brov1i'm putting this in ski gabber because it kinda has to do with skiing.
now i'm not normally a big fan of competition skiing or extreme sports on a competitive level in general but i will watch it when it's on. no matter what the sport it always seems like the announcer has no idea what sport they are watching or what the beginner terminology is for the sport they are being payed to announce. who the hell is hiring these idiots. im getting tired of hear about how cool fliptricks to "wheelies" are on a skateboard, or (i kid you not on this one he was talking about a cork 10) how difficult it is to land a spinning backflip on skis is. wtf tv providers find people with at least minimal knowledge about the sports. how can we fix this shit?
So I really learned something this year that is extremely relevant to this.
I ended up getting asked to be the on-air "freeski talent" for Dew Tour. Now, what I was doing was only for the jumbotrons/tvs all over the hill and the live stream, not actually on television. I was stoked and like "wow, I'm going to show these bitches how its done"
I've done some announcing at live events, been on camera for NS a few times, I'm great at public speaking, a sales person and I know skiing really well. This should make it easy.
However, they paired me with Georgia, who was the host of the show for both skiing and snowboarding. She was hot for sure, but a motocross host most of the time and knew very little about the sport. At first, I had the opinion of "Oh god, why did they just pair me with useless eye candy?"
The problem was once the cameras started rolling.
You see, what the public doesn't realize is that producing an entertaining television program is extremely difficult, and there's a huge amount of moving parts happening. People that do this all the time are pros at it, and its no big thing. However the newcomers are like a fucking deer in headlights.
The critical component is that there is a producer directing you. You have an earpiece in, and the producer is directing not only you, but the rest of the production staff - and they are literally talking to you while you're talking to someone. I've never experienced something so confusing, and I realized instantly why Georgia was such a pro - she could do this and keep me on track with what the producer was saying.
If you watched the Dew Tour online, there was one segment where they decided to have me host and let Schmuck announce a run. Georgia stepped out for a break and I was on my own. Once they cut over to us, it started fine. I was like "Schmuck bro, you gonna call a run for us homie?" (keeping it chyll) - once he started we had a good little banter going.
Then, something happened and the producer started talking to me - while I was paying attention to the tricks in the run, listening to and interacting with schmuck and they were giving me instructions as to where the shot was going to go next. As well, there was some issue or something, and they were feeding me a bit of storyline to lead into.
I completely just shut down. My mind blanked. I panicked, guessed that they had said we're calling down to the bottom announcers - where they had asked me to stall for two minutes - and said on camera "and thanks Schmuck, now we're throwing it down to Mike at the bottom". Immediately in my earpiece was like "No dear god, that is not right, we have a course hold and we need you to talk for two minutes."
Totally embarassed, panicked, confused and without anything prepared I just sat there silent for probably 10 seconds, which is a crazy fail in TV time. I then said "Oh, OK no sorry we're not...." and proceeded to try to talk to Schmuck in some ultra akward situation because I was completely shattered mentally.
In that moment I realized not only why they have the average host with the guy who knows whats up - I realized why they sometimes have announcers that know very little about the sport. Because they are professionals that have been field tested to be able to handle the rigors of how television gets produced in the big leagues.
I have no doubt in my mind that I could learn this skill over time, but it would take immense dedication to doing only that. I'm sure the money isn't there to quit my job at NS and become a full-time announcer... so henceforth my theory as to why you see really good TV announcers that have absolutely no fucking idea what is going on + the slang of the specific sport.
