Radio-TV Observer

A special USA-365 supplement by Mark Smith

9-25-2005

We are all media observers. We all watch, listen and read and we know what we like.

Media is a business designed to make money off the public by entertaining them. It often does not have redeeming value, logic or a moral base. But it isn't required to. I ask you to accept TV, newspapers and radio as the creative, possibility and mistake-laden free form entities that they are.

Don't make too much of what is said, written or aired. It isn't about you, it's about them. That also applies to anyone who dares to be a critic.

Today, we look at the best regional and local play-by-play announcers and color commentators.

(9-25-2005) I wish the local state of play-by-play announcing was better than it is. There's a lot of people on the air Friday nights who have mastered the 'Chet Coppack style' of taking 48 words to say absolutely nothing.

Many don't understand about cadence and voice tone. Some feel they can blow pronunciations because Harry Caray did. A few fake enthusiasm and facts but ham it up so the highlights sound good.

The ESPN style. It's too bad that more don't work to be play by play (PBP) guys because it's the ultimate in local broadcasting. Many almost speak for their towns.

Announcers are as as close as you can come to the game without being there. TV announcers just call the game as it passes. They are actually supposed to let YOU watch.

Newspaper guys can't cover the game any more than space considerations allow. And they are also obligated to get post-game comments, which often are different from what actually happened.

Long pre-game and post game shows are packed with folks who lack information and are clearly just filing time.

But the guys who call the game keep the major team sports in the local public eye. College and pro announcers breed new fans and keep the games alive.

Most of us began listening to the games on the radio in our rooms as kids, long before we ever went to the ballpark, knew what it was or where it was. I know I did. From that point on, everybody wants to be the person behind the mike sending the game back to the fans who could not be there. No matter how many hours the Chicago Bears pre-game show lasts, no one in all of sports is more listened to than the play-by-play guy. It'll always be that way.

But PBP is like singing. Everybody thinks they can call a game but most of us sound like Donald Trump singing 'Green Acres.' Not everybody can speak well enough or clearly enough to call a ball game. Not everybody understands how to raise and lower your voice without screaming. Few study the sport they are covering well enough to know what's important to say and what's just some numbers they down-loaded out of a computer.

And, worst of all, most play-by-play guys honestly don't know that it's not about them. PBP voice is an ego position. Bad ones can almost turn you off your favorite team. Good ones make you fans for life.

Leaving out Internet radio (I don't get to hear it so I can't comment), here is one man's list of the top guys on the air when the game is on the line.

Pat is almost perfect as a baseball announcer. You can tell he revels in the game from the starting lineup to the last out. Hughes knows the secret to play-by-play sports. Raising your voice at the times that something important happens and not raising your voice at other times.

Folks at home hang on the tone of the announcer's voice. If the play-by-play guy is a screamer, the listener can't tell whether the fly ball is going over the wall....or whether the left fielder has stopped short of the warning track.

Years of working with Bob Uecker on WTMJ in Milwaukee has allowed Hughes to become funny without resorting to jokes or puns, the indisputable sign of a hack (an amateur with little talent) announcer.

Hughes sets up his color man perfectly and gets him to elaborate without disagreeing. He actually sounds like he wants the color man's input. Most play-by-play men don't.

Hughes also knows when to drift away from the game and talk about something else when the score is 10-2, still documenting the game but discussing something else.

He is a reporter who roots for the Cubs but details every blunder without elaborating. That's what a reporter does. I don't think he'd do well with basketball or football but Pat Hughes is a perfect baseball announcer and he'll almost certainly call the Cubs games the rest of his life.

Brian cheats with his knowledge of baseball because he's the head coach of Griffith varsity baseball. That gives him an edge that no other local announcer has. He's in the game at more than one level and the strategy and techniques of the game are second nature to him.

Brian has a very listenable voice and he's not a screamer or a yeller so you can follow the game even when the action gets hot.

Jennings is the only local announcer who even seems to want to know anything about an opposing team that is outside NW Indiana.

That alone puts him at the top. But he also speaks clearly, doesn't stutter or stammer and is very confident about what he's saying.

The Railcats would do well to consider Jennings the next time they have a broadcast opening.

The voice of the fighting Irish for a quarter of a century, Tony Roberts' voice carries the hopes of ND fans. And their frustrations. No one is more vocal about the home team's successes and failures than Tony Roberts is with Notre Dame.

He is one of the few home team announcers that appears to say exactly what he is thinking, good or bad. Roberts also never seems surprised by a situation, something that certainly comes with experience. His voice also has a tremor of excitement, something that is a gift.

If I'm at home watching Notre Dame. I'll turn down the NBC happy boys and listen to Roberts because he won't hold anything back.

Tony Roberts' only flaw is that he doesn't seem to want or need a color man. He can call the game and still analyze it better than color man Allen Pinkett can. The difference between Tony Roberts and Pat Hughes style-wise? If Hughes was announcing the White Sox, he would detail all the ways they've tailed off in the last six weeks and dwell on how great Cleveland has been.

