At Culture11, Michael Brendan Dougherty has a fine piece on how the people who run sports are more interested in catering to people who don't like sport than for those who, like, actually do. He's writing about the modern baseball experience but everything he says also, of course, applies to cricket. Especially Twenty20 cricket:
Rugby union is trying something similar, mind you, what with all these new "experimental" laws that are designed to turn the game into some tedious facsimile of rugby league just so a few more Australians can be persuaded to follow the sport. Never mind the millions of people who like the game as it is and see no need for change. Of course, liking the game as it is means you're part of the problem. People who have no interest in the sport are the future and the solution my friends...
That's all well and good, but there's never any excuse for the term "techno-pizazz". Ever.
Posted by: ben | September 18, 2008 at 05:52 PM
Compare the football coverage on our telly with that from the Continent. The continental directors are far more prone to keep back from the action so you can have some idea of what options are open to the man in possession. British directors are keen to show him in close-up; sometimes they will even show you his face rather than his feet and the ball. It's as if they are convinced that their audience has the intelligence of an eight year-old with a low attention span. Ditto for the analysts' comments - anything but the bleedin'obvious is largely eschewed. Or, worst of all, think of all those sporting events where the director is keen to show you pictures of the sportsman's Mum, or his usual shag.
Posted by: | September 18, 2008 at 06:30 PM
Are you having a laugh? I don't recognise that description at all. French, Spanish and Italian directors covering football are more likely to show the bench, fans with microphones and drums in the stands, chairman/president looking exasperated, celebrities in the stand, in fact anything except the fecking game!
You just need to look at the Champions League matches on Tuesdays and Wednesdays to see the difference between coverage of matches featuring Scottish and English teams and then others to notice.
I'll happily admit that sometimes Sky (specifically) do go for too many close ups but generally the standard of coverage is better here (Setanta's awful but slowly improving coverage apart) than in continental Europe, I would strongly argue.
Posted by: Panenka'sChip | September 18, 2008 at 10:46 PM
I suppose it's a factual question, P'sC, so it could be settled by anoraks with notebooks. But I do think your case is weakened a bit if you say that our coverage is better bar the two channels that give nost of the coverage.
Posted by: dearieme | September 19, 2008 at 12:15 PM