Sunday, June 25, 2006
“Si se puede!” -quoth Univision
“Si se puede!” -quoth Univision
The Clarion Content highly recommends that readers who have even a casual interest in following the World Cup, on the TV, watch the Univision coverage rather than the bland-aneity, the schlock that is ESPN/ABC/Disney’s coverage.
It is night and day. Univision’s coverage is to ESPN/ABC/Disney’s coverage as Brazilian futbol is to American soccer. That is to say one is jogo bonito and the other is slow, predictable, dull, and as enlivening and invigorating as a slice of Wonder Bread with a delicious chianti. Wonder Bread
What is about Univision’s coverage? Well, you’ll know the moment you turn it on. It is a thrill ride. The enthusiasm of their announcers is palpable. They know they are covering the world’s biggest sporting event, that their audience is in the millions, that things have stopped all over the world in order to focus on the partido at hand. This excitement literally flows out of the TV. You don’t need to speak Spanish to feel it. Listening to Univision’s announcers every touch, every pass, every cross rumbles with intensity. You just watch the ball. Your base brain and their expressiveness, combined with the onscreen picture forms a feedback loop that allows you to follow the game perfectly well. These men could give any auctioneer a run for their money on words per minute.(1)
Don’t think this means, however, that at any given moment my man doesn’t have the breath, the sheer lung power to cut loose with the traditional thirty to seventy second blast of
“Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool!!!!!”
At any time, in the middle of any sentence!! Just to give you an idea of how long a blast that is, above you are looking at between thirty and seventy “o” characters bookended by a single “G” and a lone “l.” My man, he don’t have to take no gulp of air first, neither.(2) He just lets go, and you cannot believe how long he can go for. In another existence he would have been belting out arias with the best of them. He has a gift.
This gift gives Univision a huge advantage over the somnambulant American announcers on the ESPN family of networks. If you are watching the World Cup or are familiar with the great game of soccer, you will know there are no timeouts. In international matches this means halves go for more than forty-five minutes without a break. Sometimes a person has to get up and leave the room during that time, it just happens, from the phone to nature calling. Univision’s announcers tone, alone, allows you to know when you need to come back into the room, you are about to miss something. The American broadcasters can hardly summon energy even after a goal, let alone for an important free kick, foul, corner, cross, etc. When and if they ever get excited, it's after the goal, so you have already missed it. Univision’s team does a much better job of anticipating the play.
Now one can’t entirely blame the American broadcasters, they are a product of our national culture. It is entirely rational that they announce like soccer is boring, because by American standards it is; one, two, very often no more than three goals in an entire match. Heck, most basketball games see more scoring than that in the first two minutes. Recently, when two professional North American sports leagues were lagging in scoring, MLB baseball and NHL hockey, adjustments and rules changes were made to increase the scoring. Baseball did everything from juicing the balls to bringing in the fences to raise scoring. Hockey changed age old rules on the two-line pass and icing. Soccer/futbol as a world game, makes no such accommodation to the American mindset and lifestyle. It seems no coincidence that Americans, the world’s biggest consumers demand action from their games. Hence, the American announcers semi-apologetic tone, for ill-understood failure that is our own squad, but also for a game, that fits poorly with the American mindset. (Americans might be expected to struggle to understand or accept a game where territorial control is ephemeral.) (3)
The Univision announcers, even for those who don’t speak any Spanish, offer a thrill with their pronunciation of the players’ names. Names are part of the universal language. Again there is a stark contrast to the sterile American broadcasters whose attempts fall somewhere in between local newscaster and substitute teacher. The fellas in the booth for Univision are impresarios. They boldly roll the names of players from African countries off their tongues. Listening to their coverage of Angola v. Mexico, they were delighting and igniting with names like Kali, Macanga, Loco and Akwa. ESPN’s folks could handle the pronuncation only of Loco and they did not get the pun-“ish” linguistic joy out of it that Univision announcing tandem did. “Loco. ?Loco? Loco. Loco. Loco!!” See Angola’s roster
However, it is not just the African teams that they do well with, they are phenomenal for the German squad. You haven’t lived the World Cup until you have heard Univision’s play-by-play man say, “Schweinsteiger” in a truly excited tone and volume. He also does a phenomenal “Klose” and “Klinsman.” The joy and speed at which these names and the descriptions of the game are delivered is more comparable to singing or more specifically, rapping, or even better, flowing, than it is to speaking. The Univision announcer tandem gets their flow rolling and does not stop until forty-five some odd minutes later.(4) It’s halftime, and you and they are sweating nine-tenths as hard as the players are for the joy, the magic, the mystery, and the sheer electric power generated by the world’s biggest sporting event.
