Blog 3: What is the Matter with Sports Broadcasting These Days?

Problogue:  In this blog, I become a grumpy old man and tell you why it's hard for me to be a fan of sports broadcasting these days.  Along with the criticism, though, I list some of my rules for good broadcasting.  Criticism without suggestions is just backseat driving.--RC

If you've read my first two Blogger posts, you've figured out that they were written months ago and written for a blog promoting North Central Missouri College, for whom I work.  Nothing wrong with that; the blogs were aimed at a different audience, however, and professional in nature.

This is my personal blog, though, so here's my personal opinion on the state of sports broadcasting 2021:

It's not very good.

I'm a sports announcer at heart, and even though I wear several hats at NCMC under the umbrella of "digital media", it's sports announcing that has given me a pretty good living the last 25 years.

I pay study sports announcers as well as the broadcasts they are a part of.  So, what is the matter with professional sports broadcasting of live events these days?  Why has it become so tired?  Why has it becone so hard to watch or listen to?

Commentary upcoming on two seperate issues: the announcers and the production itself.

Stand by while I get my grumpy old guy hat on.

I'm embarrased that the process and production ideas that so intrigued me when I started my broadcast career in the late 70's have vanished.  Or at least faded.  Let's start with these:

• What ever happened to just telling the story of the game?
• Why do some announcers, very good on radio, struggle with TV-play-by-play?
• Why is there so much of information that is out of context or just disruptive to the viewer?

Telling the story of the game has become secondary to honoring the sponsors of the broadcast. Do we really need to be reminded so often of where the financial backing for the broadcast comes from?

On one hand, the rule of thumb is that a potential customer needs to be exposed to the advertiser's product seven times before they become a buyer.  OK, that's fair.  Let's take a Major League Baseball game on Fox right now: for the number of times I've seen the Bally logo this summer, I should be spending millions on their gaming properties.  For the number of times I've seen the ad for KU Med Center  (Royals games) I legitimately should be hospitalized for the next three months.

Let me ask, does this happen to you:  You get so sick of the exposure to marketing that you REFUSE to buy the product.

And don't even get me started on the lame sponsorship pitches seen on the NFL's hard-to-swallow local presentations by the hometown media.  Note to HyVee: Patrick Mahomes can throw footballs in my yard all day, I'll still buy groceries where it's less expensive and is easy to access.

I know modern economics at the pro level, where it's all about the money (and it truly IS all about the money, my friend, a topic for another time).  But jeez, do we really have to have 150 seconds of commercial break between innings of a major league baseball broadcast, bracketed by sponsor mentions headed into the break and more sponsor mentions going back to live action?

Sidebar: last spring I sat through a commercial break on a cable show (non-sports), counting the number of ads that ran.  There were twenty (20!) different ads before the show resumed.

And, have you noticed the split screen commercials during sports?  While we continue to watch video of the game on one half of the screen, a commercial plays on the other half of the screen.  Really?  OK, I kind of get that for soccer, where the clock rarely stops and the action is continuous.  But baseball?  Football?

Bad news: it ain't going to change.  Not so bold prediction: it's going to get worse.

Radio announcers working TV games drive me mad.  Let me rephrase: Announcers doing radio play-by-play on a television broadcast drive me mad.

One of the best things I heard back in the mid 2000s, visiting with a veteran TV guy, was, "All (TV guys) talk too much during a game telecast."

What it means is announcers are using the descriptive radio style  developed early in careers as radio sports announcers, and not moving on to a style in which the camera providing the pictures describes the action.  No need to paint a picture with announcing when the picture is already there.

Here are some basic rules for TV play-by-play (PxP) broadcasts that I've picked up over the years:

• The camera is the PxP announcer.  As an assigned PxP  announcer, the job is to add details and background to what the camera and graphics don't show, or don't show well, and compliment what the camera is showing.  Please don't say, "he runs right", or "she dribbles across midcourt" when we can see it.  NBA Finals announcer Mike Breen may be the king of this among high-profile announcers.
• PxP announcers need to prepare more background material for TV than radio, because less time and energy is spent in describing the play and more time and energy is spent enriching the play.
• The color analyst, the PxP announcers sidekick, is in reality the lead broadcaster on TV.  He is the one who should be talking as they analyse the play.  And they better be prepared to talk about things other than the play, without moving away from the drama of the game.

Much more on this later...

Why is there so much overkill of information?  Please don't get me wrong...I love a good story...but the following type information is too much information:

• Useless stats: OK, I know we're in a data-driven age, but enough is enough.  Elias Sports Bureau is wonderful in many ways, but please broadcasters, use a teaspoon to dish it up.  
• Stats with no context: Preseason Monday Night Football told us that the Chiefs only had nine fourth down conversions in the 2020 season...and that they had two that night against Arizona.  But, in how many attempts in 2020? Nine?  Twenty?  Forty?  And in what situations?  Late game when desperately needed?  Late game running the clock out?  
• Graphics, scoreboards and bottom line tickers: each may have their place, but please, not at the same time.  
• I get that fantasy sports are big (the normalization of gambling, sponsors of major sports, tossed fuel on that fire, more later) and we have to keep those folks happy even though I'm willing to bet (play on words intended) that more that half the audience for any given game does not play fantasy sports.
• The scoreboard+clock/inning+more is great game information, but please keep it simple (and maybe eliminate some of the overdone advertising?).

