LOL frustration understood! and no we shouldn't get personal here... blind attacks on american is not nice... anyway, it is the channel's responsibility to get qualified commentators, and they don't necessary have to be american! just someone who knows the game!
Well, that was exactly my point. I think ESPN did. Can someone confirm for me that the English-language commentary team I heard was what was on US TV? If so, ESPN got a qualified badminton commentator, not American, to accompany an experienced commentator from a non-badminton background. That is just what they do with team sports all the time. There is a play-by-play commentator and a colour commentator, mind you **** Enberg, for example, had probably spent hundreds of hours in a La-Z-Boy watching football games before he was ever asked to call a game with an actual player like Merlin Olson to back him up. This thread started talking about the Olympics where it was unequivocally done wrong. In Anaheim, ESPN proved that they had the means to do it right. Presumably Gillian Clark is an employee of their UK subsidiary and she was one long before the Athens Olympics. I think it's right to question why they eschewed hiring her or someone like her in favour of two Americans who knew nothing about the game. Matt P has a point, though, in that it isn't fair to personally ride the hockey guy for doing his best and his best not being up to our expected standard. I will say that he has very little to be embarrassed about in the 3h of WC coverage that I've watched so far, especially compared to the Athens MS final commentary. It is interesting though, that in Korea, the play-by-play person defers almost obsequiously to the colour commentator when it comes to analysing strategy, making predictions or commenting on players' skills while the hockey guy on ESPN offered lots of his own observations despite the presence in the booth of Gillian Clark and, at one point, even Rudy Hartono. I think that's a cultural thing, though. In North America, play-by-play people generally know enough about the sport that analysis is still part of their job whereas in Korea, etiquette requires that they defer to the expert even when they have some insight themselves.
i turned off the computer after downloading it and watching 5-10 minutes, american commentators are good in hockey, baseball, football and everything ""ball but suck like crap in badminton commentating.
Good or bad? While I agree that we should be happy that badminton is being shown on North American sports channels at all, I understand the frustration and disappointment about inexperienced commentators. I wish that they would at least educate the commentators a little bit before sending them on. Just get someone to spend 30 min with them to explain a little more than just the rules of the game? But on the same token I'm thinking: Finally! Badminton on TV. Sweet. BTW where did you download that particular match from Noob848. Hmmm all these buttons on the message editor, none of them spell checks. Sorry about my bad spelling.
I got the impression that they had spent that 30 minutes with the American guys but that is no substitute for the experience that most of us have with the game. Not enough to keep them from endlessly making comparisons to tennis and other games with which they're more familiar. The fact that their eyes weren't trained to catch the fall of the shuttle at the net and that they didn't react to the scoreboard or umpire's calls in those situations was surprising. As I say, the American guy didn't do any of that on the WC broadcast I saw, though. Still no one has verified whether it was the same guy or whether that broadcast was shown in the U.S. I hear you on the rejoicing, though. I remember seeing badminton on TV in Canada exactly once: during the Commonwealth Games sometime before it was introduced to the Olympics at Barcelona. If I'm not mistaken, he saw the same one mentioned at the start of this thread. It's on Emule, but I don't have the link handy. Taufik vs. Shon Seung-mo in the Athens final. It's the only full match of badminton ever shown on U.S. TV, isn't it? I hope I'm exaggerating.
The link for the Athens MS Final - the video that started this thread - on Emule is: Athens MS Final I'll let 848 confirm that.
hahaha this thread made me laugh harder than i laughed at the commentary of that 2004 Olympics MS Finals! Unlike most of you guys, I find that match very entertaining...A Sports Comedy Show...
here is another link for the video, just incase the emule link has stopped working. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8821155037538638946&q=badminton&pl=true i still can't get over how brainless these commentators are!!!!!!!!!
I still don't know why after 68 posts everyone is still blaming ESPN, such a poor and wrong target. FYI, the men's final is broadcasted by NBC, not ESPN. They got most olympics broadcasting in US recently, including torino olympics. Unlike ESPN, they are a nationalwide tv network, not a professional sport channel, so their audience is more likely from average joes, not badminton lovers like us. So I can understand why they do such kind of comentaries. For anyone new to badminton, talking about all those jargons will just confuse them. Just as in figure skating this torino winter olympics, I don't understand anything such as the difference between a triple-triple and a triple-double-double, or the new scoring system. But with the commentaries, I can still enjoy the sport, but maybe those figure skating fans will also feel outraged as us. Anyway, the taufik's performance in this game is so marvelous that everytime I watch it my ears just shot these comentaries out
BTW, sometimes chinese commentary is also very annoying, check out this one: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2336129705081676733&q=peter+gade&pl=true the female commentor just keep saying "hau Leng A" which means "so beatiful!" in cantonese, that is just so stupid
just been listening to those blokes for 5 minutes...all I heard was "jump smash" and "moving him around" and they actually said the around-the-head was an inferior shot...
