Shapiro focuses on the D.C. area, of course, but the issues he brings up are universal.
My comments are included.
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New Rule: If you really do want to be taken seriously as a member of the media, you are not supposed to be abjectly rooting for the home team.
During the Washington Capitals recent playoff run, I heard more than one local broadcaster end sportscasts or individual reports on the team with an emphatic "Let's Go Caps!" If you want to scream your lungs out for the home team in the privacy of your own den, knock yourself out. But up in the press box, broadcast booth or your station's studio, knock off the cheerleading and act like a professional.
Comment: Agreed. "No cheering in the press box" is a time-honored rule in sports media, and it should apply to booths and studios too. As a play-by-play announcer, I can tell you this: There's nothing wrong supporting the home team, but play-by-play is a form of journalism. Reporting in its purest form.
So, if a play-by-play announcer homers it up for the home team, that announcer isn't telling the straight truth. In reporting, not telling the truth is, well, lying. Lying undercuts, if not destroys, a reporter's credibility.
I'd like to think that when I'm calling a game for, say, the Princeton Rays or the Concord Mountain Lions, I'm calling the game for the fans of those teams, and that listeners will be able to recognize that. I know what audience I'm working for. And, honestly, I want the teams I call games for to do well. But I won't gloss over the teams' shortcomings, nor will I ignore the opponent when it does something well.
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New Rule: Along the same lines, when you're on the job, and especially on the air, don't wear clothing -- golf shirts, team jerseys, ball caps, whatever -- with a local team logo visible. Similarly, if you're a local sportscaster posing for a magazine cover in your own market, resist all attempts by editors or photographers to be dressed in the colors, jerseys, shirts, sweats of any local team, even if you work for the "official station of the _____." I won't name names this time for recent guilty offenders, but you know who you are. Here's another new rule. No free passes next time.
Comment: This applies more to TV than radio. It's also a little tricky at the local level. When I'm calling a P-Rays game, for example, I'll often wear a team-provided polo shirt, especially on the road, where people don't know me like they do in Princeton. Wearing team clothing shows that I am indeed working on behalf of the team (even though the team doesn't pay me).
In the last decade or so, the dynamic between sports teams and their broadcast outlets has evolved from a cooperative effort between two separate entities into a blended partnership (eg, the relationship between the NHL and NBC). So, look for this "transgression" Shapiro is upset about happening more and more.
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New Rule: I assume Rob Dibble had a chance to meet Hall of Fame baseball broadcaster Bob Wolff when the Nationals honored the former Senators play-by-play man (1947-60) Saturday night at the stadium.
Wolff would be too much the consummate gentleman to tell Dibble to cease and desist in referring to the Nationals on the air as "we," as in "we need a hit here" or "us," as in "they're killing us with three-run homers" or "our," as in "our pitching is dismally dreadful."
So let me suggest in my own loutish way that Dibble simply substitute "the Nats" or "the Nationals" or "Washington." Last time we looked, Dibble never threw a pitch, never swung a bat in a Nats' uniform. Even if he's now being paid by the team, and even if he has been properly critical of the club on the air, we, us and our translates to homer in my book, and likely Bob Wolff's as well.
Comment: I am completely on-board with Shapiro here. When you're broadcasting a game, you never, never, NEVER say "we." Never. Unless you're a current player, coach, trainer or manager for the team ... in which case you wouldn't be in the broadcast booth in the first place.
When it comes to sportscasting crimes, being a homer can be a misdemeanor, but saying "we" is a felony.
Off topic: It was nice to see Bob Wolff be honored by the Nationals.
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New Rule: Enough already with Mike and Mike in the morning on ESPN-980, Washington's only all-sports talk radio station. It's not so much the show I object to as its predominately national subject matter.
Yes they get world-class guests on a moment's notice, just as all the ESPN radio hosts do thanks to the power of the so-called Worldwide Leader. But if you're stuck in traffic on the Beltway on the way to work first thing in the morning, wouldn't you rather hear about teams and athletes in the local market, the way it is in many cities around the country?
Comment: In an ideal world, every sports talk market area, large or small, would feature only local programming. But ours is not an ideal world, especially in these times of economic uncertainty. Many times it's simply cheaper for a sports talk station to run syndicated programming like 'Mike & Mike' -- especially in small markets. (If you don't know how miserly some owners of small-market stations can be, just ask anybody who's been in radio for a few years. They'll tell you some stories....)
