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Rollingpk3
10-25-2015, 01:18 PM
with woodbine being my favorite track to play i just wanted to say what an excellent hire Robert Geller was. not easy to replace a legend but he has stepped right in and has become one of my favorite race callers. his calls just add to the experience of playing a track i love and probably the best compliment you can pay an announcer from an at home player is that the volume is always turned up when a race goes off.

thaskalos
10-25-2015, 01:27 PM
An EXCELLENT race-caller! :ThmbUp:

EMD4ME
10-25-2015, 01:41 PM
with woodbine being my favorite track to play i just wanted to say what an excellent hire Robert Geller was. not easy to replace a legend but he has stepped right in and has become one of my favorite race callers. his calls just add to the experience of playing a track i love and probably the best compliment you can pay an announcer from an at home player is that the volume is always turned up when a race goes off.

Dinerman is solid at EMD in his 1st year...With that said....

GOD I MISSSSSSSSSS GELLER.....

I posted like a madman when he left, that WO is lucky to have him.

He is so WITTY in his words. Is a great race watcher, he has no fear calling a horse before the horse even bursts to get up.

LOCKED UP.....

I miss hearing that too as the last horse loads.

dilanesp
10-26-2015, 02:31 PM
Geller's far better than Loiselle was.

I still find the whole obsession with announcers weird, however. The sport was the most popular sport in America during an era where at first there were no announcers at all and than later we had extremely embryonic calls with very little commentary.

In contrast, now that we have these incredibly descriptive announcers and yet fewer people like the sport. And when I'm actually at the track, the only announcer whose calls are loud enough to hear is Trevor anyway. The rest of them, I would have to look for a speaker to stand directly under to even hear them.

Keeneland didn't even have an announcer for decades, and drew good crowds. This really, really is like the absolute least important aspect of our sport. Among racetrack employees, I'd rather have competent stewards, placing and patrol judges, drug testers, receiving barn supervisors, and mutuel clerks, and an incompetent announcer, rather than vice-versa.

PaceAdvantage
10-26-2015, 02:47 PM
What does it matter that the sport started with no announcers? The fact remains there have been announcers as part of the game for DECADES UPON DECADES UPON DECADES now...so hearkening back to the REALLY good old days is hardly playing a winning hand.

The ANNOUNCER is the only connection the fan has with the action on the ground, other than his own eyes. If announcers were NOT considered at least SOMEWHAT vital to fans of the game, there wouldn't be so many posts on here CRITICIZING a select few of them and PRAISING an equally select few on a CONSTANT basis.

I don't think anyone has made the claim that announcers are CRITICAL to the survival or popularity of the sport. Is that the bar you're using these days when evaluating the game? If so, we can probably get rid of a LOT of things... :lol:

senortout
10-27-2015, 02:14 PM
One of the things you'll be missing, if you've not been attending the races for a good while, is the overwhelming number of binoculars slung over the shoulders and hung around the necks of the paying customers!
Before the infield television, and the aggregations of tv monitors throughout the stands, the decent set of binoculars was quite important to our sport; actually, it made the spectator more engaged if you stop and think about it. If he or she was totin' the only pair of decent binos amongst the group, then that led to other neat things sometimes. Can any of you recall this stuff?
Of course, the announcer situation is something else again. Whole 'nuther sitch(c'mon!)
There are announcers who fail to impress us. There are always attempts made to overstate a race as it unravels- geesh its really hard to please everyone!

Milkshaker
10-27-2015, 02:36 PM
I still find the whole obsession with announcers weird, however. The sport was the most popular sport in America during an era where at first there were no announcers at all and than later we had extremely embryonic calls with very little commentary.

Watch tonight's World Series (or any NFL broadcast) and compare those other sports' broadcasts to the era in racing that you are describing. Sideline reporters, multiple in-booth analysts, in-crowd commentators and hours upon hours of pre-game and post-game coverage handled by talent whose positions also did not exist way back when.

If anything, you could argue that racing is well behind the curve in terms of how its broadcasts have evolved.

chenoa
10-27-2015, 04:55 PM
Watch tonight's World Series (or any NFL broadcast) and compare those other sports' broadcasts to the era in racing that you are describing. Sideline reporters, multiple in-booth analysts, in-crowd commentators and hours upon hours of pre-game and post-game coverage handled by talent whose positions also did not exist way back when.

If anything, you could argue that racing is well behind the curve in terms of how its broadcasts have evolved.

Hong Kong and Australia put on great shows for their product.

dilanesp
10-27-2015, 07:09 PM
Watch tonight's World Series (or any NFL broadcast) and compare those other sports' broadcasts to the era in racing that you are describing. Sideline reporters, multiple in-booth analysts, in-crowd commentators and hours upon hours of pre-game and post-game coverage handled by talent whose positions also did not exist way back when.

If anything, you could argue that racing is well behind the curve in terms of how its broadcasts have evolved.

You should realize sports in general are less popular. Even football ratings are lower than they were in the 1960's and 1970's, and baseball is way, way down. So are auto racing and boxing.

It isn't as though this revolution in television coverage is necessarily what audiences want. Sports (except maybe the NBA) got their highest ratings during the age when there was a lot less detail on telecasts, a lot less analysis, and a lot less color.

It's very possible that really rabid fans love this stuff and outsiders don't.

Milkshaker
10-27-2015, 07:15 PM
It isn't as though this revolution in television coverage is necessarily what audiences want.

We are getting off topic, but I do agree with you on that point. The sports broadcasting revolution only bloomed because it is a vehicle for "content" around which commercials can be packaged.

castaway01
10-27-2015, 10:56 PM
You should realize sports in general are less popular. Even football ratings are lower than they were in the 1960's and 1970's, and baseball is way, way down. So are auto racing and boxing.

It isn't as though this revolution in television coverage is necessarily what audiences want. Sports (except maybe the NBA) got their highest ratings during the age when there was a lot less detail on telecasts, a lot less analysis, and a lot less color.

It's very possible that really rabid fans love this stuff and outsiders don't.

Once you say "sports in general are less popular", it's pretty hard to take anything else you say seriously. Yes, boxing and horse racing are less popular, but are fewer people watching college football on TV than they did 40 years ago? It's ridiculous to claim that. The NFL set more ratings records just this season, and this is in a world where there are 500 channels to choose from rather than 5.

Try again.

NFL Week 1 2015 Ratings at Record Highs (http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/nfl-record-ratings-for-opening-week-1201595991/)

dilanesp
10-29-2015, 01:05 PM
Once you say "sports in general are less popular", it's pretty hard to take anything else you say seriously. Yes, boxing and horse racing are less popular, but are fewer people watching college football on TV than they did 40 years ago? It's ridiculous to claim that. The NFL set more ratings records just this season, and this is in a world where there are 500 channels to choose from rather than 5.

Try again.

NFL Week 1 2015 Ratings at Record Highs (http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/nfl-record-ratings-for-opening-week-1201595991/)

"Fewer people" is the wrong metric.

THE POPULATION IS LARGER. So television-- an advertising-based medium, always promotes number of viewers.

But RATINGS ARE LOWER. A far smaller percentage of the population watches the World Series than did in the past, for instance.