It Tony Roberts was announcing the White Sox, he'd say that if they blow the lead and don't make the playoffs, they've choked.

Bill is another one born with that raspy old school Chicago 'Red Mottlow' broadcast voice. His experience has smoothed out his broadcast to the point where any situation that plays out before him, he's seen it before.

Hazen has done most of his work in the Chicago area, but you could not tell that as he's done NW Indiana football and basketball in the last two years. He gives you just enough to suggest he knows what he's talking about. You could call it smoke and mirrors, but you could also call it being the consummate pro announcer.

Bill's biggest asset other than his skills is that he's naturally friendly in the way Jack Brickhouse and Harry Caray must have been. On-air partners all sound like his best friend and he is able to disagree without debating, a deft skill that almost no one else has.

Bill Hazen is better than WBBM's Jeff Joniak, the young motor mouth who does the Chicago Bears. The Chicago White Sox play-by-play job is open and Bill Hazen could almost make me a fan, even in these choking times.

Larry is a pro Purdue homer but he gets as real as you can and still stay the home team's announcer.

If Purdue isn't cutting it, Clisby will say it, which is the only thing that makes an announcer worth listening to. Clisby, who is blessed with a great basketball voice, is superb at leading the listener with the tone of his voice. I can almost certainly tell whether Purdue is leading or trailing, slipping or rallying by the tone of voice Larry Clisby uses.

Here's another guy who sounds like he has almost no use for his color man, but he's another who can call the game and do color by himself.

Basketball is the toughest sport there is for action, because it is so fast and there are many unexpected things. You can fumble and stumble when the ball is dead but when the clock is running, you must be on top of your game. Like Tony Roberts, you can tell Clisby is rooting hard for Purdue even when he's ripping them, something you couldn't tell about Ivy league frat boys Chip Caray and Steve Stone who made Cub broadcasts stink like Fox's new fall schedule for seven years.

There are three classic voices of Indiana college sports. Tony Roberts and Notre Dame, Don Fisher at Indiana and Larry Clisby at Purdue.

Mike does an honest reporter's call and not the home team call. He is one of the very few announcers who knows teams outside NW Indiana and he seems to understand that to praise the opponent makes the value of victory higher.

Most local announcers fall into the 'They're not that good' syndrome where they suck up to the home audience by ripping the visitors who can't hear them. It's the ultimate in low class boot licking but Knezevich knows that's not what a real announcer does.

Knezevich does not have a great voice, but he does a very careful call where he is never out of control. That is vital on radio where people driving in cars 30 miles away are hanging on your every word.

Mike is also one of the best on pre-game and post game fundamentals. He consistently tells you the lineups, game setting, leading scorers, what the outcome means and what's next.

He's also good on soccer which is hard. Its difficult to keep scoring threats in perspective in playoff games where nobody ever scores. Mike also never gets in front of the game. Many have heard his voice but don't know who he is. That's the way it should be.

Joe is very strong at all three major sports and he is another who is never surprised by what occurs. Arredondo is blessed with another excellent broadcast voice and he isn't a yeller or screamer.

Joe understands the difference between TV and radio and he does a different type of call on both mediums. TV requires a call but more of an identification and comment role. Radio requires keeping up with the action and using tone of voice to tell the listener that something's coming.

Since Channel 56 gave up tape-delay prep games, Arredondo isn't on the air on game night anymore. You see him at games taping video highlights for WYIN's Thursday night TV show. Joe is a walking encyclopedia of the last 20 years of local sports. Him being off the air on Fridays is a waste.

Tommy may be back on the air in the weeks to come. He's the public address announcer for the Gary South Shore Railcats whose season ran five weeks into football and kept Williams off the air.

Tommy is the ultimate good-will ambassador for local sports. He's too hyper and loud for baseball but his experience with local football and basketball is unmatched.

Tommy is a screamer and sometimes he goes off the charts vocally but as long as he stays within himself, nobody transmits the excitement of a prep sports event any better. Williams was in Chicago radio for 10 years so he knows the ins and outs of a broadcast. His knowledge of NW Indiana sports obviously isn't what it was before he left for the big time. But he'll get that back.

Doing color commentary is very difficult because you have to try to be descriptive and opinionated within very brief sound bites. You also often have to work with an egomaniac play-by-play guy who wants you to be there during the dead moments but truthfully, doesn't want you to get in his way.

Play-by-play is talent. You must come to the game with certain gifts. Color commentary is a skill that anyone can learn but there's almost no reward. To be cut off in mid-thought is common and since you are the 'opinion' man in the booth, you get blamed for things you only half said due to lack of time.

