Who should comment on skating?

karne said:

They were poking fun at his pronounciation of the word "meniscus" (you know, in his knee) when he was speaking in English to an interviewer. I must see if I can find the video. I don't remember which commentators they were.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBJtNXvyWbg this
Peter Carruthers and Paul Sunderland. I do not think, that is tragic, and Plush speaks English much better than in 2002-2003 ..

The Eurosport commentators are my favorites!

ciocio said:

Bezic and Hamilton! They are the best in presenting Plushenko as "Russian Communist Villain"! Without them Plushenko's popularity would drop and skating would become boring!

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Look at this page, please scroll down...http://evgeni-plushenko.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11&p=53043&hilit=Scott+Hamilton#p53043 Plushy's fans were surprised

plushyfan said:

Look at this page, please scroll down...http://evgeni-plushenko.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11&p=53043&hilit=Scott+Hamilton#p53043 Plushy's fans were surprised

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LOL@ Plushy hugging Hamilton! Scott looks very happy to see him! :agree:

My favorite commentators--Tanith Belbin/Judy Blumberg for dance, Michael Weiss for men, Tonia Kwiatkowski for ladies, Paul Wylie/Johnny Weir for singles in general, Peter Carruthers for singles & pairs. (Yes, I do like Peter. I thought his commentary for Worlds this year was excellent, especially his analysis of Yuna Kim's jumps.)

My least favorite commentators--Sandra Bezic & Scott Hamilton. Sandra is the worst. I hate listening to her. Scott is better, but he really needs to get more into the details. His remarks are often so general as to be completely uninformative. And it's very obvious that he & Sandra are still quite weak on the details of IJS/COP. I so, so wish that NBC would fire Sandra & tell Scott to get with it and learn IJS once and for all.

Mixed bag--Tracy Wilson and Tara Lipinski. I like Tracy's commentary. Sometimes it's really perceptive, but in general I'd like more from her. More attention to detail and getting into the nuts & bolts, more explanation of why couples place where they do. Oftentimes I feel Tracy falls back into mushy, affirmative, Peggyish comments, especially with lower-ranked teams. Whereas Tanith is always quite clear about what such teams need to do to get better. As for Tara, I really enjoyed her commentary on ladies the first year or two, but felt she started to phone it in and lose interest after that. Perhaps that's why she's no longer commentating for Universal Sports.

I haven't heard the Eurosport commentators much yet, so can't comment on them.

ciocio said:

LOL@ Plushy hugging Hamilton! Scott looks very happy to see him! :agree:

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Business, political hug.

I despise NBC's commentary team. Scott was a wonderful skater and did great things for professional skating (Stars on Ice), but he can't commentate for poop. He's screechy and repetitive and at times it sounds like he's struggling to have a bowel movement. We played the "Scott Hamilton drinking game" during Vancouver Olympics and we were all wasted after the second skater we saw in men's (OK, I am being a LITTLE facetious, but still...). :disapp: He comes across as having no clue when it comes to IJS as to what is a winning program and tends to get caught up in his favorites' programs (Mirai Nagasu at 2010 Nationals, anyone?) with extreme bias and no basis in fact. Sandra's just along for the ride a lot of times.

I search out live feeds, even when NBC IS showing something live, because I can't deal with their very poor commentating team. Have they never heard of a spotter? They have them in other sports. They could hire a spotter for cheap to call the program (a local level TC/TS perhaps for a couple hundred dollars, can link them in from home to call the program from a laptop maybe?) during the event and while waiting for the scores to come up, with the information from the spotter, the commentating team could say "the 3Lz was under-rotated and could possibly get downgraded, but it's definitely under review. The flying sit spin should definitely be a level 3 since she only got 1 rev in the difficult side variation before she rocked out of her spin center", versus the word vomit they spew during reviews right now (IN's Tonia K is REALLY good at this kind of follow up information during reviews and I got spoiled watching the non-NBC worthy skaters on IN).

During the Olympics, I found BBC2 (I think that's what it was) and loved Robin Cousins and his co-commentator - VERY knowledgeable without talking over programs. Chris and Nicky on Eurosport as well are excellent (especially with Chris coaching some up and coming skaters and being very cognizant of what's good or not for IJS).

Even though I don't speak Latvian or Russian, the feeds provided here on GS for Worlds were really good with talking only occuring to identify an element or during reviews (and the Latvian lady commentator saying "Ah, woops!" every time Chan made a mistake in his LP was priceless).

mskater93 said:

During the Olympics, I found BBC2 (I think that's what it was) and loved Robin Cousins and his co-commentator - VERY knowledgeable without talking over programs. Chris and Nicky on Eurosport as well are excellent (especially with Chris coaching some up and coming skaters and being very cognizant of what's good or not for IJS).

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In case you were wondering, it was Sue Barker that joined Robin Cousins in the BBC commentary box. Although she is a former tennis player, she has been doing the BBC's coverage of figure skating for donkey's years (at least 20 years, anyway!)

I have always liked Sue because, although it is not her specialist sport, she has a great knowledge about figure skating. She is obviously a fan. When making up my dream-team for Eurosport's commentary team (see http://www.goldenskate.com/forum/showthread.php?40974 ), Sue would have been my first chice for female journalist (with Jenny Kirk slotting into the female singles skater spot). But, Sue is one of those people that is BBC through-and-through. She will never leave the Corporation.

As for Robin, having been there himself, he knows what he is talking about. But, personally, I find him very boring. He talks too much about the technical side of things and, unlike the Eurosport guys, is not able to make it sound interesting at the same time. But, I think he has one of those voices that would make anything sound boring, anyway!

