Further to Marty's guide to watching football for free over the internet, I was watching the Mans City and Utd, and Liverpool vs. Chelsea this afternoon on a Sopcast broadcast of a Dutch sports channel (link from here).
With the exception of a brief period in which the commentary was in English and of a tennis match, the broadcast alternated between having no commentary and having commentary in Dutch. Inspite of the fact that I understood very little of what was being said (I wouldn't say I understood nothing - Dutch is, afterall, just German in a funny voice) the bits with commentary were a lot more enjoyable than those without. Turns out all you really need is the tone of voice acting as a musical score to the action, to get most of the benefits of commentary. I think this revelation - that what's being said is less important than that the tone of voice roughly mirrors the game - goes a long way to explaining the otherwise inexplicable successful careers of a fair few commentators, not to mention "colour men".
2 comments:
When I saw the post title in my RSS feed, I knew that post was by you :)
The importance of timbre cannot be overstated. Whilst Michael Holding does not provide the most insightful comments, he is the best cricket commentator because his accent is marvellous.
Was playing to the gallery a bit with that post title :)
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