Television's Worst

[DemocalypseNow]

Kostas, your suggestion of Brian Blessed is brilliant!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP11L9jRW94 - Blessed works well for at least one sport.

Not as good as Murray Walker doing snooker commentary, which is on YouTube somewhere...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl-oAsDCGNA

[Python]

Rarely heared from Paul Page once Eurosport put Ben Edwards and Jeremy Shaw into action, am I the only one who thought he was the voice of American Motorsport (despite not featuring on NASCAR races).

As much as I loved Paul Page, I give that honor to Ken Squier, sorry. Ken Squier is mostly known for being a NASCAR commentator but had no problems commentating Indycar and F1 races. Paul Page is, however, the voice of the Indy 500, and it's a damn shame ESPN shafted him by moving him over to their NHRA broadcasts.

I really liked hearing Paul Page and Gary Gerould when they did CART events. I really wish they did IRL races, but I do like the announcing staff they have now.

[ADx_Wales]

Iwould say James Allan for worst commentator, but then Legard came along...

The major issue here is that Murray spent more time commentating on their sport than ANYONE in the world, and since he quit, nobody's been of that standard, or of that ability, it took two attempts to replace James Hunt with someone "as-good-as", its going to take even longer to find someone as good as Murray, and even if anyone suggests he should come back, his GP Masters attempts, the ROC events on Sky, and His standing-in on Radio 5 in 2007 (i dare say it) have been (yes i know hes in his 80s now) shoddy, I cannot remember if I said it in this forum, but, if he was still commentating on the final round of the 2008 season, he would have died.

Im not going to say give Legard a change, but each to their own, if he doesnt "improve" this next season, then by all means.

David Hobbs just points out the blantly obvisous, the way a 5 year old would. i.e. "there's Gerhard Berger behind Damon Hill" instead of saying something like "Gerhard Berger is behind Hill, but he was catching up at this stage of the race by a second a lap, and the Hill's car was handling poorly because he had not yet put on new rubber...Hill needs to hold Berger behind him if he's going to win the race". Thereby building up the excitement and tension. Which is suprising because he was an ex-racer, I would have though David Hobbs could least give the viewer an impression of what it is like driving a race car, (the way Martin Brundle does for example... commenting that "the car looks its bit oversteering a bit there".).

You know what, thats probably how ESPN recieved the footage, just the world feed, without "the black screen" laptimes, If they had it then it would probably be more likely to notice something like gains or losses, if they had it while Hobbs was stating the obvious then he's not good, and the best way around that, the IDEAL way to find the best commentator, would be to employ the one who could translate all those laptimes into commentary, which means it would be......

......James Allen.....



......Maybe thats why 3 commentators are more apposite these days, One to state the obvious, another to translate the times, and the third being the ex-driver.

The other suggestion would be to go through the P/A announcers on Shelsley Walsh's Vox Villa (Pron: Shell - Shlee), because that's where Murray started, Ive tried looking for a list, but no avail, however Moto GP's Toby Moody was one of them, And he's not exactly the polar opposite to Walker, who's first love was bikes and is the voice of F1, Toby's first love was F1 and was Eurosports main commentator on Moto GP for the past 10 years.

[dr-baker]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP11L9jRW94 - Blessed works well for at least one sport.

Not as good as Murray Walker doing snooker commentary, which is on YouTube somewhere...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl-oAsDCGNA

Thanks - exactly the clip I was thinking of. I would have looked for it myself, but, you know, I was just being lazy. And I'm only at home for an hour or two before having to go out to work again.

[CasinoSquare]

True, but, c'mon! Is the anthem necessary?
I find that a bit excessive, tbh. And I'm a Colombian, no need to fuss.

My mate Riccardo is also from Colombia and even he reckoned this was a bit much but liked the anthem. But he is from Medellin and wears sunglasses all the time so i tend not to argue with him.

[Ferrarist]

I'm bumping this thread, even if it is a bit old by now.

I agree with Marco, the RTL coverage is horrible. Okay, they show it for free and it is a nice alternative for those without a satellite dish to receive the BBC or without a Sky subscription. But still, many people accuse RTL of being dumbed-down and actually dumbing down its audience. And I agree with them. At sports events (They cover boxing, and they covered ski jumping a few years ago), they usually interview celebrities who are probably paid by RTL to be there and thus have no idea why they're here.