Play by plays guys have an easy job once the game starts. They just call some variation of what they see. Color men have to keep coming up with comments without repeating what the PBP guy said or repeating themselves for hours. Late in a bad game, it's very difficult. Bad play-by-play guys always use the color man to bail them out. For example, if you don't know how to close out a broadcast, the PBP person will turn to the color man, who has done commentary for two hours and ask him or her, "Any final thoughts?," requiring the color man to come up with something he hasn't said over the last four quarters, a virtual impossibility. But the color guy has to roll with it. The play-by-play man is the pilot. The color man is the flight engineer who keeps the plane in the air.

These three guys are not only good ones, they might be the ONLY three good ones now working in NW Indiana.

Chris is very adept at dropping in comments quickly and confidently. He doesn't have to be asked for, or 'fed' openings. It helps to work with Bill Hazen, as he did for a couple of years, but you have to know what you're talking about and aggressively get it in.

Lanin has a 'ball game' voice. He sounds like he's announcing the game even when he's reading a promo for that Hammond dairy. Chris is a homer. He roots for the home team and sometimes everything is 'amazing' and 'outstanding'. But that's a common flaw of all announcers. Lanin has a great knowledge of Lake County sports and he never runs out of things to say.

Anybody who's met Dave knows he can talk endlessly and that makes him the perfect color man on prep sports. You can throw him the same question three times and he can answer it three different ways.

Dave also does his homework on NW Indiana teams and has a working knowledge of out-of-the-area squads. Miller has NW Indiana's best 'commercial voice'. He sounds best when he's reading some of the myriad of annoying but necessary on-air, in-game 'reads' the RSN and RRSN do.

The Region Sports Network (RSN) as a whole has a much better grasp on the entire state than the other broadcast groups do. Dave is another of those dreaded NW Indiana homers but he at least has the local team's tasks in perspective because he knows and says what they're up against. Miller and the RSN also consider all of Porter and LaPorte County to be in NW Indiana, which is the way it should be.

Kirk is the perfect 'blender' and he might have the toughest job in NW Indiana sports broadcasting . He very smoothly slips in the sound bites in between WJOB's widely varying PBP talent level.

Kirk is very low-key and he's never outrageous. (Except for the time he said that Lawrence North's All-American Greg Oden 'hadn't shown him anything. (To be fair to Kirk, 4 dunks later, Smith revised his assessment).

Kirk Smith has a very easy-to-listen-to voice and you might not always know it's him. He's not quite as big a homer as the rest of the WJOB bunch and no matter what the PBP guy throws him, he handles it smoothly. Here's another guy who doesn't put himself and his style ahead of the game. We don't need entertainers. We need reporters. Kirk Smith is a reporter.

COLOR - You can't say “ I dunno” a half dozen times during a broadcast and you can count on most PBP guys will ask you questions you don't know. It makes the color guy sound like a reject from 'That 70s Show.'

The color commentator has to work to find more info on the team he doesn't know than the one he's familiar with. You have to know names and numbers and pronunciations. There are no excuses and it will come up.

PBP - Most play by play guys are terrible at opening and closing the broadcast. They stumble and stutter through it like their girlfriend's mother just took her shirt off. Many have such large egos they will not write out what they want to say at the start of the game. It's not illegal. It's like a speech. If you script the first line the rest of it will come to you. And it makes for a much better start to the broadcast.

PBP - All PBP guys miss plays. But what you don't know is that many of them lie like Donald Rumsfeld to cover it up. It is not at all uncommon for PBP announcers to make up what happened if they didn't see it. The logic is, 'Why not? The listener isn't here and won't know.'

What you need to do is, be honest. The PBP guy is allowed to say “I didn't see who made that sack...” or “I did not see who got that fumble." It's not good to say it but it's real.

PBP - Many announcers don't feel they have to. Turn down the sound on the White Sox or Cubs losing and call the game to the silent set. It you stutter when you try to talk fast, you either work on it or get a job writing for the newspaper. The basic skill of PBP and color people is the ability to talk clearly and quickly with a large vocabulary. If you can't do that, try memorizing just one phrase, 'Do you want fries with that?”

COLOR - You've got to find out everything you possibly can about the other team whether it's Lake Central or Muncie Central. Virtually all local broadcasters feel that if Highland is playing Culver, since they have no listeners or sponsors in Culver, that they do not need to know anything about Culver.

That kind of dedication to the job will get you in the door as the head of FEMA but it's not good for broadcasters. With so many on-line newspapers available at your fingertips there's no excuse for not knowing volumes about any team in the state or beyond.

PBP - For reasons I cannot explain, most PBP guys do not make an effort to memorize the numbers of the players, a staple of broadcasters since the Spanish-American war. Nothing stops sports PBP people from getting the numbers of skill position players and memorizing them the afternoon of the game.

The trouble is, most announcers become announcers because they don't want to work hard. The vast majority of NW Indiana Radio-TV guys are lazy and prefer to stumble through the first quarter mis-identifying everybody until they pick up on who's who. They don't think the listener can tell.