See Germany’s roster
Even Univision’s graphical displays and screen display’s are better, if only because they are more minimalist and less distracting from what is happening on the field of play. Univision is not running a constant scroll across the bottom of the screen ala ESPN, telling one what’s going on in the Canadian Football League or today’s A.L. pitching match-ups. Univision’s standard graphical content is limited to a small scoreboard with the clock, and a sponsor. Flipping between ESPN and Univision’s coverage will leave one with the impression that ESPN’s graphics are much more intrusive, literally much more invasive of the overall screen space.
If you are going to watch the World Cup, go with Univision. They have live coverage of all the games. Trust me that they are on your cable network, you have the channel. Word is my friends, their coverage is already out drawing ESPN/ABC.
See link on who’s getting what ratings for their World Cup Coverage
Univision’s announcer team bios
A quick google search reveals the Clarion is not alone in its thinking about Univision’s and ESPN’s announcers and coverage.
link
link
link
NOTES
(1) Most of the time the Univision crew is going at the speed of college Policy Debaters spreading, but a lot more emotively, than any but the very best of them.
(2) Triple negative strictly for emphasis.
(3) American leaders can’t understand or accept that lesson at much higher levels for games with far greater stakes.
(4) Another thing many Americans find difficulty to handle, a game that is played for an indeterminate amount of time. What do you mean you add two, three, five or so minutes on to each half at the referee’s discretion???!
The Clarion Content highly recommends that readers who have even a casual interest in following the World Cup, on the TV, watch the Univision coverage rather than the bland-aneity, the schlock that is ESPN/ABC/Disney’s coverage.
It is night and day. Univision’s coverage is to ESPN/ABC/Disney’s coverage as Brazilian futbol is to American soccer. That is to say one is jogo bonito and the other is slow, predictable, dull, and as enlivening and invigorating as a slice of Wonder Bread with a delicious chianti. Wonder Bread
What is about Univision’s coverage? Well, you’ll know the moment you turn it on. It is a thrill ride. The enthusiasm of their announcers is palpable. They know they are covering the world’s biggest sporting event, that their audience is in the millions, that things have stopped all over the world in order to focus on the partido at hand. This excitement literally flows out of the TV. You don’t need to speak Spanish to feel it. Listening to Univision’s announcers every touch, every pass, every cross rumbles with intensity. You just watch the ball. Your base brain and their expressiveness, combined with the onscreen picture forms a feedback loop that allows you to follow the game perfectly well. These men could give any auctioneer a run for their money on words per minute.(1)
Don’t think this means, however, that at any given moment my man doesn’t have the breath, the sheer lung power to cut loose with the traditional thirty to seventy second blast of
“Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool!!!!!”
At any time, in the middle of any sentence!! Just to give you an idea of how long a blast that is, above you are looking at between thirty and seventy “o” characters bookended by a single “G” and a lone “l.” My man, he don’t have to take no gulp of air first, neither.(2) He just lets go, and you cannot believe how long he can go for. In another existence he would have been belting out arias with the best of them. He has a gift.
This gift gives Univision a huge advantage over the somnambulant American announcers on the ESPN family of networks. If you are watching the World Cup or are familiar with the great game of soccer, you will know there are no timeouts. In international matches this means halves go for more than forty-five minutes without a break. Sometimes a person has to get up and leave the room during that time, it just happens, from the phone to nature calling. Univision’s announcers tone, alone, allows you to know when you need to come back into the room, you are about to miss something. The American broadcasters can hardly summon energy even after a goal, let alone for an important free kick, foul, corner, cross, etc. When and if they ever get excited, it's after the goal, so you have already missed it. Univision’s team does a much better job of anticipating the play.