And then of course are our commentators. Here's a list with things Heiko Waßer (Remember that name, if you want to establish a commentators section at F1Rejects) talks about, when he's not giving attention to the action on the track (Which happens quite often):

- The occasional 5.000€-competiton
- Any random statistics
- Promotion for any other RTL-Show (Mostly our version of Pop Idol)
- The private lives of German drivers

And when he pays attention, he's completely in support of German drivers. This was so when Schumacher had his good times, and this is now with Vettel. And you what the RTL commentator did, before he got his job? He worked at a holiday resort as an animateur. I hope I can convince my parents to subscribe to Sky again (We had its predecessor Premiere for quite a long time), because I'd prefer Jacques Schulz (Their commentator) over Heiko Waßer ever!

[RLeb]

People said Murray Walker should come back, because of the entertainment value he brings. Well, one person (and a lot of Aussies won't agree with me ) that could be a fine replacement for the entertainment value is "the man with the V-8 vocal cords", Darrell Eastlake

As long as his co-commentator is a Brundle type with all the insight, Eastlake is brilliant at describing the second-by-second action on the track even though he knows precious little about the inner workings of just about anything!

As for worst, that would be James Allen for me. He was biased, had an annoying voice, and his idea of "excitement" was simply to yell the same boring stuff he usually rambles on about, but at the top of his lungs. I am glad he's gone.

He has gone back to writing.... so at least when I read his articles, I can imagine them in a normal, human voice and not at 150 decibels....

[AndreaModa]

I'll stick my neck out here and say that Jonathon Legard isn't that bad a commentator. He can keep up with the action, and describe it pretty well, but he's just very annoying in the way he does it. Like short bursts of machine gun fire, and he seems to use the same phrases/sentences over and over again. Plus he really doesn't gel with Brundle at all. I say get Charlie Cox in over from BBC's MotoGP coverage. That guy is awesome, some of the stuff he comes out with is pure comedy gold, tell me BBC, why is an ex-touring car driver commenting on bike racing?! Not that he's bad at it, he's been doing it long enough now, it's just whiny old Steve Parish who lets the side down on that one. About time they got a more modern 'expert' into the box.

So yeah, I'd say ditch Legard, get him back on 5 Live Radio or whatever, and stick Charlie Cox in his place. I've been trying to find a video on youtube of his commentating, but sadly there's not much

[RLeb]

Darrell Eastlake:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni0QfihC0Vc

[Whis]

erm... to hear a REJECT commentary you must watch a MotoGP race with the italian commentary... 'nuff said.

[Enforcer]

The worst thing ever was when ITV had Anthony Davidson for one race instead of Brundle.

Every other sentance he began with same, deadpan: "So... yeah..."

"So... yeah... I think Jenson's in with a good chance."
"So... yeah... that was a big accident."
"So... yeah... the weather is nice today."
"So... yeah... With interest rates increasing, now would be an oppurtune moment to invest in goverment treasury bills."

[AndreaModa]

The worst thing ever was when ITV had Anthony Davidson for one race instead of Brundle.

Every other sentance he began with same, deadpan: "So... yeah..."

"So... yeah... I think Jenson's in with a good chance."
"So... yeah... that was a big accident."
"So... yeah... the weather is nice today."
"So... yeah... With interest rates increasing, now would be an oppurtune moment to invest in goverment treasury bills."

Woah woah woah that man is a legend on 5 live! His knowledge is vastly greater than Brundle's and I love watching the practice sessions just to get his insight on things. But I agree with you on the 'So...yeah...' bits!

[DemocalypseNow]

I'll stick my neck out here and say that Jonathon Legard isn't that bad a commentator. He can keep up with the action, and describe it pretty well, but he's just very annoying in the way he does it. Like short bursts of machine gun fire, and he seems to use the same phrases/sentences over and over again. Plus he really doesn't gel with Brundle at all. I say get Charlie Cox in over from BBC's MotoGP coverage. That guy is awesome, some of the stuff he comes out with is pure comedy gold, tell me BBC, why is an ex-touring car driver commenting on bike racing?! Not that he's bad at it, he's been doing it long enough now, it's just whiny old Steve Parish who lets the side down on that one. About time they got a more modern 'expert' into the box.

So yeah, I'd say ditch Legard, get him back on 5 Live Radio or whatever, and stick Charlie Cox in his place. I've been trying to find a video on youtube of his commentating, but sadly there's not much

Here he is...alongside John Watson of all people! Would make a pretty good commentary conbo in F1...

