Monday, July 30, 2007
ESPN, the mothership, is lame TV
Is it us or does ESPN play like a network designed by fifty somethings to appeal to twenty somethings? It has a feel like an old person in a college bar trying to talk cool and pass off like they were one of the kids. Lame pretenders.
Let the Clarion offer up a couple of examples, from yesterday's Sunday night baseball telecast. ESPN was and is trying to create a sense of urgency about the baseball trading deadline. About every other half inning, they were going to the Baseball Tonight desk for updates. The only problem is they don't have any! So we have to listen to a less than telegenic, 62 year old man, Peter Gammons, blathering on, despite having no news. He tells us Mark Texiera is the most likely position player to be traded. An inning later brings the stunning revelation that there are no starting pitchers are available. Octavio Dotel is the most likely reliever to be traded, yo ESPN, this could have been the lead to a baseball trading deadline story four days ago!! Why are you cutting to it live now? Just because more cut aways from your live telecast create a false sense of urgency? And poor old Gammons, what an embarrassment. He was once a respected and credible journalist. He was a good read, who even in his salad days, was never made for TV. Now has become such a shill, such a company man, that he never says anything outside the box, newsworthy, inventive, controversial---staid dullesville thy name is Peter Gammons.
If that isn't annoying enough, they are also every half an hour going to their SportsCenter 30and30. This is ostensibly the leading SportsCenter headlines interjected rudely into the middle of your baseball game. Only once again, their major malfunction is they have no news to report, so we have to look at the ludicrously over coifed Karl Ravech's mug twice an hour to hear him report that Barry Lamar was 1-4 with no homers today in the city by the bay. That's right, get this straight, the jerk made no news, hit no homers and they think it is attention getting and worthy enough to keep telling you that every half an hour. Ridiculous. What this is really telling the savvy viewer is ESPN doesn't believe anyone watches for longer than half an hour. They can keep telling you the same non-story over and over because like a news radio station, they figure you are just flipping by, rather than actually stopping and watching their crappy channel. Amazing.
As you have read in this space before it is our contention that SportsCenter is equally atrocious. Our first viewing in months, this morning, did nothing to dissuade the Clarion of that view. Rather than report sports news, SportsCenter has been utterly devoured by the Disney marketing machine. In addition to the myriad of pointless but sponsored segments, they are cross promoting Disney kids' movies. The underdog of the week feature is somehow supposed to be related to the Underdog, the movie, which is reportedly horrible. The SportsCenter anchors are so embarrassed by this blatant plug that they neglect to even acknowledge it before they cut to the allegedly connected highlight.
At SportsCenter they have no interest in ferreting out or even covering hard news stories. Parent, Disney, is an entertainment company not a news-information service firm, ala Dow Jones & Company or Bloomberg L.P. This is an important distinction because although format gives the pretense of news, SportsCenter is little more than puff and fluff. This not to say there aren't excellent journalists doing credible work for ESPN, there are. It is highly unlikely you will get to see them on SportsCenter or if you do they will be caricatures of themselves indulging in obsequious buffoonery, ala John Clayton and Sean Salisbury on the Four Downs segment, where they are encouraged to yell at each other as if they worked for Vince McMahon. This week's? This month's? version of that foolishness brings the viewer an NCAA style tournament bracket pairing, addressing the all important question, "Who is Now the Sporting World's biggest superstar?" A total joke, from the people who brought Sports Century, athlete's of the century, Anna Kournikova. The Clarion wouldn't even have been able to report on this morning's imbecilic discussion about who's better Tiger or Peyton Manning at all, if it hadn't been for the mesmerizing Erin Andrews. All set to grab the clicker and surf away, Erin lured us back. Perhaps that is the ultimate message, we, the sports fan, keep looking SportsCenter, as crummy as it is today, nostalgically hopefully. There is a dearth of quality competition. The next best substitute is provided by the same folks, ESPN News. SportsCenter is an aging colossus, a shell of its former self that is waiting to be toppled. Heck, even Dan Patrick has left the network. But for now, we're still watching albeit much, much less frequently than we once did.
