What's The Future Of Local Announce Booths and Studio Shows?

Old Broadcasters don't leave, and teams rarely turn them over. Ratings are falling, the old RSN models are slipping, and new thinking is most definitely welcome here. I kick it around.

I called over 2,000 NHL games over 30 years, and have been in broadcasting almost 50 years.

This is another in my series “Inside Sports Broadcasting.” It’s meant for young sports broadcasters, but here I talk to local teams as well, because big change is on the horizon.

I’m the guy who can write this piece. I have a practical PHD in the thing. I’m the guy who walked out on a job few get and nobody ever leaves. I’m the guy who knows core fans always get pissed off and miss you for about a week and then they move on too. I lived that. I was in the Dallas Stars booth 25 years with the franchise. I left and they hired another guy to do the same thing the same way. And everybody watched. Later on, they moved the analyst over to my old chair and he did the same thing the same way me and the next guy did. And everybody watched. Then they brought in somebody else. He’s still there. Now he’s doing the same thing the same way all three of us did. And everybody watches.

In fact, every time I turn on any sports game I hear the games called the same way they were called when I was a kid. Same studio show too. Mostly old guys who used to play the sport, lined up on a desk that has all these fancy lights and logos on the front of it and the guys showing me and telling me the same thing the guys who call the game just showed me and told me. Sometimes they bring in more chairs and guys with different suits and ties but they all say the same things too. We’re all different versions of the same guy. Only one guy I can think of isn’t from North America on any of it. It’s Hank and he’s awesome ain’t he? Maybe we can learn from that.

The people who are in charge of these things at the team level almost universally have no experience in broadcasting. They sure as hell have never been in either chair in the booth. They think it should always sound the same way, or don’t think about it all, even though they don’t know much about any of it. Even though audiences aren’t the same as they used to be and don’t watch games the same way. Sometimes they pick one of the broadcasters and do whatever they say to do since they don’t know anything about any of it. Except all he knows is how to call the game the same way everyone else does and he has to protect his job and the jobs of all the people who say the same things the same way he does.

So that’s where we are. And it’s this way across most professional sports leagues.

Right now, an NHL team’s broadcast booth, not unlike how all other sports do it, calls the game primarily for core fans, very close to exactly the same way that the game was called 30 years ago. 40 years ago. 50 years ago.

Hockey fans, especially older hockey fans, are fine with it, largely because it’s all they know - all they’ve been conditioned to know. They get their favorite guys calling the game and telling them the same things they told them last week, last month, last season. On the symphonic level, fans like to hear what they expect to hear and freak out if it sounds even a little different. That’s one reason why it’s super hard for women to bust into play-by-play. If you just read transcripts from calls, you couldn’t tell the difference between a qualified man and a qualified woman.

Leah Hextall knows how to call hockey. I know she does. I listen to her. I watched her call a game from an adjacent booth. Her eyes are where they should be. She gets on the puck fast. Her mechanics are tight. She knows the game and the vernacular. But, her voice is in a very high range, and doesn’t sound like what we’ve become accustomed to. And that’s fatal.

Hearing a different vocal range and cadence, can be off putting, especially if you don’t know anything else. It’s a shame it’s this way, and nobody really has the nuts to stay with trying it with different ranges and cadences. Not yet. Hockey, and the NHL, is a tough place for women to work is my general observation from over the years.

Pre, post, and intermission programming also hasn’t changed much in my lifetime. A couple of talking heads at a desk. 12 minutes of car insurance commercials in a 16 minute intermission, game highlights of the same thing we just watched, being described by a different ex-player and generally following the main analyst’s lead. Out of town scores. Intermission player interviews that tell us nothing other than the player doesn’t want to be doing the intermission player interview.

So we give up on 32 minutes of programming every night. The industry collectively mails it in. We have no new ideas here with what to do with 32 minutes of programming every night so the hell with it I guess.

NHL booths are principally occupied by two white males, both are usually over 50 years old, and both see the game exactly the same way. We got one old guy who can follow the play (mostly…), and another old guy who used to play and who repeats the same phrases all the other guys who used to play say.

The hockey side of the business loves all of this. The GM’s and so on. They love when the guys say things like “plays the game the right way” “don’t take a penalty 200 feet from your own net” and “the shootout is a skills competition". (Of course it is … it’s just no current GM or NHL head coach would ever get asked to try one as a player, nor could they score on one so they all poo poo it…lol…)

The GM’s are all old North American grinders and muckers and they like old North American callers and ex players to parrot those phrases they say every day. In my experience they don’t like fresh ideas or different points of view, or different messengers.

So, many booths, sound mostly like all the others. Some are “better” at delivering the old formula than others is about the only differentiation among the pairs. There’s surveys and it’s like what Norm Chomsky says about politics and life - that you’re given a very narrow band of choices and they tell you that’s freedom to chose. OK - so choose the two guys who sound the most like the guys who did it 50 years ago is what I got from the last fan survey I read. The results were quite predictable.

There’s also been this weird unwritten law here that unless you leave or die - it’s your broadcasting chair until you don’t want it anymore.

That’s insane from any sensible business standpoint. Why would any business so freely hand control to aging broadcasters with diminishing skills and lack of continuing education in new media, sports betting, or advanced analytics?

Their salaries rise and rise and they get older and know less about how to connect with new or different audiences - and most of em could maybe care less is what I’ve noticed. They get big checks, lotsa perks, and people tell them they’re the best in the league.

Just so you know - every team has the best fanbase and every team has the best announcers.

Corporate America’s stock in trade is fear - but they have nothing to fear here. Hockey fans won’t leave no matter what. Ask the NFL about this. Core fans bitch but never leave. You know this. We’ve tried shitting on you, canceling seasons, raising prices, changing announcers - and you tweet and scream and yell - and you keep watching. You complain about anthems and kneeling and Taylor Swift and whatever else it is you abhor and yet, you still watch. That’s how humans are. Certainly that’s how sports humans are. Enough where your anecdotal stories about “he’s not watching any more…” don’t matter.

I say shouldn’t we talk about this and aren’t there better, more profitable, and more fan-friendly ways of doing all this?

Let’s GO!