Sean: a Celebration

[french frank]

Give me something psycho-physically liberating, either African rhythm-based or Latin, which derived from Africa, and not only will I join in, you'll find it hard to stop me!

Crumbs!

[LMcD]

....for £1.35 million Gary Lineker should be made to do a little dance....

He seems to be pretty good at leading BBC executives a merry dance.

[Maclintick]

He seems to be pretty good at leading BBC executives a merry dance.

Indeed he does, & I’d love to know why those same BBC execs regard the Blessed Gary — & for that matter Shearer as well — as indispensable, when, as pointed out by the much-criticised Harry Kane & others in the recent Euro championships, these overpaid pundits failed to win or even get to the finals in any major competitions during their footballing careers.

[Old Grumpy]

Why do the BBC need any pundits - football or otherwise?

[Maclintick]

Why do the BBC need any pundits - football or otherwise?

This is actually far from being a rhetorical question, OG, esp. in the sporting arena where the explicators who prattle on in the gaps between live commentary, summarisers and their ilk, face competition from AI-generated real-time analysis. During Wimbledon, and to an extent in the Euros, the deluge of data on passes or shots completed, positional play, yards covered, unforced errors and so on reduced the commentators to the status of dumb onlookers between games, as viewers were blitzed with statistical tables. Can't be long before a live "statto-bot" becomes a reality.

While we're on pundits or "experts", the Blessed Gary's £1.35m remuneration, disclosed this week, prompted a "Wouldn't It Be Wonderful If...." waking reverie, as I imagined the unimaginable, and that the British reverence for sport vis-a-vis culture, and concomitant financial rewards, were reversed, so that BAL reviewers, who currently perform a public service for little recompense, could be lobbed Lineker-equivalent amounts of boodle.

[Pulcinella]

This is actually far from being a rhetorical question, OG, esp. in the sporting arena where the explicators who prattle on in the gaps between live commentary, summarisers and their ilk, face competition from AI-generated real-time analysis. During Wimbledon, and to an extent in the Euros, the deluge of data on passes or shots completed, positional play, yards covered, unforced errors and so on reduced the commentators to the status of dumb onlookers between games, as viewers were blitzed with statistical tables. Can't be long before a live "statto-bot" becomes a reality.

While we're on pundits or "experts", the Blessed Gary's £1.35m remuneration, disclosed this week, prompted a "Wouldn't It Be Wonderful If...." waking reverie, as I imagined the unimaginable, and that the British reverence for sport vis-a-vis culture, and concomitant financial rewards, were reversed, so that BAL reviewers, who currently perform a public service for little recompense, could be lobbed Lineker-equivalent amounts of boodle.

I'm not sure that that analysis is totally fair.
Sports commentators (especially football ones) seem to have a much better knowledge of the teams, players, and tactics than one ever hears in the interval dribble (sic) on R3!

[Maclintick]

I'm not sure that that analysis is totally.
Sports commentators (especially football ones) seem to have a much better knowledge of the teams, players, and tactics than one ever hears in the interval dribble (sic) on R3!

I demur, m'lud. Many's the time I've heard excellent interval discussions on R3, featuring such as our own Makropulos, for instance. OTOH, football pundits can be fallible. Alan Hansen -- paid £1.5m per year by the BBC for his appearances on MOTD in the early 2010s -- never lived down his comment that Man U would "never win anything with kids" in a season where their recent signings, Scholes, Beckham, Giggs & Neville contributed to them winning the Premiership.

[Pulcinella]

I demur, m'lud. Many's the time I've heard excellent interval discussions on R3, featuring such as our own Makropulos, for instance. OTOH, football pundits can be fallible. Alan Hansen -- paid £1.5m per year by the BBC for his appearances on MOTD in the early 2010s -- never lived down his comment that Man U would "never win anything with kids" in a season where their recent signings, Scholes, Beckham, Giggs & Neville contributed to them winning the Premiership.

Point taken, but I was thinking more of their knowledge and history of previous games, players etc.
Rarely during an introduction to a piece do we get that sort of insight into the piece, the soloist, the players, their instruments.
We're seldom now told how many movements (a game of two halves, ha ha) there are.
But sports commentators can rattle off the names of the team players with great panache, it seems to me: an enviable skill in my book (rather like the Speaker of the HoC having to know which 'honourable' member represents which constituency).

[Maclintick]

Point taken, but I was thinking more of their knowledge and history of previous games, players etc.
Rarely during an introduction to a piece do we get that sort of insight into the piece, the soloist, the players, their instruments.
We're seldom now told how many movements (a game of two halves, ha ha) there are.
But sports commentators can rattle off the names of the team players with great panache, it seems to me: an enviable skill in my book (rather like the Speaker of the HoC having to know which 'honourable' member represents which constituency).

