My love-hate relationship with Fox Soccer Channel
by Steve Davis on Oct 10, 2010 12:57 PM EDT
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PrintEver have that girlfriend or boyfriend who drove you absolutely nutso batty? You fought like gangsters. You both knew the buttons to push to make the other pop like a tart.
But the sex rocked and you had someone to eat breakfast with. Life was far more interesting with them, and came one moment every single day you were deliriously happy they were around.
Fox Soccer Channel does that for me.
I have such a love-hate relationship with the little soccer channel that could – but so often can’t. Or just doesn’t. I don’t really know … that’s part of the reason FSC drives me loopy.
Habitually inaccurate graphics. Chatty and/or corny announcers (who can also be wildly inaccurate). Shoddy camera work or poor direction. Lame quality on talk shows. My God, have they ever cracked the code on how to create lame talk shows.
Some of it surely is down to resources, which I get. Precious few folks can turn a profit in soccer, and FSC is probably no different. So I can excuse some of their trespasses.
But Holy Inaccuracy, some of the crap they botch is just inexcusable.
Just a couple of quick examples: If announcer Mark Rogondino referred to referee Michael Kennedy as “Michael Bennett” just one more time during last week’s U.S. Open Cup final, I swear I might have set myself on fire just to end the misery.
(More pissing and moaning after the break ... )
Last night during the U.S.-Poland broadcast – and let’s face it, these opportunities to show U.S. matches should bring out the best in the entire FSC crew – they couldn’t even get the U.S. lineup right! They had Jay DeMerit playing alongside Jermaine Jones as a holding midfielder. Never mind that DeMerit wasn’t even in Chicago. And never mind that Bob Bradley would be drug tested on the spot if he tried to play DeMerit at that position.
To make matters worse, Chris Sullivan just rolled with it! As he reviewed the lineups he said something along the lines of “Jay DeMerit will sit alongside Jermaine Jones in the center of park.”
Sullivan knows better!
I actually have a whole love-hate thing going on with Sullivan, too. He’s clearly a smart guy who knows the game. But everything is so outrageously over-thought and over-sold. Everything he says is just a tangled tumble of soccer-talk blather. And he’s in love with every player, with every coaching choice, with every formation. I swear, if a manager was suffering from dementia and rolled out a nine-man starting lineup, Sullivan would wax on about how he loves “the manager’s innovative choices!”
I still remember a match last year, during a Red Bulls MLS broadcast, as Sullivan kept going on about what kind of a fantastic job Juan Carlos Osorio was doing, and how his lineup and his personnel selections were reliably prescient. The Red Bulls were a bigger mess than a dozen eggs on the floor, and everybody knew it! Sure enough, Osorio was fired a week later.
Back to FSC … don’t let me get started on Kyle Martino’s show. In an sad and amazing example of devolution, FSC has managed to replace its previous, gawd-awful soccer talk show with a soccer talk show that is even worse!
But … all that said … no kidding: I love you FSC. I’m glad you’re around.
Please don’t leave me! I promise not to complain as much.
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So, where's the love?
Lots there to hate, but you didn’t really say what it is you love.
I feel like I’ve got a love/hate thing going with John Harkes. Loved him as a player but hate him as a commentator.
So, who’s the John McEnroe of US soccer commentating? Who’s tells you like it is in an entertaining way? I enjoyed Seamus Malin, but can’t recall the last time I heard him on TV.
Here's a wild guess...
maybe it’s the soccer games unavailable elsewhere that trigger the love.
HD Quality
Was last night’s game broadcast in HD?
I mean, I know it was listed as an HD broadcast on my channel guide, and the image sure did fill my HD screen, but if that was actually in HD, it was easily the worst-quality HD broadcast I’ve seen.
It was particularly noticeable because I was doing so major channel-surfing last night between several HD sporting events on several networks, and there was a world of difference between the HD broadcast I saw on FSC and anything else I was watching in HD.
Did anyone else notice the same poor HD quality?
(Which raises another question: why broadcast in HD if you can’t even show your main bread-and-butter studio shows, like Fox Soccer Report, in HD? I understand there might still be logistical issues getting a limited number of HD cameras to various obscure locales for games, but it’s not like the studio changes location between broadcasts . . . I think.)
Hungry Hippos, baby! It's on!
I wouldn't have a clue what you're talking about
since my cable provider doesn’t offer FSC in HD or FS+ at all.
