unifies every football fan on earth is the experience of screaming WHY ARE YOU NOT SHOWING A FUCKING REPLAY at the TV while they play some stupid segment instead of showing a key play from more angles.
October 26th, 2009 at 9:03 PM ^
Agreed.
But even more importantly, WHY ARE YOU NOT SHOWING THE FUCKING PLAY THAT IS GOING ON LIVE WHILE YOU ARE ADVERTISING FOR 'DIRTY SEXY MONEY' AND DISCUSSING IF BOB GRIESE IS DIRTY, SEXY, OR MONEY AND THEN WE HAVE TO FIGURE OUT WHAT PAUL MAGUIRE IS SINCE THAT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN ACTUAL FOOTBALL.
ummmm, I guess I still resent all those Dirty Sexy Money advertisements....
October 26th, 2009 at 10:27 PM ^
Annoyingness from the Penn State game: Broadcasting team started making some random, rambling point about quarterbacks, paused briefly to note "someone's shaken up on the field" - not even noting the team that player belonged to - and spent the next two minutes having their quarterback discussion. Dammit, if someone's injured, this is way more important than your stupid ramblings on quarterbacks. That shit can wait. And yes, it turned out to be Molk ARRGGH. This is something they do all the time. "Someone's hurt in the game I'm supposed to be telling you about, but that's not nearly as important as my point about this play that happened last week."