Re: FRED CUSICK

[Garrett Wollman <wollman@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu>]

<<On Thu, 17 Apr 1997 23:55:15 -0400, Donna Halper <dlh@donnahalper.com> said:

> humour to get attention...  Also, the sports announcers actually described
> the game (Vin Scully comes to mind-- people would go to a game with their
> radios to hear him tell about what they were watching; ditto for the late
> great Johnny Most...) rather than just providing the audio that could go
> along with a TV feed...  

Actually, that is (in my mind) one of the great faults of most hockey
broadcasters these days (Messrs. Cole, Neale, Cuthbert, and Irvin
excepted): they don't know when to shut up!  I'm perfectly capable of
discerning precisely what is going on by myself, what I want the
announcers for is to tell me the things I can't, or didn't, discern by
watching.  (Of course, it doesn't help when an idiot director decides
to zoom in on some player picking his nose on the bench while play
continues at the other end of the rink...  Am I the only one who
watches hockey on ESPN and shouts back at the TV ``Wide shot! Wide
shot!''?)

When you grew up watching the best in the world, it's hard to accept
the merely mediocre.  (Actually, I'll be fair: Gary Thorne and Bill
Clement on ESPN are not all that bad; I just wish they'd stop playing
games with the camera and get rid of those stupid Al Morganti pieces.
Well, that, and show games I care about more often.)

Now, for radio announcers, it's a different story.  I think Bob
Neumeier has done a perfectly creditable job on the Bruins radio net
over the past couple of years.  It's certainly a much harder job to
announce a game for radio than for TV (at least in hockey), since the
listeners can't tell what's happening unless the announcer tells
them.  The one complaint I would have with Neumeier would be that he
too often refers to the players by their first names---even the
opponents---as if he were a close personal friend of them all.
There's a good time for that sort of chumminess (like intermission),
but I don't think it improves the description of the game any.

(The weirdest thing, of course, was when WBZ-TV showed highlights of
a Bruins game, and dubbed the WBZ radio call onto the NESN or WSBK
video...  I'm sorry, channel 4, but that really looks stupid, even if
he is your guy...)

It is still clear that there is nobody in this country who announces
hockey as well as the best baseball announcers announce baseball.

- -GAWollman

- --
Garrett A. Wollman   | O Siem / We are all family / O Siem / We're all the same
wollman@lcs.mit.edu  | O Siem / The fires of freedom 
Opinions not those of| Dance in the burning flame
MIT, LCS, CRS, or NSA|                     - Susan Aglukark and Chad Irschick

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