Point of View

I don’t know about you, but when I attend a sporting event, I like to watch the game in front of me, not the spectators behind me. But directors of televised sporting events are of a different mind. They seem to think that viewers are more interested in anything but the game itself. How else to explain why they repeatedly cut away from live action to show us the fans, the coaches, the bench, the cheerleaders—in short, everything but the game itself?  

    
It doesn’t matter what the sport is. During last season’s American League Playoffs, Fox cut away from virtually every pitch to show us a fur hat in the stands. Those of us in New York at the time already knew it was cold on that October night. And anyone outside the east would have recognized it quickly without the continual shots of the spectators huddled against the chill.

    
Anyone interested in following the New York Jets on TV has his attention repeatedly redirected to Fireman Ed and the large sidekick whose shoulders he sits on for over three hours. We get it.    

    
Last week, with 19 seconds to go in the NCAA women’s basketball championship and Notre Dame down five and pushing the ball upcourt, the ESPN director cut to a shot of the coach. Is there any fan in such a climactic moment who turns away from the climax and thinks, “I wonder what the coach looks like right now?”

    
The same director, at a televised staging of a Shakespearean production, would cut away from Hamlet’s soliloquy to a close-up of an usher in the back row.

    
Circuses have sideshows that provide a variety of amusements for the curious onlookers before the main event takes place. But when the action is in the center ring, everyone is watching the lion tamer and nobody at that moment cares what the bearded lady looks like. If the circus were televised today, the director would undoubtedly cut away from the tightrope walker high above the crowd to a shot of the groundlings looking up.  

    
Maybe it’s an attention-deficit thing. But here’s an obvious clue to those hyperactive directors who cannot keep their eyes on the ball and their cameras still: The stadium and arena seats face the field and court because that’s what fans pay to see. We don’t contort ourselves into positions with our backs to the action in order to give our full attention to fellow spectators. That’s a sideshow nobody wants to see.