As far as getting cameras to remote locales….what remote locales? Fox Soccer Channel only covers MLS, USL and College games. Everything else comes from various feeds that they don’t have much control over. Which explains why MLS, USL and College games are so much more “amateurish” than Premier League and Serie A games.
Does FSC not produce the MLS games it televises?
Hungry Hippos, baby! It's on!
by Hopkins Horn on Oct 10, 2010 8:49 PM EDT up reply actions
That's what I'm saying
From Wikipedia:
Fox Soccer Channel offers its own game programming for United States soccer leagues through arrangements with outside production companies. Its primary broadcasting team for Major League Soccer, Women’s Professional Soccer, the U.S. national soccer teams (men’s and women’s), and CONCACAF Champions League, consists of play-by-play announcer Max Bretos or Mark Rogondino, and color commentator Christopher Sullivan, with Brian Dunseth, Christian Miles, or Steve Bell as sideline reporters, and Todd Grisham hosting the studio shows. Grisham also works for World Wrestling Entertainment. Dunseth usually serves as the second color commentator if FSC has several men’s matches in a given week, while Jenn Hildreth fills this role for women’s matches.
Most of FSC’s coverage which originates outside the CONCACAF region (North America, Central America, Caribbean) consists of picking up international broadcast feeds to which FSC has the U.S. broadcast rights. For example, the Argentine League matches and highlights are voiced by FSC announcers from the channel’s studio (having originally been produced in Spanish by Fox Sports International and Torneos y Competencias). The A-League broadcasts are produced by Fox Sports’ Australian-unit. The English coverage generally comes to FSC direct from TWI and Input Media, who produce the Premier League and FA Cup/England national team world feed broadcasts, respectively.
Hmmm. Is that normal?
In the sports TV biz, that is? So when ESPN showed a San Jose State-Nevada football game late Saturday night (picked as an example because it wasn’t in HD), for example, does ESPN rely upon a Reno-based production company upon which it layers its own announcers? I guess it make sense to outsource much of this, but I hadn’t really thought about it. So if there was a problem with the quality of the HD picture Saturday night, the fault lies more with the production company FSC to which FSC outsourced the work in Chicago than with FSC itself.
That still doesn’t explain why the studio shows can’t be in HD. It seems like that would be the lowest hanging fruit to pick off the HD tree. ESPN got Sportscenter in HD pretty much immediately when ESPN HD launched, even if very few actual highlights were yet available in HD.
But to Steve’s original point . . . to see what ESPN could do with soccer when it brought its A Game for the World Cup (I thought that ESPN’s body of work for the Cup was some of the finest work the network has ever done) . . . and then to see how a network actually devoted to soccer like FSC covers the sport on a day-to-day basis . . . man, get that ESPN Soccer channel launched stat! (And I’m not an ESPN shill, as ESPN does plenty to annoy me. But ESPN at the top of its game is far superior to any Fox-related sports outlet at the top of their games.)
Hungry Hippos, baby! It's on!
by Hopkins Horn on Oct 10, 2010 11:50 PM EDT up reply actions
ESPN’s work at the world cup was pretty much just like FSC’s coverage of the EPL. Use an international feed with the Brittish announcers. I’d say the World Cup coverage was on the same level as the EPL games on FSC (and that’s a GOOD thing).
Much of FSC’s programming is brutal, but like Steve I’m grateful it is there.
Los Angeles is like Manchester. There is a red team that wins championships and a blue team that doesn't.
You're missing the point a little bit.
“Most of FSC’s coverage which originates outside the CONCACAF region (North America, Central America, Caribbean) consists of picking up international broadcast feeds to which FSC has the U.S. broadcast rights.”
FSC does produces all telecasts in the US itself. Those are the ones with crappy cameras.
EPL, Serie A and other games on other continents come from local crews that get rerouted to FSC. Those are the highest quality broadcasts on FSC. ESPN’s World Cup broadcasts orginated in similar manner (though ESPN did send commentators and analysts on the spot, even though the image feed was outsourced).
I don't think I would mind Sullivan
if he didn’t talk at 90mph.
Potential....
…just means “you ain’t done nothing yet” and that’s where the hate comes from.
It’s such a luxury to have soccer on television so often, but it is so frustrating to think what the network could be if it only made some (seemingly) simple changes.
Totally agree on Sullivan. He makes some of the most astute points of any announcers but frequently hides them so deeply underneath foreign soccer slang and over-flowery language…not quite to the level of Miles’ overuse of “on the bounce” during each broadcast.