Now one can’t entirely blame the American broadcasters, they are a product of our national culture. It is entirely rational that they announce like soccer is boring, because by American standards it is; one, two, very often no more than three goals in an entire match. Heck, most basketball games see more scoring than that in the first two minutes. Recently, when two professional North American sports leagues were lagging in scoring, MLB baseball and NHL hockey, adjustments and rules changes were made to increase the scoring. Baseball did everything from juicing the balls to bringing in the fences to raise scoring. Hockey changed age old rules on the two-line pass and icing. Soccer/futbol as a world game, makes no such accommodation to the American mindset and lifestyle. It seems no coincidence that Americans, the world’s biggest consumers demand action from their games. Hence, the American announcers semi-apologetic tone, for ill-understood failure that is our own squad, but also for a game, that fits poorly with the American mindset. (Americans might be expected to struggle to understand or accept a game where territorial control is ephemeral.) (3)
The Univision announcers, even for those who don’t speak any Spanish, offer a thrill with their pronunciation of the players’ names. Names are part of the universal language. Again there is a stark contrast to the sterile American broadcasters whose attempts fall somewhere in between local newscaster and substitute teacher. The fellas in the booth for Univision are impresarios. They boldly roll the names of players from African countries off their tongues. Listening to their coverage of Angola v. Mexico, they were delighting and igniting with names like Kali, Macanga, Loco and Akwa. ESPN’s folks could handle the pronuncation only of Loco and they did not get the pun-“ish” linguistic joy out of it that Univision announcing tandem did. “Loco. ?Loco? Loco. Loco. Loco!!” See Angola’s roster
However, it is not just the African teams that they do well with, they are phenomenal for the German squad. You haven’t lived the World Cup until you have heard Univision’s play-by-play man say, “Schweinsteiger” in a truly excited tone and volume. He also does a phenomenal “Klose” and “Klinsman.” The joy and speed at which these names and the descriptions of the game are delivered is more comparable to singing or more specifically, rapping, or even better, flowing, than it is to speaking. The Univision announcer tandem gets their flow rolling and does not stop until forty-five some odd minutes later.(4) It’s halftime, and you and they are sweating nine-tenths as hard as the players are for the joy, the magic, the mystery, and the sheer electric power generated by the world’s biggest sporting event.
See Germany’s roster
Even Univision’s graphical displays and screen display’s are better, if only because they are more minimalist and less distracting from what is happening on the field of play. Univision is not running a constant scroll across the bottom of the screen ala ESPN, telling one what’s going on in the Canadian Football League or today’s A.L. pitching match-ups. Univision’s standard graphical content is limited to a small scoreboard with the clock, and a sponsor. Flipping between ESPN and Univision’s coverage will leave one with the impression that ESPN’s graphics are much more intrusive, literally much more invasive of the overall screen space.
If you are going to watch the World Cup, go with Univision. They have live coverage of all the games. Trust me that they are on your cable network, you have the channel. Word is my friends, their coverage is already out drawing ESPN/ABC.
See link on who’s getting what ratings for their World Cup Coverage
Univision’s announcer team bios
A quick google search reveals the Clarion is not alone in its thinking about Univision’s and ESPN’s announcers and coverage.
link
link
link
NOTES
(1) Most of the time the Univision crew is going at the speed of college Policy Debaters spreading, but a lot more emotively, than any but the very best of them.
(2) Triple negative strictly for emphasis.
(3) American leaders can’t understand or accept that lesson at much higher levels for games with far greater stakes.
(4) Another thing many Americans find difficulty to handle, a game that is played for an indeterminate amount of time. What do you mean you add two, three, five or so minutes on to each half at the referee’s discretion???!
Labels: Pop Culture, sports, television
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