You're right. That was NBC. I, for one, never blamed ESPN for the Olympic commentary but there was a connection. You may have missed another thread that came out around the same time that mentioned that ESPN was hiring the same hockey guy from that Olympic coverage to do commentary for the World Championships. I mentioned ESPN in that context because I was surprised that ESPN got Gillian Clark to work with him. In other words, they did the kind of good cop-bad cop or clueless-clued in partnership that some on this thread were advocating. Why would ESPN hire an NBC hockey commentator? I don't know? Maybe it was NBC that hired an ESPN hockey commentator for the Olympics. I am just going by what somebody said in that other thread about the ESPN WC coverage. Maybe it was wrong. Anyway, my mention of ESPN was all about the WC coverage.
Right. Here is the connection: Hosting each telecast will be long-time ESPN lead NHL analyst, and 2004 Olympic badminton commentator, Bill Clement. ...from this post. I think I jumped to the conclusion that that was the same guy from the Taufik/Sohn Seung-mo match. Come to think of it, though, I didn't question why an ESPN hockey analyst would have been working for NBC during the Olympics. Do you happen to know whether it was the same guy? Did anyone catch the guy's name before he started talking about jump-smashes and bread-and-butter? I think I deleted that video once I got those huge HD rips from England working.
Here is what I found in Wikipedia about Bill Clement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clement Yes, he was a professional hocky player and now host hocky and ice hocky show for NBC and ESPN. But notice the last paragraph: .................He worked as the play-by-play announcer for both the pentathlon events and badminton tournaments for the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens for NBC's cable networks. He also has worked as an analyst in ESPN's Great Outdoor Games since 2001. Clement won province championships playing badminton in high school. Now we know why NBC asked him to do the badminton broadcast
Ah, so he is Canadian? I was a Canadian high school player, too, and knew some hockey players who could hit a shuttle as well but no one even did "jump smashes" then so I'm not surprised that he found it a novelty.
He was born in Quebec but played Junior A for the Ottawa 67s in the late 60s. If he played provincials in his last year of high school, he would have been in Ontario. If not, then Quebec. Either way, it was the late 60s. Wasn't the "jumpsmash" invented in the 70s or 80s? Liem Swie King, was it? Clement may not have even thought about badminton again until NBC needed Olympic commentary in 2004. Well Gill Clark really reined him in on ESPN in 2005, in any case.
baby steps... one at a time. I think ESPN did a good job exposing the sport to the mainstream American public. It's our own high expectation that spoilt the experience for ourselves. If the broadcaster had hired two experienced sport commentators, they won't have necessarily done a better job introducing the game to new audience. You would need the questions/perspective from a newbie (relatively speaking considering Bill Clement did have some highschool experience ) to address the issues experienced players normally won't even go into. No point having two commentators of the sport talking ideas/concepts that go over the collective heads of the TV audience.
One way of doing it.. I'm not going to claim that there is only one way of doint this.. but Danish TV2 do it pretty well.. they usually have Morten Ankerdal and Poul Erik Hoyer as commentators.. You of course all know Hoyer, but you probably don't know Morten. Why would you. He has never been an international player. But he used to play on the level just below the pro's here in Denmark which means that he is actually very knowledgable when it comes to Denmark.. which has the advantage that he knows how when and how to pose the right questions to Hoyer the expert.. he simply brings the best of out Hoyer and I don't think he would be able to do it in the same excellent manner, if he didn't know as much about badminton himself as he actually does.. so that's why in my opinion that the best commentator combo is an expert and somebody with extensive badminton knowledge..
Hm anyway, I completely agree with westsideweiming on this. They're no single bit analytical, all they comment is like "WHOA WHAT A DROP SHOT!" and repeat themselves all again. Then I couldn't help laughing when they commented Taufik being the "bad boy of badminton". Heh what the heck would that be, I wonder.
lol read so many post here.... I think this is one of the most exciting match I ever seen~ And all due to the commentator keep talking and keep up the atmosphere~ I have the british version and american version of the same match and to be honest with you all I prefer the americans version lol its just a lot more exciting to watch
