When I tune the wireless to listen to the footy, I generally turn it off once the game starts.
This has been a lifelong trait since I discovered Roy and HG on Triple J in the early ’90s. Talking about sport was more enjoyable than listening to the blow-by-blow call of the game. And if it’s funny, that’s even better.
This seed was born when a Sydney taxi driver and part-time race caller called Ray Hadley teamed up with the newly retired Parramatta Eels warhorse Ray Price to broadcast the rugby league on Sydney’s 2UE, after Frank Hyde and Col Pearce folded up the sideline card table and put the headphones away.
I was never really into Hollywood and Zorba but as time has drifted by, I appreciate their style of combative sparring as the entertainment it was. These days I’ve left the league behind and turned to the Melbourne Triple M Saturday Rub podcast.
The delivery methods may have changed but the message remains the same. I don’t need real-time conversations to get my weekly footy fill.
COVID-19 has changed the sports broadcasting landscape for good and this heinous event has been the catalyst for the massive cost savings about to come. The days of $1 billion deals are done.
What the public don’t factor into these numbers is that the networks then need to pay for the logistics of actually putting the sports to air. This includes paying the big contracts of the on-air talent as well as the outside broadcast facilities and a myriad of other associated costs.
(Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)
They then need to sell advertising and subscriptions to make it all viable. No broadcaster makes money out of sport and it is classed as a loss leader for them to get you to stay on the network once the game is over. Hence the heavy advertising for their own programming.
Nine are the rights holders for the NRL but they produce excellent AFL coverage and have expanded Monday night’s Footy Classified to a Wednesday night offering as well this season. This proves that you don’t need to talk about the game or have the pictures to make watchable TV week in, week out.
This current crisis has given us new topics to ponder as we navigate this changing landscape. Fox Footy has put the excellent 360 nightly programs for AFL and NRL on hiatus but in their place are the equally compelling Live shows. These are essentially a panel show with the talent still on the payroll who feel no need to change out of the attire they have just slinked around Bunnings in. This way they can just put on the cans and treat it as a televised radio show. But it is very watchable night after night.
So short is Fox on current content that they are replayed immediately after they are shown live and throughout the next 24-hour cycle until the next one is produced. The other new concept that Fox are going with is the replaying of classic games to modern commentary – another innovative use of the old combatants on the evaporating gravy train.
It’s an interesting concept when you commentate the game you’re playing in. Bill Brownless did that well when calling one of his numerous losing grand final efforts on radio, much to the amusement of his fellow stable of stars.
(Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images)
When we come out of this pandemic we expect that salary caps will be slashed, football departments will shrink and player salaries will not be at the level they were when the next round of broadcasting rights are negotiated. The hole the NRL finds itself in now is due to blowing the rivers of gold that have flowed down the Murdoch and Packer Rivers since the Super League war ended. The well stocked trout have now been fished dry.
Unfortunately, the drought is to make that river barren. In the past few weeks we have been softened up by the media to expect the cost cutting to be the new norm. This is how it needs to be. Commentating from TV screens in nothing new and generally happens when commentators don’t want to travel too far abroad.
They have been doing it at the Olympics for years with skeleton crews sent due to the massive costs involved in such an epic operation that televising sport has become. When I go to the Sydney Test, it is covered by two local TV networks, Fox and Seven. The visiting team takes the local feed of the pictures and has their domestic commentary team describe the pictures you see on the screen. Radio and print journos are thick on the ground.
The harsh economic realities of the coming seasons once the pandemic is over will see a boundary runner or a sideline eye at the footy and the rest in a broadcast bunker or even at home. Crisis has created a new reliance on technology to bring the isolated to our screens as never before and have we really missed a beat? We have not.
Cricket has a more complex issue to navigate as the game goes over multiple days and is on for multiple hours each day. These are really first-world problems.
Jeff
Roar Rookie
Alternative ways to spend time with friends, with family. Non-conventional ways perhaps (digital), but generated by a realisation of you don’t know what you have been missing till it’s gone. A renewed sense of finding ways to contributing towards others who find themselves in difficult circumstances at times in their lives – financially or socially or health-wise. Perhaps a simple focus on one’s financial security. Perhaps realising that there is o lot more to contributing to a child’s well being, engagement, creativity, than sitting them below your stretched-out position on the couch across the weekend watching endless hours of TV sport to which you actually have no input into and which has no interest in you, other than selling you ways to bet on-line or to buy beer. Cat, it’s a little more nuanced than the queuing for bog rolls, at Bunnings or stock piling sanitiser, as “interests” But then again, if all there is to life for some is couch-sport which could only ever be replaced by focusing on queuing for toilet paper, then I guess that is where our society has devolved to – and therefore so be it. Personally, I’d be hoping for more.
Cat
Roar Guru
Pursued other interests such as what? Hunting for toilet paper? Queuing up Bunnings? Stock piling hand sanitizer? Its not just sport that is shut down, its all the things that people might other wise pursue as well.
