Opera Wednesday

ESPN is the new home of Formula One in the United States, and based on reports they plan to reduce coverage on television to just the race, eliminating qualifying and practice coverage from television in order to push over the top services, such as the one Liberty Media is attempting to push worldwide, in an attempt to believe online streaming, not television to the masses, is the trend, pushing what I have called television for elites.  While the coverage will be the Sky coverage from the UK, it will be jarring to see F1 coverage drastically reduced from FP2, Qualifying, a one-hour pre-race, the race, and a post-race show, to simply just the race.  US fans will be interested to see how David Croft's style compares to other well known US motorsport legend Mike Joy, multi-series commentator Rick Schweiger, and others.  I expect considerably fewer books, notes, and observations with this style.  Without a Steve Matchett, Steve Letarte, or Larry McReynolds style voice in the booth, how will it go when the lights go out in a few weeks' time?

That leads to my second thought of Formula One's chequered past, which begins the subject of today's Opera Wednesday.  Remember when it seemed every car in Formula One was sponsored by tobacco?  We saw Marlboro, Gitanes, Camel, Barclay, Rothmans, Lucky Strike, Gold Leaf, John Player, Mild Seven, Gauloises, West, Benson & Hedges, among the notable brands until the mid-2000's when tobacco slowly but surely became a prohibited sponsor in the sport for safety reasons.  This transitions into the winner's podiums in Formula One, where the tune that is played in the Winner's Circle as the drivers and team principal spray champagne but before the unilateral interviews begin is that of an opera featuring women who work in a tobacco plant, no less.  While Formula One has banned tobacco advertising, the music played before the winner's interview at a race is that of women working in a tobacco factory!

And of course, there is an opera that celebrates women in a tobacco factory from Georges Bizet.  Indeed we know the tune, and there inlies the subject of today's Opera Wednesday -- Carmen, and its established overture.

Bad homers make bad sports

Over the years at Our Word, we've been critical of the shouters, screamers, and homers whose goal it seems is to appear on any national sports highlight show with their cheerleading over the radio.

Listening to the end of the South Carolina-Missouri game a couple of weeks ago on radio while I arrived home from the Baroque Soloists concert, I could not believe how unprofessional the radio broadcast (Ellis/Suggs) was during the crazy finish of the game. We don't have the national-style radio broadcasters that used to be everyday. ESPN, in a sad way, changed the culture of how radio broadcasts are done and the result of it was the way the last play was called. I asked if the conferences should have one "regional" or "national" radio crew at each game calling the games, and both teams carrying the one national feed, similar to how Major League Baseball, prior to 1980, mandated one radio crew from national radio to offer the game to both teams' radio networks during the finals. Since fan complaints in 1980, MLB only allows the primary market to have local radio. All other stations in that team's network only has the national radio broadcast. A similar rule in the NFL applies during conference championship games and the league final, where only the primary market can have the local broadcast, and all other stations must carry the national radio feed.

Would having exclusively neutral crews calling conference games and both teams having to carry that broadcast help or hurt the sport? The development of young broadcasters has been on the decline because we've replaced the top talent with homers. South Carolina's dean of the School of Journalism, Charles Bierbauer, would be looking at homers with anger. You wouldn't want homers talking about news issues.

Here's the homer call from Fox Sports Live.  And here's the call from ESPN's coverage.

The homer call is clearly laughing and cheering, and not analysing what happened. The national television call (Joe Tessitore) has unbelief at the missed chip shot, and he saw the technical mistake almost immediately. That's what matters in any sudden incident, and that's what fans need.

There is a clear difference now in sports broadcasting, and the sad thing is that's the problem with sport today. Homers don't make for good broadcasts. A friend of mine said Charlie MacAlexander, who replaced the late Bob Fulton in 1995 and broadcast games until 2002, was much fairer than Todd Ellis. MacAlexander later worked on regional television broadcasts. The time a broadcaster used local radio to climb the ladder from local to regional radio, then regional to national radio, then from radio to television is gone, as it is now homers galore. That is a sad state of affairs now. ◙

Ken Venturi, R.I.P.

I first heard of Ken Venturi when I was ten or so. It was in Phil Pepe’s book Winners Never Quit, one of those books that I’d buy at the scholastic book sales they had when we were kids. Pepe’s book told the stories of athletes who’d come back from extraordinary adversity of one kind or another to become champions, and one of those chapters was on Ken Venturi.

Venturi had been a hotshot golfer with an ego to match. He’d finished second in the Masters as an amateur, had won early and often on the tour as a pro, and lived the life of the celebrity. Then, almost overnight, his game went south, that sweet swing turned into a mess, his mechanics crumbled. Soon he was reduced to begging for spots in tournaments. Even the Masters forgot about him. But because Venturi had ruffled so many feathers along the way with his cockiness, few people felt sorry for him, and even fewer believed he’d ever make it back. But he did, and the story of how the new, humbler Venturi overcame exhaustion and heat stroke to win the 1964 U.S. Open at Congressional is one of the great chapters in golf’s long history.

His rebirth was short-lived; carpel tunnel syndrome in both wrists devastated him, making it almost impossible for him to even feel the club in his hands. Without that touch, his game again faltered. Surgeries and endless practice brought him back, to the point that Pepe’s chapter ends with Venturi winning the 1966 Lucky Invitational in San Francisco, his final tournament victory.

