UcMiami
How it is
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2011
- Messages
- 14,197
- Reaction Score
- 47,324
Agree - and I think it is the curse of Television. As sports program grew, they were generally taking people who got their start in radio where with no picture, the announcers had to describe the play precisely and keep track of everything for the listener. As the TV programming increased, they needed more and more folks and they started hiring people with no radio back ground. The we got MNF and the cult of sports personality in the booth and three people talking. With three there wasn't enough game talk for everyone so more extraneous talking crept in. And the sports personality and the extraneous talk spread out from there to all sports with less and less actual game talk - heck, everyone can see the picture, why describe it!The worst is when they are talking crap and don't even acknowledge a foul or mean pick during it. I've seen Stef blown to the floor and the announcer (no name) doesn't even acknowledge it while prattling on about some garbage that has nothing to do with the game.
Of course the increased quality of both the picture and the broadcast infrastructure made it less and less necessary to describe the action - I remember watching some games in the 60s on a terrible B&W set with a bad antenna where without the commentary I couldn't tell which team was which let alone which player had the ball!