NHL Playoffs means time to shine - except for ESPN and Turner apparently...

Fans are noticing myriad production issues - hot white images, open crowd mics and poor audio, and announcers calling the game from thousands of miles away - WTF?

My friend and mentor John Ridgway, who gave me my first real TV job in Hollywood in 1982, had a phrase he’d say whenever something inexplicable was happening on a show we were working on -

“Don’t we do this for a living…?”

Ridgway was a television graphics pioneer, who set the bar and the standard in the 1980’s as “Entertainment Tonight’s” first video graphics designer, and brought artistic style and foundational templates that gave shows he worked on distinctive looks and feels. Customization, lots of pop and color, animations and movement, and doing it in extremely inventive and tricky ways.

Ridgway changed the way things looked on TV.

Now I’m watching the opening round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and I’m just baffled. I catch mistakes and miscues all the time - because I’m in this business half a century and I notice every little thing. It’s the kind of stuff fans don’t generally notice or care about.

HOWEVER - because of poor decisions, and poorer execution - rightsholders have ripped the curtain off the rod here and don’t seem to care, as fans are seeing and noticing shortcuts, things done on the cheap, and production mistakes that honestly shouldn’t be happening.

Television executives are too often people who know the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

Look - I’m really into this business - and I don’t know what station the Stars game is on most nights.

Ratings are a problem - lots of that is due to market confusion. Games hop from one channel to the next, start times are delayed. (which I don’t have a big problem with - it’s the way we have to do it) and tonight’s announcers weren’t last nights announcers.

”Don’t we do this for a living…?”

My old boss was old-school too, demanding precision and perfection. He taught me a lot - and he had an eager student in me. I devoured what he so freely shared.

Me, in “school” - in front of the TV, as depicted by Darren Taylor in the “3 Periods” work.

I’ve always watched TV differently - critically.

At 6 years old, I’m watching a Christmas special on TV with my 5 year-old brother Paulie. At one point he says -

“Ralph - is that the real God on TV?”

To which I respond - “Are you kidding - do you know much it would cost to get the REAL GOD on TV?”

And I was off and running. I was a child of television - all television and I grew up with the the industry. I loved watching sports on TV but I didn’t watch games - I analyzed broadcasts.

How many cameras? Replay angles? Announcers tendencies. Sound, picture, graphics, all of it. I quickly got good at knowing who was good, and who was just taking up a seat. People like Roone Arledge changed the sports TV business and world - literally - with “Wide World of Sports” and later, “Monday Night Football.”

Arledege, and the NFL built an empire on a simple concept (that the NHL still struggles to get a handle on) - “The Show - NOT the Contest” -

I skipped classes I knew I wouldn’t need - failed college courses that had nothing to do with what I cared about - and devoted every second I could to watching, as closely as I could, the industry I’d be making a living in. My teachers were on that box. I told my Mom and Dad - “this box is gonna be big and I’m gonna be on it.” I was in a hurry to get there and I got there fast, with my first paying radio job at 16 years old, in 1977. I worked on Cable TV a few years later.

And I’m watching this continuing debacle that is the first round of the NHL playoffs and wondering - what the hell is going on? Don’t we do this for a living?

This isn’t the way it’s supposed to go - or look - or be. This is unprofessional broadcasting during a time when rightsholders (ESPN and Turner) should be all polished up and runway strutting with their coverage.

THIS IS THE TIME FOR ESPN AND TURNER TO SHOW OFF!

Well - I gotta weigh in - as someone with a practical PHD in NHL broadcasting. 30 years as an NHL Play-by-play man, host, interviewer, content creator, writer, and segment producer.

I’m callin em all out - because this is giving the entire industry a bad name.