Ted Robinson's flawless performance on the Raiders-49ers radio broadcast provides a multitude of reasons why he's regarded as one of the best broadcasters in the business. Robinson is steady, excitable when necessary, and great on information without any histrionics or audio showboating. Hat's off to analyst Gary Plummer, who is very good himself, but just once Gary, please refrain from your obvious distaste of the Raiders. We get it already.
By the way, many of you have probably already heard that Ted Robinson recently had to deal with the passing of his father. My condolences to Ted and his family.
Greg Papa was also in mid-season form on radio, with Tom Flores. Papa, Flores, and Jim Plunkett did a nice simulcast, combining both radio and TV forces for Saturday's game. The late Bill King was a master at that, particularly, when it involved the Warriors in the 70's.
It's easy to kick KRON4 when they're down, but I give credit to their morning news on Friday. They were all over the hit-and-run driver incident on Taylor Street; an awful quagmire involving several parked cars getting completely demolished. Fortunately, nobody was hurt, but seeing a ton of torn metal on a busy street was pretty effective local TV news. I just wished later on KRON and my dear friend, Vicki Liviakis, didn't run a 10-minute hypnosis infomercial right in the middle of the morning news, but they did. A buck is a buck at KRON.
I know a lot of people that have had it with ESPN. And many of them are simply turning off the boys and girls from Bristol. ESPN recently laid off over 100 staffers and like everyone else in this business climate, is suffering from the recession. Maybe they should check their internal polling and figure out that outside of actual sports, NFL football, MLB, among them, ESPN is losing viewership. Chris Berman has had better days and is not the sports god he thinks he is. Leave it to ESPN to bury one of their better shows, "Sports Reporters" to the relative under-viewed early Sunday morning. And I must be the only guy in the world who thinks "Pardon the Interuption" is overated and "Around the Horn" is a bunch of collective shouting. "Outside the Lines?" A very good, thoughtful program; sort of a sports "Nightline", but again, ESPN buries it in their early Sunday morning schedule.
On the other hand, there's college football curmudgeon, Beano Cook, who cracks me up and knows his sport. To ESPN: more Beano, less "Mike and Mike."
Sports fans; enjoy your upcoming football and pro basketball. The NFL's collective bargaining agreement is soon to expire and the league and players association are beginning to posture and set up their fortresses. Roger Goodell and owners want, among other things, a rookie salary cap, similar to the NBA, and the players insist they're not giving it up. Then there's the salary-cap issue. Supposedly, the players have a $200 million strike/lockout fund. Stay tuned...The NBA is hurting real bad. Like a lot of leagues, attendance is way down. There's a lot of empty arenas; (except here in Oakland, where Oracle is packed nightly) Among problem franchises include Indiana, Philedelphia, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Carolina, and yes, even Sacramento. Plus, NBA corporate revenue and sponsorship, where the league gets a ton of its revenue, is way down, across the board. TV ratings are solid, but when you lose significant ad buyers like GM and Budweiser, (both are severly limiting, if not dropping their sports ad budget altogether) well, figure it out.
Last, but not least: Yours truly had a blast the other night; I was a guest on the nationally-syndicated ESPN radio, "Bob Valvano" show. We talked Raiders and Giants and I killed as usual. Yes, modesty aside, it was cool to schmooze with Bobby V, who chairs the "V Foundation", a great charity for cancer research, in honor of his late brother, Jim Valvano.
Read me daily on SFGate; follow me on Twitter, and listen to my sports commentary every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday on XTRA Sports AM 860.
Nice post. I have a different take on Bruce. I think he lays out a lot of cases but never much of a case. He doesn't present a lot of reasons for his views. He has views. He has passion. The passion seems to be offered as evidence for his views. Try listening to him and note the sentences and break them into conclusions and reasons--there aren't that many reasons! There isn't that much information, either. There's much passion and sound, but not a whole lot of sense. For example, think of his simplistic stuff on the performance enhancing drug issue. He was arguing by analogies here and leaving it at that.
ReplyDeleteI heard Ted Kennedy on Fresh Air today saying that you need passion when you're communicating so that people know you care. That's an interesting idea. I think in Bruce's case the passion undermines the case he wants to lay out. He hits the passion note, but without the all the reason notes he's not playing chords. For all the loud noise, he sounds a little thin. The passion is more sophistry that reasonable persuasion.
I guess I'd disagree with you on the dumbing-down issue. I think Bruce is making a kind of dumbed-down case most of the time. He's selling us that passion, that contrarian personality, that sound and fury. But this doesn't have anything to do with considered ideas; says nothing about whether or not his ideas are true, reasonable. He's appealing to the emotions. He says believe X because I am angry and direct + my voice.
Do you ever read the comments section below the Giants nightly article? Bruce seems to be addressing these folks and expressing their spirit (not a compliment).
Like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Olbermann, and Dan Patrick, Bruce's voice seems to express his on-air personality perfectly. Have you heard Damon Bruce's voice?
Nice post yourself. I like Bruce; you make very convincing arguments. He does do a lot of research and facts, I can attest to that. Thanks for responding. I assume Damon won't be on your Xmas list?
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