I love a parade as much as the next guy. I especially love a parade that celebrates a championship for a team that I've been following since 1980. So, I was ready and eager to watch my beloved New York Giants float down New York's "Canyon of Heroes" for the first time ever, a just reward for beating the "perfect" Patriots in Super Bowl XLII.
But, of course I couldn't completely enjoy it. Why? because, no matter what channel I tuned in to (and, here in the New York area, the parade was on every channel), I heard something that made my head rattle and my ear hair stand on end.
It was people. Talking.
Every station employed some combination of sportscaster and news reader to anchor the festivities at City Hall, then sent the same combination into the parade route to talk to the crowd and maybe catch a player or two getting onto a float.
You'd think this combination would be harmless. But then you realize that local news anchors and sportscasters aren't exactly good at impromptu patter when they only have ten seconds to riff in between reading things off the teleprompter. The problem with a parade like this is that the broadcast is all patter; there's no goofy script to read from like Matt, Al and Meredith get at the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade.
So we get insight like Len Berman of WNBC, wondering if their crowd reporter, Tracie Strahan, is any relation to Giants defensive end Michael Strahan. We get Russ Salzberg of WWOR, usually good at riffing, talking confusedly about the team's playoff run through Tampa, Dallas, and frigid Green Bay. And we had some random deep-voiced ex-athlete on WCBS yammering on about how much quarterback Eli Manning was maligned during the season.
Yikes. And that was the sports guys.
The anchors had even less of a clue. "Here comes a float!" one might say. Because no one had a written itinerary of who would be on each float -- and the players were wearing gray sweatshirts instead of their jerseys -- the anchors were lost. I think one of them actually said "here comes a side of beef!" when a float with the Giants' defensive line came into view.
Is there any reason why we need commentary during a parade? I mean, it's pretty much all visual, anyway. Just show the floats, and if you can identify a player (Strahan's been on TV so much, even my mother recognizes him, along with the Opie-looking Manning), flash up an identifying graphic. Otherwise, just let us enjoy the noise and scenery, and do the interviews during the six o'clock news. Please.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
2-05-2008 @ 4:50PM
Ryan said...
I was at work so I could only watch it on 1010wins.com which had a link to an AP video feed. NO patter whatsoever. Just "raw" footage of the parade and people celebrating.
It was very lovely.
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2-05-2008 @ 4:59PM
GigG said...
If you look on your remote there is a little button it has the word "Mute" either above or below. Push it.
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2-05-2008 @ 5:03PM
Joel Keller said...
Gig, listening to a parade without music or crowd noise is very creepy. I want to hear the crowd noise, just not the patter. I liked Ryan's idea better. Too bad I didn't find it in time.
2-05-2008 @ 5:16PM
Jump Point said...
Worse than parade patter was the criminal theft of our attention represented by the worst Super Bowl ads in modern memory http://tombomb.typepad.com/tombomb/
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2-05-2008 @ 5:36PM
MUTE said...
I was going to say MUTE it also but you are whining regardless so I guess you are a no win case. Just like to bitch and bitch and bitch Huh?
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2-05-2008 @ 5:39PM
JW said...
What's worse than all that is they show parades on all the local channels. When St. Louis won the World Series in '06, that Sunday every channel had get their hands on the parade. With that said, they cut out every thing that was going on that day including a live Nascar race. Yes, I said Nascar for those of you that don't watch, but it is another sport and I bet if it was tennis or bowling or even X Games they would have cut it out too. But I wrote the local NBC people and they don't show races on NBC now except the last few.
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2-05-2008 @ 5:40PM
No1Dad said...
Giants suck. Worst team ever to win the Superbowl.
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2-05-2008 @ 6:01PM
Oreo said...
Then that must mean the Pats REALLY suck.
2-06-2008 @ 10:24AM
Ari said...
The Giants beat the top three offenses in the league in 3 consecutive games. Just because they turned it on late doesn't mean they suck. Best defensive effort in recent football history.
2-05-2008 @ 5:57PM
YouFaceTheTick said...
People watch parades? Why?
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2-05-2008 @ 6:01PM
Oreo said...
I liv e in New England. I had to listen to bullshit for 6 months, you can put up with one day.
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2-05-2008 @ 6:34PM
BC said...
"watch my beloved New York Giants float down New York's "Canyon of Heroes" for the first time ever"
They didn't get a parade the other times they won the Super Bowl? Or you didn't watch it?
TV is replete with events that don't require narration by anchors, but news departments abhor a vacuum. My personal bete noir is local stations who preempt network programming for "complete, continuous" storm coverage. If it's a hurricane, OK. If it's a constantly repeated list of closings caused by several inches of snow interspersed with "hey, it's still snowing here" location shots, a crawl across the bottom of the screen would have sufficed.
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2-06-2008 @ 1:09AM
Gary said...
In 1987, then-mayor Ed Koch didn't throw a parade because he considered them foreigners for abandoning New York City. The win in 1991 came in the midst of the opening days of the Gulf War and it was considered in poor taste to have a ticker tape parade.
I was at the parade so I didn't get to see the local news coverage but seeing as how most anchors totally get sports wrong, I'm not surprised it turned out awful.
2-05-2008 @ 6:29PM
Karen said...
I watched the parade on NY1, the local 24-hour NYC news station. They had their main morning anchor, Pat Kiernan, with their half-sports guy, half in-depth interviewer guy, Bud Mishkin, up on a dais, and then their human interest guy, Roger Clark, and their transit reporter, Bobby Cuza, working the crowds. Mishkin is a thoughful, insightful, low-key person, and it was interesting to listen to him. Kiernan, whom I love as anchor, was distracted (when the TV was on him, he always seemed to be looking elsewhere instead of listening to Mishkin), but also low-key and relatively intelligent. Clark and Cuza, for the most part, let the crowd do the talking, although Clark did get inarticulate in his own inimitable way from time to time.
Anyone who watches local-network news anchors covering ANYTHING gets what they deserve.
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2-06-2008 @ 3:16PM
Dave said...
Hey, when are the Yankees going to get a parade?
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