Wimbledon and World Cup Waffle
Created | Updated Jun 27, 2010
What is it with the BBC and sport on TV these days?
Just how many people do they need to tell us what's happening?
Take Formula One. In the old days (bad or good, you decide) Murray Walker presented and commentated with sane intervention from James Hunt. Now it takes a whole plethora of people, starting with Martin Brundle. Brundle is one of those rare observers of his sport whose every word is worth hanging on, from his running the gamut of the starting grid to his astute assessments of tactics and collisions during the race – but that's the point – if he's good, why do we need to hear so much from other BBC employees? Okay, it's useful to have a second pair of eyes in the commentary box to watch out for on-screen displays of lap times and I reluctantly accept that a presence in the pit lane during the race may be useful, but why does it all have to be book-ended with the blandness of Jake Humphrey asking a former driver and a former team owner what Brundle has already told us anyway. Even if you like the 'excitement' of F1 in the first place, you could easily lose the will to live by going to the pointless Forum on the red button at the end of the race.
The World Cup has the same disease - a proliferation of prattling pundits and presenters pontificating predictably. A career commentator is now invariably supported by an ex-pro whining that "It weren't like that in my day" and often using poor English in an attempt to reach some mythical lowest common denominator among patronised viewers. Back in the studio, with another top notch presenter lost to ITV, we have to suffer one ex-pro interviewing a bunch of others, who state the obvious or the stupid, unless Alan Hansen happens to be on, in which case Messrs Shearer and Co should keep their traps shut and listen so they might learn something. Or, if you're really unlucky, the show may be presented by an Irishman who tries to make up for his lack of knowledge and presentation skills by being funny, which he isn't.
Then there's the tour bus, a luxury item trekking across South Africa explaining that Africans are poor and apartheid was a bad thing. It's difficult to know who needs telling this, and if we want to be better informed we'd watch the documentaries about it, not live matches and highlights. On one highlights programme the panel spent so long dissecting the mundane English opener that they failed to show even the goals of the South Korea v Greece match. Somebody really needs to tell them it'd be nice if 'highlights of today's matches', as advertised, bothered to show a Manchester United player actually scoring a goal – even if it was Ji-Sung Park and not Wayne Rooney.
Now there's Wimbledon as well, where the Dan Maskell's of this world have long since passed and even Peter Fleming, an expert in the psychology of the game and someone who knows the value of silence, has been sidelined by a string of self-repeating, self-regarding jabberers led by John 'verbal diarrhoea' McEnroe, who turns up year after year to churn out the same tired jokes about umpires and line calls. On the opening day a co-commentator had to issue an oblique revoke/apology for his swearing, yet he's the highest-paid there and it's not like he needs the money. The BBC are just pandering to that mythical, blokish viewer again, someone who is only ever going to watch tennis for two weeks a year and doesn't want any real insight into the game – just those jokes.
When they move away from the crowded commentary box – three of them there sometimes – they give us a highlights show, broadcast so early it generally interrupts live play, where we again listen to various members of the populous BBC commentary team droning on about Andy Murray and the lack of other British talent. Again, someone needs to tell them that Murray is not always match of the day and that there are plenty of other players to see, rather than just watch people wittering on. Do the BBC really think people tune into sports programmes to be impotent viewers of a debate?
Anyway, aren't we supposed to be in crisis, aren't there cuts for anything publicly-funded? Why can't we just do away with these people? I mean terminate they're employment, not actually have them killed – although there are one or two where this could be considered. Do what it says on the tin, show us the matches, show us the highlights and shut up.
