11/05/24
March 09, 2021
Blue Jays Will Use TV Audio on Radio Broadcasts: The Toronto Blue Jays will drop their radio broadcasts and use the TV feed's audio feed instead beginning with opening day April 1. No team in decades has gone without a dedicated radio team. Though it's described as being a safety move for the pandemic, Sportsnet isn't saying that radio will come back in the future.
That stinks. Baseball on the radio is a totally different experience. You might as well not do it at all as provide the TV commentary.
posted by yerfatma at 10:59 AM on March 09, 2021
Baseball on the radio brings me back to my pre-teen and early teen years. On a sunny summer afternoon I would put the radio into the back window of my parents' room, set up the station and volume, and go out to cut the grass while listening to the game. Straight push mower, no noisy power mower back then.
Baseball is made to be broadcast on the radio. The announcer would put the words out, and your imagination would assemble them into a picture of the field and the action. It's how I learned the game. Using the TV audio is a terrible idea. The announcer and the analyst spend far too much time talking about things other than the action at hand, and they frequently ignore action on the field to give us some nice factoid about the left fielder's mother-in-law. While this is happening, they fail to describe a well-executed hit and run.
Using the TV audio is the sort of thing that contributes to the slow death of baseball.
posted by Howard_T at 05:32 PM on March 09, 2021
Baseball on TV is full of dead air. Even good baseball broadcasters on TV like to "let the play breathe." What a terrible idea. Radio listeners will have no idea what's going on half the time.
posted by werty at 10:29 PM on March 09, 2021
I'm not a fan of this plan, but they've got the right guy to be broadcasting the play-by-play: Dan Shulman.
He's been the voice of ESPN radio baseball broadcasts for years, so he knows how to do it.
I'm going to hold final judgement until I hear how Shulman performs for the first few games.
posted by grum@work at 08:47 AM on March 10, 2021
Baseball on the radio is sacred. I can't believe the Blue Jays are doing this.
posted by rcade at 10:14 PM on March 10, 2021
It's un-American, I say!
posted by yerfatma at 08:06 AM on March 11, 2021
When Tom Dundon bought the Hurricanes, he decided that the money will go into players, coaches, and GM and every other aspect of the organization will be completely about the bottom line. So, he let hall of fame radio guy, Chuck Kaiton, walk out the door because he made Chuck sell ad time for the radio broadcasts. Ever since then, the radio feed has been a simulcast of the TV feed.
Then Dundon got cheap with John Forslund and let ol' Johnny Sideburns walk out that door and replaced him with a sideline reporter who is awful at announcing. The new dude is so terrible that I have to mute the sound, but I'm sure that Dundon doesn't a give a shit because of the bottom line savings.