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Opinion
You might not have noticed it, but a new low for sports broadcasting in Australia was reached in the Big Bash League on Saturday evening.
During the BBL Qualifier final between the Perth Scorchers and the Sydney Sixers, Sixers skipper Moises Henriques lofted quick David Payne high into the Perth sky over mid-wicket.
“He’s picked that up, and sent it high away over the leg side,” called veteran commentator Mark Howard, who through his stints with first Channel 10 and now Fox Cricket has covered more Big Bash than just about anyone.
Then, as the camera panned across and into a throng of Scorchers fans in the crowd, ‘Another six!’
There was just one problem. The ball had, actually, fallen some distance short of the boundary. Making things uglier still, the catch had been comfortably taken by Stephen Eskinazi, an event that viewers had to wait until the replay to have confirmed to them.
Adding the cherry on top, the Fox graphics immediately popped up on screen hailing the six.
If you want to watch the scene in all its ‘glory’, well, Twitterer Lenny Phillips, who has long been among the most vocal of critics on the issue I’m about to touch on, has it saved for all to see.
Most of you are probably aware of just why this happened, but for those of you who aren’t, here’s the long and short: ever since the COVID-19 pandemic blocked interstate travel for all but the most essential of circumstances, Fox have primarily been calling all their sports from studios in Melbourne or Sydney, hundreds or even thousands of kilometres from the action.
This has continued even after the majority of COVID restrictions were eased in late 2021 and early 2022 – I wrote about it being particularly egregious in the AFL early last year – and it has caused problems ranging from the mildly irritating to the irredeemably pathetic on a regular basis.
These issues have been particularly evident this BBL season, where commentators – most obviously Brendon Julian – have made it painfully aware they’re watching off a screen by frequently misjudging whether lofted balls are going for six or falling short for a catch. (Once again, thanks to Lenny Phillips for archiving these moments).
Saturday night’s howler was more disastrous than the rest thanks to some dodgy camerawork – poor Howard didn’t have a prayer as the camera failed to find the ball in the air and instead settled on the crowd – but it proved once and for all just how damaging remote calling is to the quality of a broadcast.
There’s a reason that since the dawn of sports broadcasting, commentators have been in attendance at games. They get a greater feel for the atmosphere at an event that just can’t be replicated off a screen, plus they’re in a position to actively track a game with their eyes to a far greater extent than can be provided off the monitor.
Fox have put a great deal of money and effort into assembling their commentary teams for all sports – some of Australia’s finest cricketers, including Adam Gilchrist, who was present in the studio for Saturday night’s BBL Qualifier, are paid big bucks to offer their insight and expertise on the coverage, while the same is true for AFL, NRL and all the other major sports they cover.
But all of that simply doesn’t wash if those commentators’ raison d’être is being sacrificed. Honestly, what is the point of paying big bucks for Julian (or indeed anyone else) if he can’t even tell viewers with any accuracy whether a ball is going for six or not?
To their credit, Seven have, for the most part, gone back to broadcasting live at games wherever they are – occasionally with local commentators such as Adelaide’s Mark Soderstrom for AFL games in South Australia if it’s too expensive to fly out the big guns.
Allan Border and Adam Gilchrist, Fox Cricket commentators. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
If it’s still doable for Seven, then the same standard should be expected of Fox – especially given their plan for the AFL season is to match what they do with the NRL and provide their own commentators for games instead of running with Seven’s feed.
Adam Papalia is one of Fox’s diamonds in the rough as a caller, particularly for AFL, and he did do the occasional match live on the scene last year – and the quality increase between his calls and those of Dwayne Russell or even Anthony Hudson doing it remotely was substantial.
Surely he would have been a better option for a game – and, indeed, for the BBL final in Perth this weekend – than Howard calling from a studio on the other side of the country?
Frankly, it’s time Fox found other ways to save money other than cheaping out on the thing that should be their highest priority – providing the best possible broadcast to the hundreds of thousands or even millions of eyeballs tuning in.
This isn’t the fault of the commentators at all – they’re being paid to do the job as best they can. Fox are disrespecting them as much as they are the fans who have to tune in to hear them making mistake after mistake after mistake due to the circumstances they find themselves in.
I’m willing to bet the majority of them aren’t exactly thrilled with the current state of play, either. In Ashley Browne’s book on the AFL’s struggle through the COVID-impacted 2020 season, AFL 2020: A Season Like No Other, acclaimed commentator Gerard Whateley lamented the negative impact calling remotely had on both the quality of the broadcast and his own enjoyment of his work.
“It was a misrepresentation of what it was actually like at the game,” he told Browne. “People at home weren’t watching a faithful representation of what was happening. It echoed.
“I left the last game in Melbourne before the [second] lockdown telling ‘Huddo’ [Anthony Hudson] that I’d never get used to calling the games like that. There was nothing to work with, nothing to react to in the raw sense.”
The majority of fans and viewers likely don’t care too much about this – or if they do, it’s doubtful it would actually offend enough for mass backlash. Hell, I’ll still be watching the rest of this BBL season, and the AFL and NRL seasons after that.
But at the very least, Fox’s pathetic cost-cutting needs to be called out for what it is: a cheap, deplorable ploy that diminishes the quality of the broadcast and disrespects those tuning in.
We all deserve better.
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