Venturi retired from the tour the next year, and then began the remarkable next stage of his life, one that would surely have qualified for an entirely new chapter in Pepe’s book. As a child he had stuttered so severely that doctors told his mother he’d never be able to pronounce his own name; he’d overcome that, just as he would overcome the challenges that threatened his golfing career, and now Venturi would turn to broadcasting, where the next 35 years he would be the lead golf analyst for CBS.

I loved listening to Venturi cover golf, and over the years he became one of my favorite broadcasters. He might not have been as smooth as some, might not have had the way others had with words, but – like so many other broadcasters I’ve eulogized over the years, including his good friend and colleague Pat Summerall – Venturi was a big-match announcer. When you heard his hushed voice as Nicklaus stood over a put, you knew this was a big moment.

And like them, Venturi didn’t make the broadcast about himself. He told it like it was, but without the smarmy snark of a Johnny Miller or the harshness of a Curtis Strange. He wasn’t interested in showing the viewers that he was smarter and cleverer than the golfers on the course. And, perhaps most important, he was always on the golfer’s side. He didn’t want to see them fail out there, and took no delight when misfortune befell them. I remember during Jean van de Velde’s meltdown at the 1999 British Open that ABC’s team of Mike Tirico and Strange almost seemed to relish what was happening. Venturi wasn’t like that – he knew the pain of losing, and though he’d tell you what went wrong out there, he never suggested that he would have been above making that same mistake.

Venturi’s work with Vin Scully, Summerall, and Jim Nantz made CBS’s golf coverage the best on TV. When he retired a few years ago, to be replaced first by Lanny Wadkins and then by Nick Faldo, it just wasn’t the same. Don’t misunderstand me – I think Faldo can be very good, but he’s not Venturi.

When I’d heard a couple of weeks ago that Venturi was too ill to attend his (richly deserved) induction into the golf Hall of Fame, I worried that this might be the challenge he wouldn’t be able to overcome. His death on Friday, at age 82, leaves a void in both the sporting and broadcasting worlds. Ken Venturi was a class act, on the course and behind the microphone. He was a winner. ◙

Originally posted at It's About TV!

Pat Summerall, R.I.P.

My favorite Pat Summarall moment was from the 1990 Super Bowl, back when I still watched the game.  The San Francisco 49ers were in the process of crushing the Denver Broncos - had, in fact, just scored twice early in the fourth quarter to make the score 55-10 (the eventual final), and as CBS prepared to go to commercial, Summerall summed it up as only he could.

"This," he said, "is just unfortunate."

That he didn't resort to hyperbole, trying to be clever or the coiner of a new phrase, tells you what you need to know about Summerall the broadcaster.   In the past, I've referred to announcers like Summerall (Curt Gowdy, Chris Schenkel) as "big-game" announcers, because the sound of their voices lent gravitas to the event they were broadcasting, but as I think about it I think one could add another description: "gentleman announcer."

This shouldn't be read as sexist, of course.  What I mean is that, like those other men, Pat Summerall was a gentleman in the way he broadcast a game.  There was no shouting or hyperventilating every time someone made a routine play, no attempt to make himself the center of attention - the broadcast wasn't about him, it was about the game.  He had a rich, smooth voice, was clear and spare with his words, and understated in his delivery.  He enjoyed great chemistry with his broadcast partners, notably Tom Brookshier, John Madden and Ken Venturi, and they all profited from working with him.  And he respected the viewers.

Pat Summerall was one of the first former athletes to make the successful transition to the broadcast booth.  He had been an NFL placekicker, most notably for the New York Football Giants, and it was supposedly through his kicking that George Allen Summerall earned the nickname "Pat," for Point After Touchdown.  After retirement he moved to the broadcast booth at CBS, first as a color commentator on NFL football (working with, among others, Chris Schenkel), then to lead NFL announcer in 1974, from which he would ultimately broadcast 16 Super Bowls.  Besides announcing live events, he was also the host (with Brookshier) of NFL Films' This Week in Pro Football, back when that show (along with Howard Cosell's Monday Night Football halftime show) was the main delivery method for highlights of the week's action.

Eventually, Summerall became lead broadcaster on all of CBS' major events, including the NBA, the Masters and the U.S. Open tennis championships.  (He even filled in once for the ailing Harry Carey on a Chicago Cubs game for WGN.)  It didn't matter that Summerall had never played professional tennis or golf or basketball; he had experts to provide the analysis.  His job was to be the professional broadcaster, and he did it as well as anyone.

Summerall and Madden moved to Fox in 1994 after the network won the NFC television rights from CBS, and that was good news for the NFL - but not so good for the rest of us, since Summarall's move meant he'd no longer be heard on those other signature events.  Nothing against Jim Nantz, but Pat Summerall never felt the need to turn the 18th hole at the Masters into a Hallmark Moment.

Outside the booth, Summerall fought a long and ultimately successful battle against alcoholism.  In 2004 he underwent a liver transplant, and he had other assorted health concerns over the past couple of decades.  He was the longtime commercial spokesman for True Value Hardware, which meant that even non-sports fans probably recognized his voice. 

Pat Summerall died on Tuesday at the age of 82, and the more I think about it, the more I like that description "gentleman announcer."  I certainly like it for Pat Summerall - one of the very last of an era we'll likely not see (or hear) again. ◙  

This piece originally appeared on our sister site, It's About TV.