5: Football: NFL and NCAA:
Difficulty for TV announcing: 4 Difficulty for radio announcing: 6
In addition to being the most popular sport in the United States to watch, football is also the easiest sport to announce. The great luxury for announcing football on T.V. is that the pace of the game is slow, but it never stops completely. For example, before a play there is usually either a receiver or running back in motion; or even a change in the play. There are also not many key terms that announcers need to know regarding football. The list of important terms, excluding player names and positions, includes touchdown, field goal, downs, interception, fumble, scramble, hashmark, option, blitz, types of coverage, types of offense. With a relatively short list of terms for a TV announcer to memorize, and the pictures telling audiences what happened: Football announcing is about as simple as it comes.
And announcing football does not get much harder on the radio. Yes the announcer needs to convey down, distance, and where the teams are on the field to the audience, but those are pretty much the only extra difficulties to radio football announcing. The players in the NFL may hit the hardest, but football is by far the easiest sport to announce.
4: Basketball: NBA or NCAA.
Difficulty rating for TV announcing: 5 Difficulty for radio announcing: 7.
Basketball is a sport that most people have played before. So most members of the audience understand the general rules for scoring. The key terms that are used in basketball, announcing excluding players and positions, are: Free Throw, post up, baseline, box out, key, elbow, rebound, assist, rim, bucket, rotation, spacing, block, shot clock, double double, triple double. These 15 terms are the backbone to television basketball announcing because they apply to both the NBA and college basketball.
Another reason in why basketball is fairly easy to announce on TV is because the flow of the game is easy to follow and is rarely interrupted. Games stop during called timeouts or TV time outs, so there are few breaks in the action. There is enough going on in basketball to get excited about, but not too much that an announcer could loose track of things that are going on. But the luxury of TV announcing is that the pictures help to tell the story of what is happening. So you will see two color analysts for many basketball games in order to create conversation on air to keep audiences from getting bored.
In announcing basketball on the radio, there is little need for in game analysis because the play by play announcer has to paint the picture of the game for the audience. The announcer has to describe every move that the person with the ball makes in order to keep the audience informed. Since the audience can not see what is happening, the announcer has to describe the game in a way that the audience can visualize. In many cases, basketball sounds faster on the radio because announcers are describing every action the man with the ball is taking. That, in a nutshell, is why radio announcing is more difficult not only in basketball, but in almost all sports.
3: Baseball:
Difficulty for TV and Radio announcing: 7.5
Good news for those of you who want to be baseball announcers; there is no extra difficulty between TV and radio announcing. In baseball, announcing is the same for TV and radio. However, the fact that there are other difficulties that the sport presents.The challenge of announcing baseball is not just in the fairly long the list of terms, but also in the dreadfully slow pace of the game. Baseball has 162 games in a regular season. And if the team you are announcing for makes the playoffs, that could be as many as another 11 games you would have to announce. And that is in the regular year. Baseball also has what no other sport has, double headers. Double headers are when the same teams play each other twice in the same day. As your team's announcer, you would have to announce both games in one day, then travel with the team to their next game. Baseball is the ultimate marathon sport to announce.
2: Hockey:
Difficulty to announce on TV: 8 Difficulty to announce on radio: 9.
Hockey is a challenge to announce. The list of key terms to memorize is long, plus the list of European players with difficult names to pronounce is even longer. The puck is about the size of the human hand, and it moves at incredible speeds. Shots off the sticks of hockey players are hard to track for goalies that are heading towards them; let alone announcers who are completely dependent on the red light behind the goalie to tell when a player has scored. There are also few stoppages during the games compared to the other sports on this list, so announcers have little time to catch their breath. And to reiterate, announcing a hard game with no pictures is even harder. I don't know how radio hockey announcers do it.
But none of the sports mentioned are as difficult for announcers as....
1: Horse Racing.
Difficulty to announce on TV and Radio: 10
Now this may come as a head scratcher to most people. There are so few terms to learn and the typical horse race only lasts about 2-4 minutes. But the reason that these races are so hard to announce is pretty simple: The announcer has to keep track of 20 running horses, all with weird names, simultaneously. Because the horse races are so short, the announcers do not get any breaks for those 2-4 minutes, they have to keep talking. There are constant lead position changes, and keeping track witch weird named horse passed another weird named horse with your brain going a mile a minute is far from simple.
Still don't believe me? Feel free to try it for yourself. But don't come crying to me when you are out of breath and mess up the names of the winning horses.
So the next time you are watching football, basketball, baseball, hockey or even the rare horse race, remember the voices behind the microphone help shape your viewing or listening experience.
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