Not Enjoying This World Cup At All
Not really anything to do with England failing to beat the USA, although it didn’t help. Not the quality of the football either, although some of the opening games have been predictably drab and cagey affairs. No, my beef is with the TV coverage, which is reaching the point where I can hardly bear to turn on the set. I have missed 3 matches already, which is unheard of.
Whoever is in charge of the live TV feed from South Africa is obsessed with using fancy replay technology, even while the ball is in play, so we have to wait patiently and guess what is happening on the pitch. I’ve lost count of the number of times we have been treated to footage of crowd and/or players looking anguished or joyful, managers throwing tantrums, ‘famous’ faces in the stands looking bored, injured players rolling around in agony, repeated replays from every possible angle of a goal or a foul we have seen umpteen times already, all shown in super slow motion that makes you wonder if the producers have seen ‘The Matrix’ once too often. In one match we even lost 15 seconds of live action while we were fed close-up images of the corner of the net bulging and billowing, as the game continued unremarked by cameras or commentators.
This obsession with getting the most from undoubtedly impressive video technology has been increasing for years. Up till now I could tolerate it, because the unnecessary bits were shorter, and with a little practice you could kind of judge there wasn’t a lot happening on the pitch by the noise level of the crowd. Which brings me to my second beef. Who on earth thought it was a good idea to encourage every spectator to have one of those damn plastic trumpets to blow? The soundtrack of every match has been a constant cacophony of monophonic honking, like a swarm of bees buzzing in my head, and it completely drowns the usual crowd noises, old-fashioned stuff like cheering, booing or whistling. No scope here for a much-loved aspect of our game, traditional football chants and songs. No choruses of “You’ll Never Walk Again” or “The Referee’s A Wanker”. All drowned out by the droning blare of what was obviously a marketing man’s dream, and has become a viewer’s (and commentator’s) nightmare.
I wonder how it affects the viewing figures. How many others decided they would give Algeria v Slovenia a miss so their ears could take a break, as I did. I wonder what the advertisers and sponsors will think.
Pete Smith @ June 15, 2010