[Cynon]

Rarely heared from Paul Page once Eurosport put Ben Edwards and Jeremy Shaw into action, am I the only one who thought he was the voice of American Motorsport (despite not featuring on NASCAR races).

As much as I loved Paul Page, I give that honor to Ken Squier, sorry. Ken Squier is mostly known for being a NASCAR commentator but had no problems commentating Indycar and F1 races. Paul Page is, however, the voice of the Indy 500, and it's a damn shame ESPN shafted him by moving him over to their NHRA broadcasts.

I really liked hearing Paul Page and Gary Gerould when they did CART events. I really wish they did IRL races, but I do like the announcing staff they have now.

The Versus crew or the ABC/ESPN crew? Because either one isn't bad... Marty Reid isn't nearly as bad as people say he is, ditto for Scott Goodyear. I like the Versus crew, except I don't like Robbie Buhl.

[Ferrim]

LOL, that clip of the Italian comentator was hilarious He just managed to properly pronounce "Alguersuari" once in something like 20 attempts

About the Spanish "sanganchao" clip that you were commenting a few months ago. It was said by Gonzalo Serrano, the bald and fat commentator that used to be alongside Antonio Lobato when F1 was broadcasted by the Telecinco station (since 2009 it has been broadcasted by LaSexta, Lobato was hired by them but Serrano wasn't). The actual phrase is "Se ha enganchado" (he's stuck), but as a consecuence of the excitement as well as of Serrano's overall lack of education and class (I'll talk about that later) he pronounced it as "sanganchao", repeatedly. Now, "San" is Spanish for "Saint", and from there comes the "San Ganchao" thing.

Back in 2007, Hamilton and McLaren were the subjects of a brutal campaign in the Spanish press, as you'll probably remember. Everything was a conspiration against Alonso, and so on. I won't enter on it but I'll say that it made me very hard to talk with other people about F1, here in Spain, because they were so partisan that I couldn't stand it. They were all rooting and praying for bad things happening to Hamilton, at least on track.

Going into the China race, Hamilton was about to clinch the title (2nd to Räikkönen would have done it), and it looked increasingly and increasingly likely that he would manage to do it. Then came their tyre troubles and his incident at the pit-lane entry, that managed to postpone his championship win and gave Alonso a final chance in Brazil, just when everything looked lost. During the early stages of that race, Lobato and Serrano were talking about a "miracle", just a miracle could keep Alonso's chances alive. And when Hamilton got stuck, Serrano said the "sanganchao" part and "that's the miracle" a bit later. At that point he wasn't aware, but people quickly joined "sanganchao" and "miracle" and it became "San Ganchao's miracle" (of course, Ganchao is not a given name at all in Spanish). It was widely celebrated in Spain, even before Hamilton actually lose the title in Brazil.

And about Serrano: if Lobato can be frustrating at times, Serrano was way worse. I actually developed a hate for the guy, for his continous lack of respect to the other drivers and his victimism (everyone was against Alonso). He would continously begin to speak and even scream while Lobato or De la Rosa were talking, and I even heard him swearing live a couple of times. As I said before, classless.

[P_Friesacher]

"So... yeah... With interest rates increasing, now would be an oppurtune moment to invest in goverment treasury bills."

So... yeah... isn't that still rather more something for the risk seeking investor?

[IdeFan]

I've debated on other forums who is worse: Allen or Legard, and I have to go with Legard.

Allen had the hardest job in the world of commentary: How do you follow a legend like Murray Walker? Not surprisingly he cocked it up.

Legard had the easiest job in the world: James Allen was near universally reviled, even an average commentator could follow that and seem great. But somehow he also cocked it up. He even uses confusing language. Sometimes in quali he will say "here comes Alonso" and I think "ok what time has he done" when what he is actually just starting his lap.

Sometimes he will get excited when a driver goes top of the timesheets, when he is in fact the first man to complete a lap, this is particularly bad in Q3 where he proclaims the driver to be on pole position just minutes into the session.

At other times he seems to totally forget what a good laptime is, when, say Button beats Sutil's time by 4 seconds, he will marvel at the time difference, when in fact Sutil as on an installation lap and Buttons time was still seconds off the practice pace.

Another thing which annoys me is when he says "and Webber sets the fastest lap!"....at the end of lap 1.

