On ESPN First Take this Wednesday, three grown men performed a real-life version of the barber-shop argument from Eddie Murphy’s Coming To America. The topic on this occasion was not the merits of Rocky Marciano and Cassius Clay, but Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay. Try as you might, it was almost impossible from the screaming match on offer to isolate exactly how and why Irsay was so objectionable. Only cryptic clues could be gleaned via the network’s rolling ticker.
The most vocal participant in the bun fight, as ever, was the show’s infamous star Steven A Smith, known colloquially as “Screaming A Smith”. After two minutes watching him in action you can see why. Smith’s ongoing thesis and life’s work, available daily from 9am on Australia’s ESPN2, is that he is right and everybody else is wrong. A typical anecdote: as a student-athlete at Winston-Salem State University in the 1980s, Smith broke new ground by using his college newspaper column to call for the sacking of his own basketball coach.
Last year there were dire predictions for First Take when Smith’s erstwhile sparring partner Skip Bayless upped sticks and moved to the Fox Network, but both men could start an argument in an empty room. Nothing of their combined incandescence has diminished since the split.
In actual fact you could barely call it a split. When First Take is going out live across Australia, you can simply wait until Smith runs out of breath and quickly flick across to Fox Sports News 500, where Bayless is invariably set to embark upon another bristling tirade against LeBron James, or whatever else has got his goat. But mostly LeBron. On Wednesday, like night follows day, Bayless was upbraiding the greatest basketballer on earth for the grievous offence of having not participated in the NBA All-star weekend slam dunk contest. Henceforth this slight on the game was discussed by panelists as if in need of a war crimes tribunal.
Bayless’s new show, Skip and Shannon: Undisputed, in which he argues instead with three-time Super Bowl champion Shannon Sharpe, mixes an ironic title with an almost identical format as First Take. The main difference is that participants sit at a round desk as a camera circles them from behind. If the debate itself does not induce a vomitous sensation, the production techniques surely will.
First Take, Undisputed and ESPN’s ubiquitous Sportscenter are American sports news and chat show formats perfected; tiny sprinkles of news as people scream at each other. In this media environment, whip-smart newsreaders and accurate, reliable game callers seem arcane and interchangeable. The Bayless’s and Smiths of the world – who can spend hours, days and weeks working themselves up into a lather over the most trivial matters – are the real stars.
I mention all this to establish context, and a counterpoint, having given over completely to the soothing qualities of the far less verbose and far more informative locally-produced Fox Sports News, rolling all day across Australia once Skip an co have finally collapsed in a pile of their own indignation. So often we bemoan the Americanisation of Australian sport, but among the great holdouts in TV’s headlong march towards complete idiocy are our sports news bulletins.
At this point Fox Sports 500 does it the best of any Australian station and with little fanfare, mixing the journalistic qualities glimpsed during the best parts of Sportscenter with a (very) toned-down version of the punditry and opinion offered by the likes of First Take and Undisputed. Even their UFC guy is a study in decorum. He wears a suit and all.
The consistent quality of Fox Sports News is due in no small part to the resources boasted by Rupert Murdoch’s evil empire, of course. Far more so, its success is a byproduct of admirable restraint from producers no doubt tempted to import the American model wholesale, and talented presenters who don’t indulge in bilious editorialising. Most just soberly relay the news, ask straightforward questions of guests, and – shock horror – actually listen to the answers.
In large doses, the effect of this as background noise is slightly hypnotic, something you’d never say of ESPN’s revolving cast of blowhards. Admirable, because there is no real kudos to be had these days presenting an intellectually nourishing mix of reportage and analysis from actual experts (tennis fans will weep at Wally Masur’s disappearance now he has moved on to Tennis Australia HQ). Fox do it day after day. At their best – as per, say, their humane and human treatment of the Phillip Hughes and Phil Walsh tragedies – Fox produce some of the most thorough and informative coverage of sport available in Australia.
How readily we come to accept US-style bluster in place of cold hard facts remains to be seen, but while Fox and their ilk are still sending reporters all over the country filing stories on location, and calling upon people who actually know what they are talking about, we should be thankful. Sports media is a giant balloon steadily filling with vast amounts of hot air. How fortunate there are still avenues of getting the latest news straight up, without the screaming match.
To matters more pressing, and one hopes this weekend’s A-League action will not see a repeat of the unpleasantness of last week’s homophobic Graham Arnold crowd banner. Fortunately, that’s an unlikely scenario, given Arnold and his table-topping side are at Melbourne City on Friday (SBS, 7:30pm AEST and Fox Sports 4, 7pm AEST) and the offending and offensive Wanderers fans involved in the sorry episode – who are now facing 18-month bans – will probably stay home on Sunday and miss out on Western Sydney’s game against the Glory in Perth (Fox Sports 4, 10pm AEST), whose AFL side West Coast no longer possesses bragging rights when it comes to such deplorable behaviour.
Meanwhile, the AFLW season has been many good things so far, but its ability to provide us with further laughs at the expense of winless Collingwood is certainly right in the mix. On Saturday (Seven, 7pm AEST) they take on the Bulldogs, who are 1-2 and playing at home. If the Pies are struggling as a team, no individual is feeling the heat more than star forward Mo Hope, who has a book due at season’s end but only one goal to write about so far. Hopefully she’s back in business with a bag. Of the JLT Community series men’s matches on the weekend, Gary Ablett’s return for Gold Coast against a host of comeback Bombers (Fox Footy, 4:30pm AEST) on Sunday will certainly be worth a look.
Saturday’s Giants-Fever matchup (GEM, 7pm AEST), will give us further pointers on how well the new Super Netball format is going down with TV audiences. So far, so good. Last Saturday’s coverage drew 858,000 eyeballs nationally, according to the host network, and more viewers in Sydney, Brisbane and Perth than the AFLW managed.