I agree with that point. There's rarely enough on-air credit given to the players on the platform, giving it their all for hours on end. I recall a LFO/Abbado relay where in the concluding applause the announcer observed "Now the trumpeter is taking a bow". I thought "C'mon guys, that's Reinhold Friedrich ! Bit of respect, please". I also agree that the generation of footie-commentators post-Mottie deserve appreciation -- Jonathan Pearce, Guy Mowbray inter alia.

[LHC]

I'm not sure that that analysis is totally.
Sports commentators (especially football ones) seem to have a much better knowledge of the teams, players, and tactics than one ever hears in the interval dribble (sic) on R3!

That's because sports commentators are experts who do a lot of background research on the players teams etc before each match. As evidence, here's a copy of the great Bill MacLaren's notes for a single rugby match.



It would be unthinkable for the BBC to hire a newsreader or TV personality to present and commentate on a football or rugby match

[Ein Heldenleben]

That's because sports commentators are experts who do a lot of background research on the players teams etc before each match. As evidence, here's a copy of the great Bill MacLaren's notes for a single rugby match.



It would be unthinkable for the BBC to hire a newsreader or TV personality to present and commentate on a football or rugby match

Quite a few ,perhaps the majority of commentators, are sports journalists who have maybe played the game. The Shearer figures (known as summarisers ) are usually ex pros. John Motson was typical starting as a print football reporter for the Sheffield Telegraph the Radio 2 then BBC TV . There are a few newsreaders who were both TV personalities, newsreaders and commentators. The late Harry Gration , who I had the great pleasure of working with, did commentary , sports reporting and sports and news presenting .

[Maclintick]

That's because sports commentators are experts who do a lot of background research on the players teams etc before each match. As evidence, here's a copy of the great Bill MacLaren's notes for a single rugby match.

It would be unthinkable for the BBC to hire a newsreader or TV personality to present and commentate on a football or rugby match

It's clear that there is a gaping chasm in Sports TV, both in terms of celebrity-status and remuneration, between the commentators, who as you say thoroughly research before every game, work largely off-camera and are masters of their craft enjoying relative anonymity as far as the general public are concerned, and the household-name summariser/pundits paid vast amounts for parading their contentious opinions. This applies primarily in footie, IMHO.

[eighthobstruction]

....just looked up Mark Chapman the BBC all rounder sports presenter.... (who in my opinion is a thoroughly witty, funny , knowledgeable +, +, +, man [hail fellow well met]) and he gets £325k for his Radio and TV contribution....he is on Radio 5 Live quite a lot at all odd hours and OB's....His ability to host/navigate/steer round table and zoom type radio is very impressive getting best out of contributers , while asking intelligent searching questions (all without laughing like a ninny), and extracting the michel while being self aware and self depreciating....

[Ein Heldenleben]

It's clear that there is a gaping chasm in Sports TV, both in terms of celebrity-status and remuneration, between the commentators, who as you say thoroughly research before every game, work largely off-camera and are masters of their craft enjoying relative anonymity as far as the general public are concerned, and the household-name summariser/pundits paid vast amounts for parading their contentious opinions. This applies primarily in footie, IMHO.

I suspect the TV Football commentators do pretty well simply because everything to do with football ( and F1) on TV seems to have 0 on the end of it . The reason Lineker earns so much is that he rates well with the C2DE audiences that the BBC is desperate to hang onto . Sky would pay him much more ; he knows and the BBC knows it. But being the face of BBC Football is better for his other interests like the podcasts than the smaller audiences of Sky.
The presence of Sky also distorts the commentator Market. When they are spending £ 20 million plus for the rights to each Premiership match the coverage costs become almost trivial so the presenter pay goes up. And other channels have to hoick their pay - if not to match it but to at least offer something extra.

[Maclintick]

....just looked up Mark Chapman the BBC all rounder sports presenter.... (who in my opinion is a thoroughly witty, funny , knowledgeable +, +, +, man [hail fellow well met]) and he gets £325k for his Radio and TV contribution....he is on Radio 5 Live quite a lot at all odd hours and OB's....His ability to host/navigate/steer round table and zoom type radio is very impressive getting best out of contributers , while asking intelligent searching questions (all without laughing like a ninny), and extracting the michel while being self aware and self depreciating....

IMHO Chappers is all of those things, 8thObst, and if judged by the prodigious number of hours he puts in across R5 and TV, while maintaining the highest professional standards & unfaked bonhomous demeanour, as you say, is well-deserving of his £325k.