During Worlds, I was finding that I was mainly watching Eurosport's coverage, but was flicking over to the BBC for the bits that Eurosport did not show (eg. when the BBC came on-air before ESP; when ESP were on adverts during Warm-ups; and when the BBC showed the post-competition interviews and podium ceremonies).

So although it was good to see figure skating on terrestrial TV, I still went back to the satellite TV when I could. Why? Because, for a whole commentary team, I preferred Eurosport!

Just shows how important it is for a broadcaster to get a commentary team that the viewers like.

CaroLiza_fan

Matilda said:

I refuse to listen to Scott Hamilton et. al. --they put in bad mood. I like the British Eurosport guys, but frankly, the best commentary I've heard in years was on Icenetwork during the 2012 US Nationals, when Johnny Weir joined their team for the men's competition. I learned more about COP from Johnny's commentary in one competition than I had from other commentators over a number of years. I think Tonia Kwiatkovski was better with Johnny in her team as well. Doubters, if you have Icenetwork, please check it out. Unfortunately I could only find one video with Johnny & Tonia's commentary on YT--of Jason Brown's SP:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=t2H-dV6aww4

I also think Tanith Belbin does a great job with her dance commentary.

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As much as I enjoy Johnny's aknowledgable commentary, I really think he talks too much. I wasn't able to enjoy Jason's performance at all, since every ten seconds Johnny would come up with although interesting but disturbing facts.
I just couldn't get into the music Jason was trying to interpret and that's the a no-go for me in figure skating commentators. They should really know that the performance works best with no disturbances.
The british eurosport guys are doing it right - minimal talking during performance (calling the jumps by name + somtimes short comments on outstanding spins, footwork etc) --> good and informative mostly unbiased commentary beforehand and afterwards.

Eclair said:

As much as I enjoy Johnny's aknowledgable commentary, I really think he talks too much. I wasn't able to enjoy Jason's performance at all, since every ten seconds Johnny would come up with although interesting but disturbing facts.
I just couldn't get into the music Jason was trying to interpret and that's the a no-go for me in figure skating commentators. They should really know that the performance works best with no disturbances.
The british eurosport guys are doing it right - minimal talking during performance (calling the jumps by name + somtimes short comments on outstanding spins, footwork etc) --> good and informative mostly unbiased commentary beforehand and afterwards.

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Agreed.

Also, his perpetual "I WISH he had the triple Axel" was really annoying. YOU wish? What about Jason? I bet he wished even more!

Watching the competitions without commentary (and preferably in the arena, not on TV ) is ideal. However, as much as there's been discussion here about how commentators could help the "uneducated" viewers to understand the judging system, I think Johnny (and Tonia) do a great job. Giving the commentary during a complete slow-motion re-run of the program would allow the commentators to remain quiet during the performance, but that would take way too much broadcast time. Hence, some commentary during the performance is inevitable, and I'd rather listen to Johnny's informative and sometimes humorous commentary than most others I've heard.

karne said:

Agreed.

Also, his perpetual "I WISH he had the triple Axel" was really annoying. YOU wish? What about Jason? I bet he wished even more!

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"Will Jason have the 3A or not?" was the talk of the town at that point, and Kori had specifically told Johnny why it was not in the program, so it's understandable he would mention it. Saying ONCE that he wishes the 3A was there (for Jason's sake--not his own--because the program was great, and he would have been fighting for a medal if he had a 3A) and at the end pointing out how good a score he got even without it hardly qualifies as "perpetual".

Verne Lundquist works for CBS Television. He hasn't commentated on Olympic Skating in decades. Let's not get him confused with the ones they put on NBC - who admittedly don't care about the sport.

Verne enjoys skating and the skaters, and did a way better job of keeping Scott from being annoying. He kept the commentary focussed.

Best non-skating commentator, though, has always been Terry Gannon.

Terry Gannon said that when he initially was hired to do commentary for figure skating, he wasn't sure it was something he'd enjoy (since he knew nothing about the sport). But he really made an effort to learn about skating and came to admire and respect the skaters for being the athletes they are and all that they put themselves through all year long to excel. Count me in as another fan who wishes NBC would fire Hamilton and Bezic. I also wish they'd hire more US champs (including replacing Tracy Wilson with Tanith...how many US skaters are commentators on Canadian TV broadcasts?)

I really think we need commentators who have competed under IJS. Tanith Belbin is *fantastic* and Michelle Kwan would be a smart choice as a freestyle commentator, if for no other reason than she is a familiar face to all Americans (and also competed under IJS). It's not like it would be a full-time, year-round job. I bet Michelle could swing it. Ryan Bradley is a fan favorite and competed under IJS recently, so he could be another good choice.

I don't mind any of the announcers. In this era of Youtube I love the diversity of which I get to completely indulge in(thank you, internet). Now, as for live coverage I want high density, DEPENDABLE coverage first. Then I want an announcer sensitive enough to know when to be quiet, when to tick off the bullets and when and how best to express enthusiasm, disappointment, etc. I don't think any of the coverages completely ticks off ALL those bullets but I think that my main preference has to be British Eurosport. I love watching the evolution of their coverage of Yu-na from her early days to the 2013 worlds. At the beginning they reminded me of prospectors, prospecting for gold and acting like they just "struck it rich". And if you listen to their commentary at the latest worlds they sound like proud uncles enjoying the wealth of THEIR early find. In fact it is actually kind of funny watching all the different coverages of Yu-na this last worlds. It was like all the announcers were grateful to Yu-na, falling all over themselves in their attempts to "wax poetic" about her performance.

Well sorry I got Verne confused with the older man who has commented for the network. Who is that?