Back when dinosaurs battled cavemen and unicorns roamed the earth, there was no TV, there were no sports bars and yet there still were sports. In those days, the only way you watched these gripping competitions was either in person or via that trusty radio set on your bedside table. Back then sports meant something and games seemed to carry a great unifying aspect of entertainment where the blaring sound of a radio personality echoed upliftingly throughout a home. People knew the names of their favorite announcers like they did presidents and followed their sports just as religiously as they do today. But, there is one difference between 20th century hockey coverage and that of the present day.
Back then, the focus was on the words. Today, the focus is on the visual. So what changed?
As we focus on the radio component of the sport of professional hockey, the relationship between the two has always been a close one. The NHL was formed back in 1917 and to that point consisted of 6 teams spanning 6 cities and a wide variety of fan interest. In towns like Toronto or the Canadian metropolis, Montreal, their teams were immediately accepted as shown by the presence of fans packing into arenas and even more rushing to their local papers following games the scores of which they were desperate to find. However, once you crossed the border, one found that teams like the Bruins were all but broke. They won just 6 games in their inaugural season and were only granted thick wool grocery store uniforms as clothing for use in games. Meanwhile, the NHL who was already looking ahead towards a plan to increase league size to 12 teams knew that in order for that to happen they needed to boost fan interest in their existing 6 teams (Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadians, Boston Bruins, Detroit Redwings, New York Rangers).
But back to Boston where, like the NHL, B's incumbent owner, Charles Adams was in a bit of trouble. Desperate for funds that were needed in order to bring in then fabled names like goaltender Tiny Thompson, Adams suddenly realized he had made a promise he might not be able to uphold. Prior to the 1928 season, he in collaboration with a team clamoring for the morale booster of a full sized arena, constructed what was immediately dubbed the Boston Garden. But unfortunately for Adams, a 13,000 seat arena came at a price and a price that he was forced to convince investors to pay.
By the end of the day, Adams and company forked over the equivalent to 54.4 million modern day dollars and the only way there were able to do so was via Adams’ promise.
He insisted that within the first 5 years of the Boston Garden’s operation, the corporation would make 500,000 1928 dollars. When you factor in inflation, it is clear that that is a lot of money.
To skip ahead in time, it is important to mention that the Bruins did not miss the playoffs within that 5 year span thereby meeting that 500,000$ profit with the utmost ease. However there was a problem. They only way the Bruins were making money was by winning the Stanley Cup literally every year and that kind of excellence, no matter how stacked a team is simply cannot be sustained.
What Adams and the NHL as a whole needed was a way to involve more fans than the 10,000-15,000 who were lucky enough to make it into an arena to see a game live. That way came in the form of the radio broadcast, less than 10 years after Adam's golden arena was completed. But sadly for Bruins fans, these advancements were baby steps towards the level of broadcasting consistency that we enjoy today. For over 3 decades, all Bruins fans got was a spotty, out of range broadcast of Canada's Hockey Night in Canada that was only transmitted to the US when a US team was playing a Canadian team on a Saturday night. Furthermore, CBC, the company who operated these broadcasts, alternated between French and English every week. For example, Bruins fans got just 11 Hockey Night in Canada broadcasts that were in English and were transmitted to the area in the first 15 years of play by play history.
It would take almost 80 additional years before Bruins regular season games were picked up to be broadcast on a regular basis and by then, Charlie Adams was dead, the Bruins had found their cash cows in Bobby Orr and then Ray Borque, and the need for radio coverage had been overcome. This time, the odds were pitted not against the Bruins but instead against the radio coverage that in the United States had never had its time in the limelight.
By the time WEEI made its first broadcast of a Bruins game back in 1985, NESN was also getting at it and they had a huge advantage. While WEEI analysts employed radio as their outlet for sharing their accounts of the game, NESN or The New England Sports Network as its acronym states uses TV and you can guess who wins that battle.
Fact is, TV is far more encompassing than radio, forcing you to simply sit there and watch while doing nothing else for fear of missing a piece of the action. In comparison to radio, television uses 2 of the human senses to convey information and for that reason it is safe to say that when watching a game the information contained within the broadcast is often represented better than that same information conveyed via words from a radio.