Then there's this cold, hard reality: Most smaller markets simply don't provide enough news and content to support a daily, four-hour morning show. Trust me. There's just not enough going on, and too small a population to rely on listener phone calls to help fill out the show. Heck, some stations at which I've worked don't even have the capability to take listener phone calls in the first place.
But why a market area as large as Washington DC doesn't have a local morning show is baffling.
That said, 'Mike & Mike' is a very good show.
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New Rule: ESPN SportsCenter anchor Scott Van Pelt sadly is the latest in a long line of TV sports anchors (Chris Berman, Stuart Scott, Patrick, among others) to shamelessly pitch products in on-air commercials.
These days, Van Pelt appears in advertisements shilling for Titleist golf balls, and he should know better. He's essentially delivering news every night he's on, and often goes out in the field as a reporter and interviewer. Television anchors and reporters don't endorse products on the air. Ever see Tom Brokaw, Katie Couric or Britt Hume, among many others, do commercials? Van Pelt, a guy whose on-air work I've admired since his early days at The Golf Channel, is better than that. Next time, take a pass.
Comment: Again, I agree completely. And I say that as a fan of Scott Van Pelt.
It's impossible to be an objective journalist AND a product endorser. In Van Pelt's case, it would be one thing if he was strictly an entertainment personality, but his job calls for him to be an objective reporter covering a great many topics. He could, conceivably, be more critical of a golfer because that golfer doesn't use the products Van Pelt endorses. Which would damage his credibility.
On a local level, I've heard at least one broadcast news personality voice a commercial for a political candidate during an election campaign -- a staggering contradiction and conflict of interest. When that happens, a newsperson goes from being a reporter and a journalist to a mere shill -- sacrificing credibility in the process.
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New Rule: Do we really need a half-hour studio show before every game in the NBA Finals? In previous postseason series, ESPN and TNT gave us hour-long pre-game shows and those were far too long, despite the presence of always entertaining Charles Barkley on TNT. At this point, anyone following the NBA knows all there is to know about both teams in the Finals, so why not a 15-minute pre-game starting at 8 p.m., a few minutes more for courtside introductions and analysis from the game broadcasters and tip-off at 8:30 p.m., the better to finish just in time for news at 11?
Comment: The length of pre-game or pre-event programs on network TV has become insufferable. For examples, look to the interminable pre-race shows for the Triple Crown horse races, or any NASCAR Sprint Cup event.But I'll let you in on a little secret. Longer pre-event shows mean more spots for commercials, and more commercials give the networks a chance to make more money. So, unless there's a viewer revolt these shows are here to stay.
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New Rule: The LPGA Championship, one of the four women's majors on the tour's ever-shrinking schedule, is being played this week in Havre de Grace, Md. But don't look for it on any of the major over-the-air networks this weekend. Instead, all tournament coverage will be aired by the Golf Channel, which means millions of potential viewers without the cable network in their basic package will be shut out. What a shame. And now that the LPGA owns the tournament outright, it's a must fix for the future.
Comment: This could be a sign of doom for the LPGA. Sure, the women don't have the same distance as the men on the professional tour, but the ladies play at a level the vast majority of us -- male or female -- can only dream of attaining. To me, good golf is good golf, and an LPGA major is as entertaining and pressure-packed as the PGA's. But I'm in the minority with that perspective, and it's a sign of big trouble for the LPGA if it can't get one of its majors on broadcast TV.
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New Rule: Props to Richard Sandomir of the New York Times for pointing out that ABC's broadcast of the Belmont Stakes included a number of features that had already run earlier in the day on corporate cousin ESPN's pre-Belmont coverage before ABC went on the air for its own pre-race show.
"Synergy Results In a Lazy Broadcast" was the spot-on headline over the Times story Sunday. And while this synergy surely saved the parent Disney Company a few bucks in production costs, bottom line is that viewers watching both networks deserved better. One totally unnecessary feature aired on both networks included Kenny Mayne sitting in a pick-up truck with Mine That Bird trainer Chip Woolley playing a (badly) scripted game of Twenty Questions. We have only one: How did that get on the air in the first place?
Comment: This is the downside of the Disney/ESPN/ABC synergy. If pre-game and pre-event shows were shorter, there wouldn't be room for subpar feature pieces and the blatant overlaps Triple Crown fans had to put up with. A possible solution would be for ESPN to make such features available only on their website.Ask yourself this: If a politician ran for election promising to shorten pre-game and pre-event shows on network TV, you'd vote for that person, wouldn't you?
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