Inept broadcasting is hurting the game

Do the Dew

Club Legend
Feb 14, 2019
2,080
6,644
Stuart Dew's Gut
AFL Club
Richmond
The broadcasting of our game has truly never been in worse shape. I've griped about this before, but I'm going again...

Worse still, it's so saturated with the same names flipping between their radio and TV commitments with a sickening amount of back patting, inane banter and in-house rubbish.

How Luke Darcy gets to call games I'll never know. Dwayne Russel is biased and literally on repeat with the names and teams changed. "Nepotism" Hamish gives me syphilis just looking at the slimy bastard. Daisy Pearce is about as insightful as a rock and is probably joined in this category by most of the other shoe-horned in women or boring ex-players who somehow, SOMEHOW not only get a gig but manage to keep them.

We desperately need more Sarah Jones, Eddie McGuire (some will disagree), Gerard Whately, Clinton Grybas, Dennis Cometti types, but instead we get the boys club and people who are either there to fill a quota or are gifted a job for no obvious reason.

One thing the EPL (and English Soccer) generally do well is their commentary and letting the game speak for itself when required, including crowd noises. If nothing can be added to improve the telecast, why add it? What we get is a group of essentially idiotic, muppets who seem hell bent on scrambling to get their air time minutes to a certain level and enjoy the smell of each others farts.

Interesting going back and watching some old highlights from the mid-2000s when Grybas was commentating. The guy is 1000x better than most of the flogs today. One thing that the tv-execs clearly don't understand with footy commentary (given that they keep employing most of the same muppets), is that it is supposed to complement the game, not completely dominate anything that is happening on the field. Listening to BT, Bruuuuuuce, and Derwayyyyne frustrates the * outta me watching from overseas, where I don't have the luxury of going to games
 

Rusty Brookes

Norm Smith Medallist
Aug 9, 2001
6,702
8,679
Preston
AFL Club
Hawthorn
Other Teams
Hawthorn, Manningham Cobras
Listening to the Hawk Talk podcast (get on Hawthorn fans, it's great - https://hawktalkpod.wordpress.com/) this week and they opened with radio highlights from last Friday's Hawthorn v Collingwood game. It was stark in how much better the commentary was compared to the highlights from Channel 7.
 
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