Let me be the 17,000th blogger to lament how terrible the English-language commentary is for the World Cup games here in the US. It’s intrusive, unenlightening and generally ill-informed. When my son and I were watching the (woeful) England-Paraguay game ridiculously early in the morning, we switched to the Spanish-language coverage on Univision. Perhaps it’s because we can only understand a handful of words, but it was far less annoying.
I think there would be a great market here for someone to do a funny, intelligent radio commentary on World Cup games here. I know someone already owns the rights. But just as The Guardian and The New York Times do minute-by-minute commentaries online, a radio team could comment by watching ESPN and ABC’s television coverage and providing their own voiceover. When I lived in Milan in 1989-90 (including during the World Cup), Radio Popolare did just that. I used to put my radio next to the television because the radio commentary was both a wonderful, ironic send-up of sports announcing and highly informative.
I guess it was a mash-up using old technology. If someone tries it, let me know so I can escape the horrors of ESPN/ABC.
Lance
I’m sure anyone doing a mash up radio commentary would get into rights trouble soon.
bbc radio 5 online commentary is blocked abroad but you can get an Internet radio eg kerbango which gets it I am told.
we watched the game here in a local bar. and it was still dire.
best from Barcelona
richard
Australia’s SBS radio is broadcasting all matches in the language of the competing teams (SBS radio is the Australian governement’s multicultural broadcaster). It should be available as streaming audio, but I just tried it here:
http://www9.sbs.com.au/radio/#
and the links seem broken. Maybe they’ll get them up soon, and you’ll be able to hear a few England matches. I think they take the FIFA audio feed.
Richard, I think you’re probably correct about rights trouble, but I’m not sure why.
I watch a broadcast and don’t relay the picture or the sound. On the radio I talk about what I’m watching. What infringement is there? On a practical level, if I were really determined, I could probably go to the Cayman Islands and do a streaming broadcast over the Internet. I know that’s just a legal dodge, but still.
The Australian idea of broadcasting in the competing teams’s languages is great.