But what is unique about hockey as a radio sport is the speed and chaotic existence for which it is centered around. Players whizz up and down a 200 foot rink at speeds of up to 30 MPH covering such a distance in mere seconds. Players switch shifts with an incomprehensible jumble of bodies around a bench area while at the same time the miniscule puck skitters wildly away from any who try to tame it. Plays last just seconds, rebounds are scooped up by any and all within sight and when players really want to, their passes and clearing attempts can often eclipse 75 to 80 miles per hour. The play can literally go from one end of the ice to the other in less than 2 seconds.
"You might see something for a split second but then it is closed up” Radio personality Bob Beers said during last week’s Friday Matinee between the Bruins and Rangers. “That’s when you can see really how fast this game is."
Now you try to describe all that.
TV announcers like beloved Jack Edwards have the luxury of allowing fans to see for themselves what goes on all while they elaborate on their calls of the last play that however recent may have occurred 200 feet away with totally different players than are contributing to the current one.
In radio, that just does not work. To do well in the business you must speak with a majestic combination of the speed of an auctioneer and the fluidity of a political figure all while keeping your descriptions brief and elaborate at the same time.
Elaborate? One might ask. Well, elaborate might not even be the right word to describe such drama. Artistic maybe?
Those something’s (scraps behind the play, gaps in an opponent’s defense, a player yapping at a referee) that Bob Beers referenced earlier can often cease to exist long before many of us could even register it within our minds. This is where the art and skill come in. For Bruins radio play by play analyst, Dave Goucher, he can make note of pieces of a play far faster than any novice sports fan can and then describe them with utmost elegance so that we feel more than like we are right there.
When you watch a game on TV you lose that kind of unfiltered, precise interpretation of the finite facets of the game but that is not all.
As ticket prices skyrocket into triple digit values, it seems like more of a robbery for arenas as well as their tenants to request such a whopping sum of money in exchange for admission to the main event. But not entirely because of the price. This kind of distaste is powerfully bread by the modernized facets of televised hockey. Staying at home gives you a better view of the game than watching live as most outlets now carry obscene amounts of instant replay, intense analysis during intermissions and above all, the ability to watch the game and then go to sleep when the contest ends at 11:30 at night.
That last part can be said about radio as well but when you think it out, listening to a game rather than watching it preserves the magic of seeing one live, largely because of those limitations that many despise.
Unfortunately for most hockey venues, the advertising slogan used by countless cable providers is in fact true. “The best seat in the house is your house!” Throughout the early histories of almost all major modern sports, you were treated to a more comprehensive experience when you saw a game in person. But now, the roles have been flipped.
That is one of the worst deeds television coverage has done to harm its sport.
But there are those little things, little things like the yellow first down and blue line of scrimmage markings on a football broadcast. When watching a game live you are treated to a constant representation of the score, the game time and in most cases, any penalties assessed to a team all shown via a massive scoreboard that often hangs over the center of the rink. The same can be said for TV broadcasts as for over 3 decades now, an innovation labeled in history as “The Fox Box” (named thusly for its creator Fox Sports) has been hockey’s first down line and yet another leg that TV has up on the interworking’s of a radio broadcast.
Furthermore, radio’s lack of a visual display of the score, the game time or any like information brings the story back to the list of obstacles radio commentators face that TV analysts simply do not have to deal with. Once again it is the theme that runs true throughout the entire radio play by play business. Convey more information in the same amount of time.
Radio is simple. It relies on one sense, hearing, and does not deal with the visual complexity that television does. Radio costs less to be produced and is free to all who can snag a set. The ease at which radio is accessed is largely because of that simplicity as well the fact that demand for it is miniscule compared to that of television that obviously offers so much more than its competition. With this in mind I guarantee you that if I walked down the street with a radio set in one hand and a flat screen TV in the other and offered both of them to a passerby, the radio would be instantaneously discarded while the TV would be cradled like a baby as that lucky passerby ran off with his or her newfound loot.
Now it is expected that that metaphor be met with a bit of questioning. Honestly it is the TV that costs 400$ and it fought to the death over on Black Friday while a radio could easily go for less than 25$ and comes standard in almost every single car built in the past 15-20 years. TV’s cost more than radios because people regard them as more entertaining but I ask you this. Does that entertainment factor directly translate to the skill and or the complexity/quality that a certain form of media necessitates?
To sum up, it is easier to describe a picture when the person you are describing it to can see that picture at the same time. That is what TV commentary is like while radio is like describing the picture to a person with a blindfold on.
Radio is artistic.
0 comments:
Post a Comment