Live television can be incredibly unpredictable sometimes, and that unpredictability was on full display Monday night when ESPN had to transition its coverage of the Bills/Bengals game to coverage of Damar Hamlin's medical emergency on the field.
Many have praised ESPN for how the talent and reporters handled the situation for that four or five hour window from the time Hamlin collapsed. On 97.5 The Fanatic in Philadelphia, host Tyrone Johnson shared in giving the MNF and SportsCenter crew their flowers, but Johnson said to carry coverage for that long without a ton of new information coming in was a really tough ask of everyone involved.
"We saw what happened, everyone reacted then they had to continue to talk about it without any new information," Johnson said Tuesday. "They did a very good job doing it, but they kept on having to do it without an update."
Johnson just wished that once everyone was in a situation where they had to wait to figure out the latest, ESPN should've tossed it to alternate programming.
"Cut to something with a scroll that says we will be back as soon as we have an actual update," he said. "I'm saying up until the Scott Van Pelt SportsCenter - whatever the normal programming would be - to fill the time here's a 30 for 30, Last Dance, whatever it is with a scroll, and then we'll have SportsCenter at whatever time unless we get information. And then we'll come right back and tell everyone the information."
Ricky Botallico thought about having to be involved in the first production since the death of famed Phillies broadcaster Harry Kalas and remembered how raw people's feelings were on the air.
"What happens is real emotion comes out. I mean when Harry Kalas passed away I had to be on the first show," he said. "It was not easy, definitely not fun."
Johnson said at least at that time the show had information on Kalas' death that they could report. In the instance of ESPN and Damar Hamlin, Johnson felt like it wasn't right to force its hosts and analysts to fill several hours with reaction and no news.
"To have no information and just make them go on and on, it wasn't that they did a bad job," he said. "I thought they were asking them to do something unfair."
No comments:
Post a Comment