OutKick Readers Are Fed Up With Football Commercial Breaks, Video Reviews, And Crowd Noise
Readers weren't shy about their biggest football-watching gripes...
It's Tuesday, which means it's time for another edition of the column that is second only to Cracker Barrel when it comes to receiving complaints in recent weeks, The Gripe Report!
I'm going to assume that you spent at least a portion of your weekend doing what I did from Thursday through until Monday: sitting on the couch watching football.
It really is great to have it back, and there were some especially fun games on the NFL slate (unless you're a Ravens fan).
But as great as it is, there's still plenty to gripe about.
Have a gripe? Send it in!: matthew.reigle@outkick.com
Last week, I laid out my personal list of gripes when it comes to football-watching, and now, I'm going to turn things over to some of you fine, intelligent, and, I can only assume, very good-looking Gripe Report readers.
So, let's see what stuck in your craws this week…
"What else is on?" (Getty Images)
Overabundance of Commercial Breaks
John is going to bat lead-off for us this week with a gripe that we're all too familiar with:
Are they still doing the commercials after a score and then more after the ensuing kickoff? That always irritated me greatly.
…
Indeed they are, John!
At a certain point, it really does start to feel like you're watching a cavalcade of commercials with football breaks as opposed to a football game with occasional commercial breaks.
Believe me, I understand why. I didn't spend thousands of dollars to get a degree in Radio-Television to not understand that commercials are how broadcasters pay the bills.
But still, I wonder: when does the flood of commercials become too much for viewers to bear?
Well, we're not there yet, because people are still dealing with it and watching the games. Once the eyeballs start going elsewhere because they can't stand to sit through another round of ads for cars, beer, and boner pills, that's when they might take their foot off the gas a little.
Might.
Why does it seem like video reviews were faster when they were handled like this (I miss this, by the way). (Photo by Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)
Replay Reviews
Next up, let's hear from David about something that seems to be increasingly common not just in football, but all sports:
The replay booth. Does anyone in the NFL do a worse job? TV announcers are natural motormouths, but if you want to get them to shut up for fifteen seconds (an eternity in TV broadcasting), just have the replay officials make one of their patented hideously bad calls. The stunned disbelief creates a few seconds of relief from the endless inane chatter.
…
I've noticed this as well, and I think it's because replays seem to be taking longer and longer than they used to. You'd think now that we're triangulating the spot of the ball to measure first downs using a series of cameras, we would've sped the whole process up, but nope.
It was somehow faster back when the referee would run over to the sideline and watch a replay while hiding behind a curtain like the Wizard of Oz.
What's even weirder is that sometimes, the TV broadcast shows a definitive angle of a play, telling all of us at home what the correct call should be. I think that's where this dead air comes in.
For instance, a replay review to see if a player stepped out of bounds. Well, we can see that on the broadcast easily, and how much there is to say about that.
"Yup, looks like he stepped just out of bounds around the 36-yard line… so, uh… I had an excellent bagel at the hotel this morning. Everything bagel with sausage, egg, and cheese… alright, what the hell is taking so long?!"
But the bigger issue might be just how many reviews there are. I want the right call made, but now, every game you watch, no matter what the sport, there will be some stoppages to sit and watch every angle to see if someone's shoelace touched grass out of bounds.
I think at some point we'll get it all figured out… I just thought we would've gotten to that point by now.
Hearing the crowd adds energy to a broadcast, but it shouldn't drown out the commentary team. (Photo by Tyler Schank/Getty Images)
Crowd Noise
Drew is coming in hot with a gripe that I never really thought about until he mentioned it, but now I notice it too:
My No. 1 gripe with televised football is that they mix in the crowd noise too loudly. Maybe the play-by-play announcer and color commentator aren’t that great, but if they are talking, I want to be able to hear them clearly. If I didn’t, then I would just mute the TV. Three hours of continuous background roar is too much.
…
Back when I was in college, I worked on a comedy show that we did in the communications school, and one thing I learned from that was to be wary of criticizing audio people, because that's a tough job.
There are a lot of variables to account for, and it's not quite as easy as I thought it was until I saw people cursing at a bundle of XLR cables.
So, that leads me to believe that you can have good days and bad days when it comes to the audio mix, but Drew is right. There seems to be an emphasis — and sometimes an overemphasis — on the crowd.
That's all well and good, but when it starts making it hard to hear the game sounds or the commentators, there's a problem.
Personally, I like the way Formula 1 produces broadcasts. You can hear the commentators clear as day, and you can hear the cars. Meanwhile, the crowd is mic'd up, but they only put them up when they need to. So, if there's a big overtake, they'll pot up the crowd mics for a couple of seconds and then bring them back down.
I wouldn't mind this with football, but I just don't think it's doable. Think how fun it is to hear the pop from the crowd when there's an interception. There's no one fast enough to turn that crowd mic fader up in time for it all to sound right.
I think it's just something we're going to have to deal with, but if there are any football broadcast sound engineers reading, maybe dial back the crowd a couple of dBs.
…
That's it for this week's edition of The Gripe Report, and what an edition it was. When the official Gripe Report coffee table compendium gets released, this one will be in there.
Anyway, if you've got any gripes of your own, be sure to send them in for the next one!: matthew.reigle@outkick.com