Sparkplug 30

Well, looky here! By the time you read this, we'll be less than 48 hours away from the start of the 2006 Supercross season, and it looks like it's gonna be a good one. My original intention for this week's Sparkplug was to list my picks for this season, but a press release I read yesterday over at Racer X Online has changed my mind. Instead, I want to talk about a favorite topic of mine: media coverage of our sport. In particular, I want to address the announcement of the new “broadcast team” for the Amp'd Supercross series.

First, let me make it clear that this isn't about WHO was or wasn't chosen to be the “voices” of Supercross. I've known for a while that my personal tastes in announcers apparently runs counter to prevailing opinion. For example, while I admit that Art Eckman has a superb voice and has shown a great deal of love for the sport, his consistent inability to get riders' names right, among many other things, used to bug the heck out of me, yet he was no doubt a huge fan favorite. I accept that I may be out of the mainstream... that's no big surprise.

But what I'm concerned about is our sport's insistence in “following the leader”, as it were, rather than going for the pass by using a new line. What I mean is that it seems that no one has asked the basic question of “how many announcers do we really need?”

This past Fall, I had the great joy of listening to live web coverage of the greatest single day motocross event of the year, the Motocross of Nations. How many announcers did they need to broadcast such an important event? Exactly one. And as I listened to that webcast, I began to question the “common wisdom” of our current two-in-the-booth and one-on-the-floor configuration.

The fact of the matter is the “color analyst” and “play-by-play announcer” setup was originated for television broadcasts of stick-and-ball sports, sports that actually HAVE play-by-play. ABC's Monday Night Football team of Al Michaels and John Madden are perfect examples of this. Network coverage of autoracing adopted this style of coverage out of familiarity, not necessity. But the concept sort of works: one guy focuses on describing the action factually, while the other adds “color” by giving voice to insights derived from his or her experiences with the sport. For a sport like Supercross, however, all this two-position team really adds up to, though, is a lot of chatter. The play-by-play person has to give up mic time in order for the color guy to get a few words in and many times, the color guy is pontificating on something that happened, just as a new development unfolds, changing everything. Then the play-by-play person has to play “catchup” to bring the viewers back to the present. It can be very frustrating for the viewers at home, who are watching the big pass for the lead unfold while the color man is still talking about the guy in third place.

And pit reporters? Why in the world do we need a pit reporter for Supercross, a sport that has exactly zero cameras in the pits during the race because all of the “action” (and that's stretching the term) in the pits occurs before the race starts? Even if they change the title to “floor reporter”, there is very little insight that they could possibly provide during a 20 lap sprint that cannot be effectively communicated by the main announcer. Now, I have always been an advocate of televising the behind the scenes aspect of motocross and supercross, but this is stuff that does not happen during the race, so that means the broadcast must make time to air pre-recorded scene-setting packages, just like they do with stick-and-ball pre-game shows. Our sport is dynamic, and the “story” changes from race to race. The audience must be informed of what is going on and what is at stake BEFORE the gate drops, otherwise they'll never “get” what the sport is really about: the athletes. Cutting away from race action to watch a pre-recorded piece, though, is more than annoying. It's bad TV.

My point is simply this: there's no point in carrying extra personnel simply because “that's the way we've always done it”, particularly if they add no real value to the broadcast. All that's needed is one very knowledgeable person to call the race, while occasionally adding limited “color”. This announcer would not be working alone, of course; they would have a staff of spotters and statisticians working with them, feeding them information that they can use as they see fit. But one voice is enough, and it's also okay for that lone voice to take a breath and be silent for a bit. There does NOT, contrary to American broadcast belief, have to be announcer-chatter filling every available millisecond of airtime. It's okay for us to only hear the bikes every now and then.

Think of all the times you have stood trackside at a race; did you really need to hear the announcer to know what was going on right in front of your face? Think of all the times you've watched taped replays of races, and turned the volume down so you wouldn't be subjected to all of that useless noise. Then think of all the times you've said to yourself, “I wish they'd just SHUT UP!” How much silence is it reasonable to expect, when you have a team of three competing for airtime?

So as far as this new team is concerned, I wish they would just let Denny Stephenson handle the entire broadcast and pay him double, then get rid of the other two announcers. Denny can handle it by himself and he knows the sport and the riders. Everybody else on that team, in my humble opinion, is just unnecessary fluff. Do I expect this to happen? Of course not.

P.S. I don't know who's gonna win Saturday night's battle, but I believe James Stewart is going to come out on top of the 2006 Supercross war.