But alas, I could bitch about announcers across all US soccer networks and people would disagree and it would be annoying. PS: I thought Macca and the Wigan coach who ESPN used as analysts this summer were great…when Lalas let them get a word in.
Oh well, I am done as well….thanks FSC for letting me watch soccer on TV! So much that I even have to DVR other channels sometimes to watch it all!
Kyle Martino's Show
Man the new show that they have on monday nites is pathetic.. to say the least. I really liked the FOX Football Fone-In….. that was the best in-house show that FSC ever produced. Why on Earth did they get rid of It?? People like Eric Wynalda made the show what it was, I want obscure points of view. I liked the controversy, the arguments. Its what made the show interesting. I am Sorry but Kyle Martino is very DULL!!! Kyle never speaks his mind and never goes out on a LIMB…….
BRING BACK FOX FOOTBALL FONE-IN!!!!!!!
Im sorry Steve Davis but Fox Football Fone In, was the best show; to have ever been broadcast on FSC!!!
But if that’s true, is it a vote for Football Fone-In or rather an indictment of all of the channel’s other programming?
Steve, I’m with you all the way on this. I never want FSC to go away, but damn, to paraphrase Jayne Cobb, she can be a powerful ugly creature from time to time.
"We don't care who finishes second." -- Celtic's Peter Lowrie
Fox Football Fone-in
Steven Cohen was the best thing FSC had going and they screwed it up, thank god he is on the World Football Daily podcast.
Thou speak'st right on
All of the US soccer announcers are drones. All of them: ESPN’s, FSC’s, and anyone else’s that I may have left out. They chit-chat constantly with only brief and unfocussed references to the match being played in front of them, and too many of them are of the Dellacamara school, which Requires! Requires that their Speech! be Rendered With The Auditory Equivalent … The Auditory Equivalent! Of Capital Letters! And! Exclamation Points! § My God but that’s irritating. And they must pepper their speech with half-assed stock phrases. (Just once I’d like to hear a match where no one is “broken up” when a pass gets intercepted.) § But even that’s not the worst of it. The worst of it is that not a-one of them, excepting Chris Sullivan to some extent, is capable of starting a coherent sentence with the end point clearly in mind. § Hey, Fox Soccer Channel (You too, ESPN): send your would-be announcers to school in the UK, to learn how to do a soccer match properly.
I Identify
I identify with almost all of Steve’s points. Sullivan’s constant babbling is as annoynig as Ty Keogh’s, another former player who had the annoying habit of placing players in offside positions during throw-ins. FSC is at its best when it brings overseas matches English, Spanish, etc.) with their commentators and productions. I deliberately didn’t watch USA-Poland because I knew FSC commentary would be inane and I would miss key parts of the game due to overuse of replays and isolation shots plus commentary that at times is totally irrelevant to the action. It’s time for FSC to step up to the next level and provide far better coverage of the matches they produce, including commentators who know what they are talking about and, more importantly, know when to talk.
by redpalaceeaglebullsox on Oct 11, 2010 5:25 PM EDT reply actions
Galavision
You know what I did Saturday? I watched the game on Galavision (partly because I don’t pay extra for FSC) and it was great even though I don’t know a word of Spanish other than cabesa and gol. I was able to focus on the game more without all the goddamn chit-chat that you get on ESPN and FSC.
Also, FSC is cool and all just because of the sheer amount of foreign and domestic games they show, but until they start getting all MLS games and the USMNT games they broadcast in HD, I’m not paying the whatever extra $ a month I’d have to if I wanted to get FSC. Until then I’ll get my soccer fix from ESPN2, ESPN3.com, and free internet feeds of games on FSC and other channels. I mean how frickin hard is it for FSC to use HD cameras for MLS and USMNT games? ESPN’s got their s&*t down. Hell even my local Fox Sports West HD and Fox Sports West Primeticket HD brings me Galaxy, Chivas, Lakers, Clippers, Angels and Dodgers games in HD.
Screen Graphics
I noticed the Demerit thing as well. What was even more disturbing though was that every time they flashed a picture of coach Bradley they had his name as Brad Bradley. Its not like he hasn’t been around awhile. And then at halftime the stat graphics showed Poland up 2-1 on score. Don’t they have an editor of some sort? Of course this stuff happens every week on FSC. And the camera angle was terrible too. Too close and definitely not quality. I would love to get FSC in HD but if the quality is not any better I won’t be upset I don’t have it.