So while Allen was merely annoying and biased, Legard is annoying, seems to lack understanding of motorsport in general and completely mangles the english language while he does it. Oh and he is still pretty biased, the England vs Germany hype ahead of the European GP was particularly bad.

[Debaser]

Having just seen an advert with Nigel Mansell with that terrible Iranian "Comedian" who's name I've forgotten for car insurance it must be up there with television's worst.

[DonTirri]

We Finns seem to be a lucky nation. None of our commentators has been THAT atrocious. Granted, the current pairing of Saari-JJ Lehto (well, current until JJ was cruising in a boat drunk and got his passenger killed in a crash) can't get even close to the pair of Matti Kyllönen (Finlands Murray, just listen, you don't need to understand: Schuey retires at Suzuka 98 or to prove he can hype non-finns too: Schuey vs Villeneuve at Jerez(footage re-enacted in F1C)) and Erkki Mustakari was just awesome. Though, Pairing Kyllönen with Rosberg was great too.

[FullMetalJack]

Having just seen an advert with Nigel Mansell with that terrible Iranian "Comedian" who's name I've forgotten for car insurance it must be up there with television's worst.

That advert is cringeworthy

[DemocalypseNow]

Schumacher even manages to ruin an advert with his cheating! That B&$7@RD!!!

[ADx_Wales]

Omid Djallili, Money Supermarket.com

Bad advert, until he puts a fake 'tache on our Nige, that was mildly amusing.

[dr-baker]

Haven't watched enough commercial TV recently to know what this Mansell advert was all about so I looked it up on YouTube and it's not as annoying as this one for example.

[ADx_Wales]

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[AndreaModa]

...advert ranting and raving...

What about those retards on the National Accident Helpline ads?! Now THAT is television's worst!

[Yannick]

I agree with what was previously said about the coverage by German TV station RTL. They are indeed dumbing down their audience. A few years ago, co-commentator Christian Danner was refreshing. By now, he has effectively given up on trying to lift the level of the commetary that's so low Heiko Waßer's formulaic babbling. Pit reporter Kai Ebel has been interviewing boxers from the ring in RTL's boxing broadcasts before he joined the F1 commentary team in the early 90s. Sometimes, he uses his own fighting skills on other journalists to get through to his interview partners. But the worst is that he always asks them questions that are so silly and embarrassing that every TV spectator with a little bit of brains can identify them either as just plain stupid or an insult to the interview partner. So there is no way that this guy will get any previously unavailable information from an interview partner, less any insider info. RTL has been in F1 since the early 90s. They always tried to motivate their viewers to cheer for the German participants and they are siding heavily with them. That was particularly silly in early 1991 when the only German participants were Michael Bartels not qualifying in a Lotus - and the Porsche V12 engine not pre-qualifying in the Arrows. I liked Bartels but I never understood why they were wasting their time on trying to get people to cheer for the hapless efforts of Alboreto, Caffi and Johansson with that dog of an Arrows.

[Salamander]

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Amen to that. I hate those commercials so much...

[shinji]

You guys have never seen an annoying ad until you've seen this, or this.

Then there's Poo at Paul's, but let's not go there.

[ADx_Wales]

There was a boss called Paul where I work,we accused him of harbouring kids wanting to do a poo at his house. NOT the reason he got dropped out of the job though.

[Captain Hammer]

Let's see here ...

In Australia, the Everyman is none other than Greg Rust, who seems to have a weird paraphilia for Mark Webber. You think the Beeb's love of Lewis Hamilton is bad? It's nothing compared to this. Rust has been known to interrupt the commentary because they've gone without mentioning Mark Webber when "Mark Webber" was on-screen at the time. In reality, it was Sebastian Vettel. As has been said before, Rust needs to be hooked up to a machine that dispenses increasing amounts of pain every time he intones "Australia's Mark Webber". He's also been known to correct the pit reporter (James Allen or Peter Windsor), and get it wrong. He also has a disturbing habit of trying to get the pit reporter to agree with his opinion and present it as a fact; when Sutil blocked Webber in qualifying at Bahrain last year, Rust kept working on Windsor, trying to get him to say that Sutil's superlicence was in doubt because of the incident.