Rowdy
Roar Rookie
I must apologise because l agree on Chappelli and Nicholas knowing their stuff. Coming from an Australian Football background l found Sterling invaluable in getting to know Rugby League. In many ways he is the Chappelli of RL callers.
Michael
Guest
But the nrl is the only sport that is not in debt in any way. the digital aspect of it makes money per year. they told them they could produce their own stuff for a lot less than the networks do the american sports company. um
Paul D
Roar Rookie
I wonder if a broadcaster will ever have the courage to put the product to air without commentary, or give people an option to just have the effects mikes. I imagine it would be fairly popular. And it might just save the broadcasters a bunch of money too.
Mark Scarfe
Roar Guru
Very juvenile. Auto correct at its best.
Tim Carter
Roar Pro
Your first sentence required a question mark instead of a period, and that question mark needed to be placed within the parentheses. Glass houses, etc.
Chris.P.Bacon
Guest
"As an Easts fan I recall the 1980 try as I turned the TV off shortly afterwards.." ....and as a Bulldog's supporter I turned the TV volume up and did a little dance! :laughing: Sorry, I can't recall the try you're referring to John but it's always nice discussing magnificent Canterbury tries with fans from rival clubs. Nice of you to remember mate! ;)
Nick
Roar Guru
That stubbornness on Channel 9 also led to their cricket coverage becoming the joke of the world. It was even worse than the Indian's english-language commentary. The Indians are nakedly biased like Channel 9, but at least they are insightful with the tactics and had a deep appreciation for the history of the game, and the opponents. Channel 9 commentators, save for Ian Chappell and Mark Nicholas at the end, barely knew the names of the opposition team and constantly talked as if they were in the bar at the golf club reliving the glory days. Ian Healy is the worst commentator I've ever heard, Michael Slater sold out on Channel 9, Michael Clarke's accent is ear piercingly horrifying, and he's SO boring. Thank heavens it moved to seven. Agree entirely on Peter Sterling. He's a great commentator, and three times as good on radio when not surrounded by those muppets. Joey and Phil Gould just push meaningless, deluded and dangerous agenda together. Freddie sounds like a yobbo. And yeah, Lockyer is about as interesting as a chair.
JOHN ALLAN
Guest
As an Easts fan I recall the 1980 try as I turned the TV off shortly afterwards however there was a try scored by Canterbury in a midweek cup game. My hazy memory recalls perhaps Turvey Mortimer & Brentnall whereby one of them from a tap penalty with his back to the tryline kicked it over his head & the other collected it & scored. They later explained it was atactic from their AFL days in Wagga. Does anybody else remember it?
Chris.P.Bacon
Guest
I think you may be referring to this try Nicko - a beauty from the 1980 Grand Final - Brentnall to Gearinl! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdvStMZ4yXI
Nick Maguire
Roar Rookie
I think it was Steve Gearin who caught the ball but couldn't be sure it was Amco Cup, could have been a premiership game.
Mark Scarfe
Roar Guru
The national Panasonic Cup was my memories of mid week footy. Great days in hindsight.
Tom G
Roar Rookie
Getting rid of more than half the clown collective in the Chanel 9 broadcast would be a welcome improvement... They have more people in that squad than there are players they are talking about. Most of the time they aren't even talking about the bloody game they are paid to call and comment on.
Adam Bagnall
Roar Guru
I enjoyed Ray Warren when I started watching the game in the mid 90's. Sadly he should have been replaced years ago, and it's this stubbornness that has led to 9 becoming an embarrassment when it comes to rugby league coverage. Peter Sterling is easily their best, and he ksbrought down by the joker's around him. Lockyer has zero personality and is painful to listen to. Joey and Freddy have their moments but are usually joking around. I've been on Kayo since day one and haven't looked back
Brendon the 1st
Roar Rookie
Gee I wish you were right, I doubt it though. They'll vote Trump back in, you can bet your house on it.
Nick
Roar Guru
Max, It took America 8 years (arguably 11) to regain the economic ground it lost in the GFC. This hit will hurt hard.
Mark Scarfe
Roar Guru
Great info.
Rowdy
Roar Rookie
If there’s a mistake l suppose fixing it is righting an article.
Jwoody74
Roar Rookie
Having been involved in sports broadcasting for over two decades I can tell you categorically that skeleton crews are not sent to Olympic Games and I’ve worked on 4 of them. The International Broadcast Centre at an Olympic Games is like a mini city and that’s not even scratching the surface of the numbers involved in producing the world feed for broadcasters of the actual sports. As far as how cricket is produced in this country and the visiting team taking the domestic pictures you’re only kind of right on that also as international broadcasters produce their own downstream cut of the play. Hubs however are the future of live sports broadcasting with fibre optic cables playing a major role in keeping numbers of the crew in a central location in order for OB service providers to reign in costs of broadcasting live sport. It’s not necessarily the broadcasters looking to save coin it’s in fact the service providers as they hire the freelance crew that bring you the pictures and the majority of crew are indeed freelancers.