Lest I continue simply bashing current sports broadcasts, here are some things I really and truly believe in:

• Tell the story of the game.  Games produce their own drama.  Broadcasts are there to allow listers/viewers a chance go share in that drama.  Period.  Help them do that.
• Know the audience.  Talk to the people you know are watching/listening.  And please be as  objective/honest as possible ("no cheering in the press box" is a great rule).
• It's okay not to talk.  The great baseball broadcaster Ernie Harwell used to advise radio broadcasters to pause now and then and just allow the stadium sound to fill the broadcast.  "Let the people rest their ears", he liked to say.
• Easy on the stats, make sure they make sense, and use them at the proper time.  If you've got nothing else to say except to quote stats, you haven't done your homework on the people.  If you've got nothing to show on the screen except stat graphics, your camera people aren't working hard enough.

More suggestions on sportscasting coming up...but at least I got that off my chest right away.

Blog 2: Games in Phone Booths

This blog has been altered and updated from a previous post (April, 2019) on another web blog.--RC 

My good friend Tim Crone, who worked on TV and radio sportscasts with me for over 10 years, often says that I’d broadcast games from a phone booth just to be doing a live game broadcast. 

It's true.

It's funny that after all the play-by-play work I've done, at 58 years old I'm turning the corner and working more in helping others get a start by teaching and leading our college production team.

My current employer, North Central Missouri College in Trenton, MO has four teams that are traditional broadcast sports: women's and men's basketball during the winter, and baseball and softball during the spring.

It makes it nearly impossible for me to announce the 150 games or so a year that I was doing in my heyday, when I thought I was polished and sharp and interesting.  

Last year at NCMC, in our second year, we had the students to do multi-camera presentations during basketball season, and featured some student announcers (Jason Orr, AC Marion, Kobe Linder and Gabe Swann).

I'll be honest, it's always been weird stepping back and letting someone else call a game.  Maybe it's time for me personally; certainly it's time for me in my new role at NCMC.

I'm not sure what the staff is going to look like this year.  One of the things I believe in is putting talented people in a bus, then deciding where the bus will go; in other words, I'd like our students to decide where they'd like to go in exploring broadcasting, and build our programs around them.

Maybe we'll even find someone who would call a game from inside a phone booth.

Blog 1: The Revival of the blog "Rick Cole, Broadcaster"

This blog has been slightly altered and updated from a previous post (April, 2019) on another web blog; seems like a good way to resume blogging is by revisiting some previous writing.--RC

I want to tell you a story.  Like many good stories, it begins with “Once upon a time.”  This story isn’t a fairy tale, however, it is real, and it happened to me.

 A good deal of my younger years were spent in far western Nebraska, a couple of miles from the Colorado state line and about 100 miles from the Wyoming state line.  Rural.  Distant.  Wheat farmers, rattlesnakes, six-shooters.

 But the area also had a radio station, and when I received a transistor radio (kids, ask your parents or grandparents) I became a huge fan of that radio station.  It was like the movies: I hid under the covers and listened late at night when I should have been sleeping, vowing that I would someday work at that radio station.

 And I did, several years later.  As a sophomore in high school, the radio station announced that they were looking for part-time announcers.  I had prepared: I practiced reading stories in the newspapers out loud, set up my own pretend radio station in my basement, even written to famous disc jockeys about how to land a job.

 I did land a job.  In the course of the next seven years I served (at various times) as a part-time announcer, a full-time staff member, the program director, the news director, the trainer of young announcers, and the sports director and play by play announcer.

 After that I did part-time broadcast work while I taught and coached in public schools.

 In the late 1990’s, I began to look at sports broadcasting as my calling as a full-time professional.  I started by doing radio play by play of volleyball, came to Kansas City and founded the one of the first local cablecast sports broadcast companies, worked 12 years as the broadcast director for an NCAA college, started four online broadcast networks, and piled up around 4,000 broadcasts of games in the KC area.

 At tiny William Jewell College in Liberty, our broadcasts of games had a 22% higher viewership than the rest of the conference’s schools, and they were schools in much larger markets: Louisville, Indianapolis, Chicago.  I also helped to create the first NCAA Division II conference broadcast network.

 I can safely say that Jewell was the best broadcast network in our 16-team conference, and one of the very best at the NCAA Division II level.

Everything has a shelf life, unfortunately, and my time at Jewell came to an end with the elimination of the sports broadcast program for financial reasons in the spring of 2018.

I'm back broadcasting college sports now at North Central Missouri College.  The time away from sports broadcasting, combined with the time missed due to COVID, has given me ample room to think and actually change my approach to broadcasting.

This blog is for sharing those thoughts.