Foxing what ain't broke

The goofy robots, Joe Buck, Tony Siragusa, the theme song that sounds too much like the Sleigh Ride Song... and Fox's NFL broadcast presentations are still head and shoulders above that which CBS dishes out in woeful fashion every Sunday.

Well, friends, that gap is about to close considerably as Fox will be adding in-game "mood music" to their football telecasts.

A new kind of NFL scoring: adding music to TV game coverage.
Don't laugh. Fox will formally announce today that it will do that on its regional Arizona Cardinals-Carolina Panthers game Sunday (1 p.m. ET) after an unannounced test on last week's Seattle Seahawks-San Francisco 49ers game. Fox Sports President Eric Shanks on whether such soundtracks will pop up on Fox's upcoming Super Bowl: "It's a possibility."

Given you're bombarded with mood-prompting music in TV shows, ads and movies — and in stadiums and arenas during games — it's seems inevitable that sideline shots of, say, Bill Belichick could end up being accentuated by Lady Gaga's Poker Face. That's Jay-Z's I Know What Girls Like taking us inside the heads of kickers who just made game-winning field goals. Cue It's Raining Men as players run out of tunnels. Everything going wrong for a team? Who you gonna call?Ghostbusters!

Fox's Shanks says game playlists could include famous artists — "the rule is you use it just once and don't edit it" — but will also draw on original medleys. For Sunday's game, Fox has 15 new cuts from James Cardoni, who has composed music for the prime-time show CSI.

But having cuts you'd hear in movies, like spooky chords when babysitters find out the calls are coming from inside the house, is one thing. Knowing when to use them is another. "This is all in the execution," Shanks says. "Just like music in movies, you have to use it at the right times. And imagine trying to score a movie the first time you're seeing it." Plus, he says, announcers during last week's test game needed to get their groove on "to get a feel whether to keep talking or let the music build the suspense or drama for the next play."

Just how bad will it sound? Take a listen for yourself as Fox sprung an announced demo run during last week's Seahawk/Niner game.







Do us a favor, Fox Sports. Keep the mood music with Harry Kalas, John Facenda and NFL Films.


Over-dramatizing Seahawks/Niners does an injustice to Sweetness, Gale, Barry, LT, Jim and other true NFL legends.





H/T: Hot Air

Taking a short break from the humdrum

… and speaking of breaks, Fox Sports’ “Sport Science” examines the science of the cross-over dribble or “ankle-breaker” in street parlance.

Recently-minted Boston Celtic, Stephon Marbury (“Starbury” to literally tens of kids around the nation) is the subject athlete who will attempt the breaking.

Ironically enough, the first person we saw use this move effectively was not an NBA baller but rather Chris Smith who played point guard for the Connecticut Huskies back in the early ‘90s.



H/T: Awful Announcing

Time for some hard ball?

We got back from Vegas a few hours ago and have been in de-compress mode ever since. Between a bowl of soup, the Monday Night game and Game 5 of the World Series, we’ll share some random thoughts on our weekend in Sin City, baseball, football and the elections that were, unfortunately, encroaching into our Vegas bubble more than we desired, in a series of updated posts.

And speaking of Game 5… the Phillies have themselves set up perfectly to wrap things up at home this evening as their ace Cole Hamels (4-0 in the playoffs this year) takes the hill against the Tampa Rays, Scott Kazmir. This should give Philly’s finest a riot-control live scrimmage opportunity against Philly's passionate and championship-starved fans in preparation for 8 days from now when this historic election will take place and win or lose, hordes of Sarah Palin supporters will take to the streets in America’s larger cities in either a really good mood or a very nasty mood.

The Giants-Steelers game yesterday was a highly entertaining affair featuring two of the more high profile teams in the league and would’ve been a perfect fit for NBC’s Sunday night prime-time slot except for the fact there was no Sunday night game last night. Why? Fox was broadcasting Game 4 of the World Series and the NFL was protecting one of its broadcast partners (Fox carries the NFC games) by not airing a game opposite that most surely would bury any World Series match up short of Red Sox-Yankees (uhhh, Beers? The Sox cannot play the Yankees in the World Series. Well, there you have it.) in what is already a historically low-rated Series.

We understand why the NFL does want to protect Fox but next time the T.V. contract is up and we’re Roger Goddell, we make it very clear to Ed Goren and the gang at Fox that the free pass on that first Sunday of the Series is over and that the NFL intends on running the Sunday night game as scheduled. Hey, we’re not totally heartless towards the national pastime… if the NFL has decreed Sunday night as “Football Night in America” with the prime match-ups then they need to start acting like it. As such, we could be talked into possibly giving up the now second-tier Monday night game (which, on the whole, has provided better games than the Sunday night affairs) for this late-October baseball sacrifice.

Picture is from I-15 North and the first pulse-quickening look at the California-Nevada border and its casinos.

(UPDATE #1): Suit was everywhere in Vegas and boy, was that ever a bummer. Well, to be precise, he was on T.V. an awful lot which we still resented. Imagine chilling at the the sportsbook, keeping an eye on the games while handicapping the ponies, when the benevolent patriarchal visage of America’s favorite infanticidal socialist pops-up on the big screen. Buzz. Kill. At least Kerry had the common decency (if not the funds) to not interrupt our blissfully ignorant-to-the-rest-of-the-world Breeder’s Cup weekend back in ’04.

Bumper stickers: We have absolutely no data to back this up – it is merely an anecdotal observation but for all the passion that Suit has supposedly generated among the Democratic faithful, we recall actually seeing more Kerry-Edwards stickers out and about in '04 than Suit-Gas Bag bumper stickers.

… and is anyone really surprised by this:

"State and local officials are investigating if state and law-enforcement computer systems were illegally accessed when they were tapped for personal information about "Joe the Plumber."

The speed by which the dirt on Joe the Plumber was unearthed certainly suggested something was amiss.

Or this: Barbara West, a news anchor in south Florida was interviewing Gasbagus Maximus and had the unwitting bad luck to use the word “Marx” as in, “Karl Marx” with regard to a question she asked concerning Obama’s economic policies. Gas-Max didn’t appreciate it and, again, faster than one can say, "G. Gordon Liddy" we find out that Barbara West's husband is a scofflaw of very minor proportions. Again, do not answer that door!