The Expert is Cameron McConville, a washed-up V8 Supercar driver who was never very good to begin with and had Nelson Piquet (or "It's everyone's fault but mine") Syndrome; just watch his accident at Phillip Island last year when he attacks Steve Owen for causing an accident despite the fact that McConville was nowhere near the racing line and never would have made it through - Owen was moving over to let McConville through on the other side. McConville apaprently thinks there is no difference between driving a V8 Supercar and a Formula 1 car, and seems to resent the Formula 1 drivers because he's not in the sport. His experience is limited to three laps of Motegi in a Honda RA108, and he has since taken it upon himself to be the resident tecnical expert, even though he knows nothing. He also likes to invent terms; when Brundle and Legard were discussing the Delta time in Valencia as the minimum allowable time for a driver to get back to the pits, McConville started talking about the "Gamma time", which he described as the maximum allowable time for a driver to get back to the pits.

And finally, the Jack Of All Trades is Darryl Beattie (occasionally replaced by Craig Baird). His Formula 1 experience is limited to motorcycle racing. It's really quite telling of the general quality of the commentary when Beattie is actually the best commentator.

The coverage is often embarrassingly sparse. We don't get free practice, and only the ONE HD channel gets qualifying. Instead of Brundle's famous gridwalk, we get an hour of Mark Webber hero worship and vague, generalised "reporting" that really only discusses what happened at the last race. We then cut to the BBC in time for the formation lap (usually in the middle of Brundle saying something interesting), with the Australians generally treating the Brundle and Legard like Ted Kravitz - someone they might cut to occasionally when there is something happening. Finally, before and after every ad break we get the Three Stooges offering their opinions on what is happening, which usually takes five minutes. And back in the days of refuelling, there was a tendency to cut to an ad break as the pit stops began despite this being when the most action would take place ...

[TomWazzleshaw]

Let's see here ...

In Australia, the Everyman is none other than Greg Rust, who seems to have a weird paraphilia for Mark Webber. You think the Beeb's love of Lewis Hamilton is bad? It's nothing compared to this. Rust has been known to interrupt the commentary because they've gone without mentioning Mark Webber when "Mark Webber" was on-screen at the time. In reality, it was Sebastian Vettel. As has been said before, Rust needs to be hooked up to a machine that dispenses increasing amounts of pain every time he intones "Australia's Mark Webber". He's also been known to correct the pit reporter (James Allen or Peter Windsor), and get it wrong. He also has a disturbing habit of trying to get the pit reporter to agree with his opinion and present it as a fact; when Sutil blocked Webber in qualifying at Bahrain last year, Rust kept working on Windsor, trying to get him to say that Sutil's superlicence was in doubt because of the incident.

The Expert is Cameron McConville, a washed-up V8 Supercar driver who was never very good to begin with and had Nelson Piquet (or "It's everyone's fault but mine") Syndrome; just watch his accident at Phillip Island last year when he attacks Steve Owen for causing an accident despite the fact that McConville was nowhere near the racing line and never would have made it through - Owen was moving over to let McConville through on the other side. McConville apaprently thinks there is no difference between driving a V8 Supercar and a Formula 1 car, and seems to resent the Formula 1 drivers because he's not in the sport. His experience is limited to three laps of Motegi in a Honda RA108, and he has since taken it upon himself to be the resident tecnical expert, even though he knows nothing. He also likes to invent terms; when Brundle and Legard were discussing the Delta time in Valencia as the minimum allowable time for a driver to get back to the pits, McConville started talking about the "Gamma time", which he described as the maximum allowable time for a driver to get back to the pits.

And finally, the Jack Of All Trades is Darryl Beattie (occasionally replaced by Craig Baird). His Formula 1 experience is limited to motorcycle racing. It's really quite telling of the general quality of the commentary when Beattie is actually the best commentator.

The coverage is often embarrassingly sparse. We don't get free practice, and only the ONE HD channel gets qualifying. Instead of Brundle's famous gridwalk, we get an hour of Mark Webber hero worship and vague, generalised "reporting" that really only discusses what happened at the last race. We then cut to the BBC in time for the formation lap (usually in the middle of Brundle saying something interesting), with the Australians generally treating the Brundle and Legard like Ted Kravitz - someone they might cut to occasionally when there is something happening. Finally, before and after every ad break we get the Three Stooges offering their opinions on what is happening, which usually takes five minutes. And back in the days of refuelling, there was a tendency to cut to an ad break as the pit stops began despite this being when the most action would take place ...

Bingo! Someone give this man a beer

Actually make it a 6-pack...

[Klon]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEPsK7Mvm3U

While we are at the topic of advertising...