TV, IN its eagerness to deceive viewers, almost always ends up out- smarting itself.
The Masters, for example, is not such a special event that it shouldn’t be presented in the deceptive manner that all networks present golf:
The viewer should believe that a lot of what appears on tape is actually live. That makes the network and production crew look as if they have an uncanny feel for being in the right place at precisely the right moment.
But in their short-sighted haste to fool us, golf productions have conditioned us to know precisely what to expect, and when. In
their haste to enhance drama by delivering taped action as live, networks have only diminished the drama by conditioning viewers to anticipate what they’re about to see.
Saturday, for example, CBS suddenly cut to Bernhard Langer, who was looking at a long putt on the 13th green. We hadn’t seen much of Langer in nearly three rounds of coverage. So why now?
That’s an easy one. Either he was about to pull a knife on a little girl in the gallery or he was about to sink the putt. Langer rolled the ball into the hole, as if we didn’t know that was coming, as if we didn’t know that such a sudden switch to Langer was a matter of video tape and not clairvoyance.
Friday’s round, on USA Network, a CBS co-production, was filled with such highly-predictable foolishness, including an instance when the deception was revealed in an almost comical fashion.
In an up-to-the-moment update of the entire field that appeared along the bottom of the screen, Fred Funk was listed as 1-under. Moments later, CBS/USA cut to Funk seconds before he sank a longish birdie putt. Not that we suspected that this Kodak Moment was being shown live. As with Langer, we hadn’t seen much of Funk until then.
But after Funk holed the putt, we were told that the birdie now puts him at 1-under. Oh, so that was the live putt, made who knows how long ago, that put Funk at minus-1.
Yesterday, more than an hour into the final-round telecast, the first time we saw Tom Lehman was when he was ready to stroke a birdie putt. You knew it would be in the hole, not the moment he hit it, but the moment he appeared. It was. Yet, no one on CBS as much as hinted that it was on tape.
It’s not just on putting greens. Whenever you see a player, a player you haven’t seen much or at all during the telecast, just as he’s about to hit to a par-3, it’s a virtual lock that he’s about to leave the ball stiff to the pin.
And so, what golf networks’ little deceptions are intended to create — some dramatic and self-serving enhancement — eventually make for the opposite. It’s like when you’re about to enter a movie theater to see a who-done-it and someone on the way out tells you who did it.
ANYTHING worth doing is worth overdoing; thus the Tiger Woods era is filled with excesses. On Saturday, CBS continuously displayed its Page 1 leader board with Tiger Woods at the bottom, “Tied with five others at -1.” Someday we might read a headline: “Tiger Woods, Nine Million Others, Vanish In Nuclear Attack.”
A welcomed change in CBS/USA’s Masters coverage was that the telecasts began with a look at the leaderboard. In the past, they began with long and flowery tributes to The Masters, thus annoying eager viewers by trying to sell them on watching something they’d already tuned in to watch.
Ken Venturi, as he did yesterday when David Duval blocked his approach shot into the water on the 13th, has a habit of confusing bad swings with “bad decisions.” They’re two different things. It’s not as if Duval aimed wrong or had the wrong club, he mis-hit the shot.
BOB Murphy, last week, worked his 48th consecutive home opener. Prior to becoming an original Metscaster in 1962, Murphy worked Red Sox’, then Orioles’ broadcasts … . Lookalikes: the Mets’ Derek Bell and Bob Raissman.
Because Bobby Murcer still mostly does imitations of pedestrian sportscasters, last week on Channel 5 he prefaced an in-game recap with the reflex-actioned, “For those of you just tuning in … ” Come on, Bobby, it’s Tuesday in New York, 1:15 in the morning.
If you want a good idea of how sneaker money — in this case, Nike’s — makes American universities — in this case, St. John’s — sit up, roll over and play dead, check out HBO’s “Real Sports,” tonight at 10. Until the NCAA, not to mention the Feds, breaks the grip of the sneaker cartel, any and all calls for NCAA reform are either naive or a con.
Of all the guys who don’t get it, John Daly may be the guy who doesn’t get it most. To prove that he has his alcohol abuse problem under control, he posed for a photo that appears within a feature on him in this month’s Esquire. Standing in his yard, middle-of-the-day, Daly poses holding a garden hose in one hand, a can of beer in the other.
Jerry Orbach, as good an act as he is an actor, hosts Make-A-Wish’s eight-ball fund-raiser at Roseland tomorrow to kick off the U.S. Open Pocket Billiards Championship. He’ll be joined by his “Law and Order” co-stars, as well as Paul Sorvino, Jason Sehorn and others (Jerry Seinfeld, we’re told, might even show). For details, call Blatt Billiards, 212-674-8855.
Orbach, by the way, is a nine-ball specialist. “It’s the only thing I do better than most people.” … WFAN’s Bob Wischusen yesterday worked as a courtside reporter on NBC’s Pacers-Hornets regional telecast … Channel 5’s Curt Menefee hosts the Yankee home opener pregame, tomorrow at noon. Channel 5 will cover the World Series flag-raising, as well as player introductions.
Bengals LB Steve Foley was arrested last week, for only the fourth time in a year, this time for firing a gun outside a nightclub … The announcement of what could be the biggest bust in the history of the scam-infested sports memorabilia business, we’re told, is just a few days away.
Gary Thorne must be spreading himself too thinly. Yesterday, during ABC’s Avalanche-Red Wings telecast, he said, “Colorado down, 2-1.” Moments later, he said, “Red Wings trying to get their two-goal lead back.” Is it possible Thorne didn’t know that Colorado, not Detroit, was winning, 2-1?
DURING Wednesday’s Habs-Rangers telecast on MSG, Mike Richter, recovering from knee surgery at Lenox Hill, called to bid on a round of golf with Sam Rosen and John Davidson, part of MSG’s “Charity Week” TV telethon.
Or at least Richter tried. The young man who took Richter’s call didn’t believe it was him, insisting that Richter provide a credit-card number. Richter said he didn’t have his wallet handy — he was on his back in a hospital bed. Sure, likely story.
The Garden finally got confirmation when a call was placed to Richter’s room. Richter then went on the air from Lenox Hill and eventually was outbid for golf with Rosen and Davidson, the first break he caught all season.