Sending broadcast team down from booth to bench marks new low in hype, and leaves analysts and audience to drift in space.

Like many, I will admit that I got lured in by the promise of something new, something fresh, something that on the surface seemed like it might just be a good idea. And then after about a minute, I was left wondering why there was so much hype for TSN’s recent experiment (at least I hope that’s all it is) in hockey broadcasting.

It’s remarkable how the idea of putting the play-by-play guy and the colour analyst at ice level between the benches generated so much publicity for the network for a game earlier this month between the New York Rangers and Buffalo Sabres. It was the talk of sports radio stations across the country and splashed on the front pages of sports sections, and it gained a fair bit of attention on television—especially, and not surprisingly, on TSN.

But why? What was the big deal?

So two guys were between the benches calling a hockey game. The way this thing had been hyped, you would have thought a dog was doing play-by-play. And if TSN is only in it for the publicity, then it probably won’t be long before a pooch gets a shot behind the microphone.

The network trumpeted the “innovation” as an opportunity to capture the speed and excitement of the game by putting the broadcasters closer than ever to the action. But if you hadn’t been beaten over the head with the build-up for this event and simply flipped the game on, chances are you wouldn’t have had a clue as to whether Chris Cuthbert and Glenn Healy were between the benches, in the broadcast booth, or out in the parking lot for that matter. These guys are pros; they were going to do a good job wherever they were, but they didn’t do anything they don’t normally do. This one looked and sounded like every other hockey game ever shown on television.

What was TSN really hoping to achieve? And what, exactly, was the viewer supposed to get out of this whole thing?

Hockey, like all sports, is a visual game. The only way to enhance the viewing experience of the between-the-whistles action is to get creative with new camera angles. Putting a couple of schmoes between the benches may have been a kick for them, but it did absolutely nothing for the guy sitting at home watching the game. In fact, I would go so far as to say TSN’s experiment did a disservice to the viewer.

If an analyst’s job is to watch the game and dissect it for the viewer, that task is best done from above, where the entire ice surface can be seen without having to look through a bunch of bodies all scrambling for loose pucks. Sure, the guys between the benches may have picked up on some of the emotion of the game and perhaps even some of the inter­play between the two teams or the teams and the officials, but those are all things that a third member of the broadcast team could have garnered and reported while the main men worked in their usual perch.

But putting the play-by-play team rinkside was a blatant case of TSN overselling and underdelivering. Just ask a guy who’s been in that position.

“Every time we go into Madison Square Garden in New York, we have the wonderful opportunity to work in Row 5, right behind the penalty box,” John Shorthouse, the radio voice of the Canucks, says about the difficulty of ice-level broadcasting. “It’s the only rink in the league where we have anything close to a chance to do that. Basically, you’re at ice level. And I’m telling you, it’s tough. It is tough. When you see a shot go from the point on the same line you are into the front of the net area, into the slot, you lose sight of the puck like you wouldn’t believe and it just becomes this mad flurry of skates and sticks and you can’t see where the puck is and you don’t see whether it goes in the net. In order for me to do my job to the best of my abilities, I think I need to be high up.”

I have no problem with TSN trying to be innovative, but I don’t want to hear the network trumpeting its vision and its enhancement of the game. They tried it, it didn’t do much for anybody or the NHL, so go back to the drawing board and come up with something new.

It’s like sending men to the moon. Space programs tried it, realized there wasn’t a whole lot up there and have now moved on to bigger and better projects. Maybe TSN could call a game from outer space—or maybe they could just send Glenn Healy there on a one-way ticket.

The National Hockey League and its network partners always seem more concerned with attracting new viewers than adequately servicing the ones they’ve already got. There was nothing wrong with the way games were being shown on television, and putting broadcasters between the benches isn’t going to be enough to convince more fans to watch the games.

Continue to put microphones and cameras on the players, the coaches, the officials, and anywhere else that can bring the elements that make hockey such a great game to the viewers at home. But don’t think that two guys talking about hockey at ice level will get more people to watch the sport. It’s simply not going to happen.

I was hoping that TSN would have come to that conclusion on its own, but the network had the same two guys in the same broadcast location for a second game the following week. The second time around was the same as the first and left me spending more time wondering why they’d bothered than watching the game. In fact, I found it to be a tune-out factor because I felt I was getting an inferior product.

So scrap the experiment. And wake me up when they’ve found a dog that can get the job done.

Jeff Paterson is a sportscaster and talk-show host on Vancouver’s all-sports radio, Team 1040. E-mail him at jeff.paterson@team1040.ca.