Let the Clarion offer up a couple of examples, from yesterday's Sunday night baseball telecast. ESPN was and is trying to create a sense of urgency about the baseball trading deadline. About every other half inning, they were going to the Baseball Tonight desk for updates. The only problem is they don't have any! So we have to listen to a less than telegenic, 62 year old man, Peter Gammons, blathering on, despite having no news. He tells us Mark Texiera is the most likely position player to be traded. An inning later brings the stunning revelation that there are no starting pitchers are available. Octavio Dotel is the most likely reliever to be traded, yo ESPN, this could have been the lead to a baseball trading deadline story four days ago!! Why are you cutting to it live now? Just because more cut aways from your live telecast create a false sense of urgency? And poor old Gammons, what an embarrassment. He was once a respected and credible journalist. He was a good read, who even in his salad days, was never made for TV. Now has become such a shill, such a company man, that he never says anything outside the box, newsworthy, inventive, controversial---staid dullesville thy name is Peter Gammons.
If that isn't annoying enough, they are also every half an hour going to their SportsCenter 30and30. This is ostensibly the leading SportsCenter headlines interjected rudely into the middle of your baseball game. Only once again, their major malfunction is they have no news to report, so we have to look at the ludicrously over coifed Karl Ravech's mug twice an hour to hear him report that Barry Lamar was 1-4 with no homers today in the city by the bay. That's right, get this straight, the jerk made no news, hit no homers and they think it is attention getting and worthy enough to keep telling you that every half an hour. Ridiculous. What this is really telling the savvy viewer is ESPN doesn't believe anyone watches for longer than half an hour. They can keep telling you the same non-story over and over because like a news radio station, they figure you are just flipping by, rather than actually stopping and watching their crappy channel. Amazing.
As you have read in this space before it is our contention that SportsCenter is equally atrocious. Our first viewing in months, this morning, did nothing to dissuade the Clarion of that view. Rather than report sports news, SportsCenter has been utterly devoured by the Disney marketing machine. In addition to the myriad of pointless but sponsored segments, they are cross promoting Disney kids' movies. The underdog of the week feature is somehow supposed to be related to the Underdog, the movie, which is reportedly horrible. The SportsCenter anchors are so embarrassed by this blatant plug that they neglect to even acknowledge it before they cut to the allegedly connected highlight.
At SportsCenter they have no interest in ferreting out or even covering hard news stories. Parent, Disney, is an entertainment company not a news-information service firm, ala Dow Jones & Company or Bloomberg L.P. This is an important distinction because although format gives the pretense of news, SportsCenter is little more than puff and fluff. This not to say there aren't excellent journalists doing credible work for ESPN, there are. It is highly unlikely you will get to see them on SportsCenter or if you do they will be caricatures of themselves indulging in obsequious buffoonery, ala John Clayton and Sean Salisbury on the Four Downs segment, where they are encouraged to yell at each other as if they worked for Vince McMahon. This week's? This month's? version of that foolishness brings the viewer an NCAA style tournament bracket pairing, addressing the all important question, "Who is Now the Sporting World's biggest superstar?" A total joke, from the people who brought Sports Century, athlete's of the century, Anna Kournikova. The Clarion wouldn't even have been able to report on this morning's imbecilic discussion about who's better Tiger or Peyton Manning at all, if it hadn't been for the mesmerizing Erin Andrews. All set to grab the clicker and surf away, Erin lured us back. Perhaps that is the ultimate message, we, the sports fan, keep looking SportsCenter, as crummy as it is today, nostalgically hopefully. There is a dearth of quality competition. The next best substitute is provided by the same folks, ESPN News. SportsCenter is an aging colossus, a shell of its former self that is waiting to be toppled. Heck, even Dan Patrick has left the network. But for now, we're still watching albeit much, much less frequently than we once did.
Labels: baseball, ESPN, sports, television
Comments:
Further cross-promotion torture; today's SportsCenter wraps with "What 2 Watch." Instead of hyping the sporting events of the day, when baseball is hot; two milestones can be reached by Glavine and A-Rod, plus there is the jerk trying to hit his homer in Chavez Ravine, SportsCenter-Disney led "What 2 Watch" with a promo for their craptastic series "The Bronx is Burning."
Post a Comment
