It took me all of two weeks to break my New Year’s resolution of “being less negative” and I didn’t even realize that I was doing it — all I was doing was sending out a Tweet, taking an easy pot-shot at the second-tier announcing team from Fox for Saturday’s Niners-Saints game, the crew of Kenny Albert, Tony Siragusa and Daryl Johnston. They were distracting at best, with Johnston in particular talking about some idiotic concussion-phone system while the game was going on and then blowing a replay prediction that was pretty obvious to anyone watching. So I hit send on this:
After I posted it we had a momentary glitch in the Internet stream here at MSR HQ and as such I had to take an involuntary social-media break. That allowed me to look at my impromptu slam and wonder: Where did all the bile come from for guys who were just doing their job? Do I have the right to smack publicly on Tony Siragusa and Daryl Johnston just because they rub me the wrong way? What does that make me, other than JAOJ (just another online jerk)?
I mean, it’s not like the Fox crew was factually incorrect, or slurring their speech, or saying something morally reprehensible. Like many people I just don’t like the ha-ha attitude they take, the whole Moose-and-Goose show tenor of the announcing this crew puts out. But it must test positive for some percentage of viewership, otherwise (you hope) that Fox would find some other talent to replace them. From watching all the commercials during the playoff broadcasts this weekend, there’s apparently a lot on TV that I would never spend a minute watching, like “Glee,” “Two and a Half Men,” and “Alcatraz.” So I am probably not in the mainstream when it comes to offering programming commentary.
And then even if I was, look at that Tweet — if you are going to be critical, you should follow the Jim Rome rule of “have a take, don’t suck.” And that tweet has about a half a take or less. It just says the Fox crew is bad, not saying how or why — and then takes a sideways poke at Joe Buck and Tim McCarver, which is out of context since baseball season ended roughly 26 months ago and if I wanted to make a Joe Buck call it should have somehow involved Troy Aikman, his NFL broadcast partner. And I actually don’t mind Buck as much on NFL as on baseball.
So I would say looking back that my Tweet was the opposite of the Rome rule: It had no take, and it sucked. A good lesson in that negativity is usually the worst choice when it comes to commentary, one I will try to remember when engaged at the keyboard next time. That Twitter makes it easy to slam someone every second isn’t Twitter’s fault. It’s called operator error. And with any luck I’ll be doing it less as the year progresses.
Good column, but I think you worry too much. Tony Siragusa and Daryl Johnston do suck, and they do it publicly at their audience’s expense. I think it should go the other way. Every network should run real-time approval ratings for their announcing teams, and make a habit of dumping the bottom combination each and every year. These are great jobs, and great announcers should be filling them.