Best. Broadcast. Evah!
Live broadcasting. All the enjoyment of normal broadcasting but with the extra element of danger that one might hear the word ‘cunt’ on the television (thank you ‘I’m a celebrity’) or on the radio (thank you ’Today’ programme). You are of course, free to use the word yourself around the house (it’s best to do so in private, as public usage, say in a boozer, could land you in a spot of bother) as often as you like, repeating and repeating like somebody trying to learn Tourette’s using one of those language tape things.
Live broadcasting lets us look behind the curtain at the performance of presenters who, in pre-recorded programmes look shiny, slick and flawlessly professional. The only time one saw fallibility was on the occasional clip shows made up of out-takes, where one witnessed an increasingly distressed presenter trying to record a segment containing the word ‘topple’ without getting a fit of the giggles, or being attacked by an enraged gibbon. Hil-hairy-arse.
On live broadcasts, anything can happen and it’s a wonder that it doesn’t more often. The most common threat is somebody larking about behind the presenter as they report from the sort of place where the public have not had media training, such as a council estate. And how much fun would it be to see MPs or Peers misbehaving behind Nick Robinson as he reports from Parliament? If I was an MP I would at no time be without a cardboard sign that could quickly be unfolded and read ‘hello Mum!’.
Normally, live broadcasts are reserved for occasions where larking would be unsuitable, featuring a regional BBC reporter in a North Face anorak (please address your letters of complaint about product placement to ‘your composter, the end of your garden, Little England’) looking sombre in front of a flooded high street or an otherwise unremarkable stretch of street made tragic by the abundance of petrol station bouquets or, god forbid, soft toys that line the perimeter of the police cordon.
Sports reporting is the exception. Sport tends to be covered live and a particular breed of presenter has emerged – somebody that can talk with passion about twenty two overpaid nancy boys sex pests kicking around a ball for ninety minutes, or two blokes clacking balls around a green baize table for, well, forever in my experience or, my very favourite, commenting on a Grand Prix, where it’s acknowledged that the most exciting bit is the start, requiring the commentator to begin the commentary at a pitch of excitement that horse-racing commentators normally conclude with, then maintain it for the next two hours. The god-like presenters of ‘Test Match Special’ cope with a five day schedule by only occasionally remarking on the play, the rest of the time discussing the local wildlife, what they got up to last night, last week or last decade, cakes and so on.
Football commentary, on the radio, is perhaps the apex of live commentary. There’s a quote reported by the late, great, Alistair Cooke that radio was preferred to television because ‘the pictures were better’. Fair enough but that quote is from the late 1940’s and whoever said it plainly hadn’t seen a fifty inch plasma job. So football commentators on the radio know they have to work extra hard to compete with somebody who can watch the match. On the telly. In a pub.
This possibly explains the approach that BBC Scotland took yesterday in its ‘Sportsound’ programme, where, around five o’clock in the afternoon, when all the Scottish Cup football matches were ending more or less at the same time (injury and stoppage time staggering the final whistles over a few minutes), they kept an open microphone to all the commentators at all the grounds.
No matter how close a commentator at a football match presses their special one way microphone to their lips, you can still hear the roar of the crowd, including the occasional fruity wanker fuck and cunt. It’s like somebody organised a flashswear. In the last minutes of the Scottish Cup, where the fans were urging their sides to either score to go through to the next round or to equalise and get that lucrative replay, the sound of the crowd was such that having the radio on was like standing under a waterfall.
That was as nothing though compared to the excitement of the commentators, one of which, reporting from Firhill (home of the greatest football team on the planet – Partick Thistle), managed a textbook ‘curse of the commentator’ with the fabulous ‘the score here nil nil and likely to stay that way and Queen-Of-the-South have just scored!’. There was lots of this sort of thing and, frankly, it was probably the best ten minutes of live broadcasting I’ve ever heard. The anchor/presenter/ringmaster/conductor orchestrating the whole thing did a fabulous job and, I don’t know about him, but I was wrung out by the time it had finished and needed a sit down and a fag.
Live broadcasting lets us look behind the curtain at the performance of presenters who, in pre-recorded programmes look shiny, slick and flawlessly professional. The only time one saw fallibility was on the occasional clip shows made up of out-takes, where one witnessed an increasingly distressed presenter trying to record a segment containing the word ‘topple’ without getting a fit of the giggles, or being attacked by an enraged gibbon. Hil-hairy-arse.
On live broadcasts, anything can happen and it’s a wonder that it doesn’t more often. The most common threat is somebody larking about behind the presenter as they report from the sort of place where the public have not had media training, such as a council estate. And how much fun would it be to see MPs or Peers misbehaving behind Nick Robinson as he reports from Parliament? If I was an MP I would at no time be without a cardboard sign that could quickly be unfolded and read ‘hello Mum!’.
Normally, live broadcasts are reserved for occasions where larking would be unsuitable, featuring a regional BBC reporter in a North Face anorak (please address your letters of complaint about product placement to ‘your composter, the end of your garden, Little England’) looking sombre in front of a flooded high street or an otherwise unremarkable stretch of street made tragic by the abundance of petrol station bouquets or, god forbid, soft toys that line the perimeter of the police cordon.
Sports reporting is the exception. Sport tends to be covered live and a particular breed of presenter has emerged – somebody that can talk with passion about twenty two overpaid nancy boys sex pests kicking around a ball for ninety minutes, or two blokes clacking balls around a green baize table for, well, forever in my experience or, my very favourite, commenting on a Grand Prix, where it’s acknowledged that the most exciting bit is the start, requiring the commentator to begin the commentary at a pitch of excitement that horse-racing commentators normally conclude with, then maintain it for the next two hours. The god-like presenters of ‘Test Match Special’ cope with a five day schedule by only occasionally remarking on the play, the rest of the time discussing the local wildlife, what they got up to last night, last week or last decade, cakes and so on.
Football commentary, on the radio, is perhaps the apex of live commentary. There’s a quote reported by the late, great, Alistair Cooke that radio was preferred to television because ‘the pictures were better’. Fair enough but that quote is from the late 1940’s and whoever said it plainly hadn’t seen a fifty inch plasma job. So football commentators on the radio know they have to work extra hard to compete with somebody who can watch the match. On the telly. In a pub.
This possibly explains the approach that BBC Scotland took yesterday in its ‘Sportsound’ programme, where, around five o’clock in the afternoon, when all the Scottish Cup football matches were ending more or less at the same time (injury and stoppage time staggering the final whistles over a few minutes), they kept an open microphone to all the commentators at all the grounds.
No matter how close a commentator at a football match presses their special one way microphone to their lips, you can still hear the roar of the crowd, including the occasional fruity wanker fuck and cunt. It’s like somebody organised a flashswear. In the last minutes of the Scottish Cup, where the fans were urging their sides to either score to go through to the next round or to equalise and get that lucrative replay, the sound of the crowd was such that having the radio on was like standing under a waterfall.
That was as nothing though compared to the excitement of the commentators, one of which, reporting from Firhill (home of the greatest football team on the planet – Partick Thistle), managed a textbook ‘curse of the commentator’ with the fabulous ‘the score here nil nil and likely to stay that way and Queen-Of-the-South have just scored!’. There was lots of this sort of thing and, frankly, it was probably the best ten minutes of live broadcasting I’ve ever heard. The anchor/presenter/ringmaster/conductor orchestrating the whole thing did a fabulous job and, I don’t know about him, but I was wrung out by the time it had finished and needed a sit down and a fag.
Labels: BBC, BBC Radio, Foot, Radio Scotland, Sports
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