BBC commentators question

Pretty much will echo what PoolBoy says.

The BBC do occasionally mention tournaments other than the ones they cover, so there obviously isn't any kind of rule telling them not to. However when they do discuss other tournaments, they tend to gloss over them a bit making them sound trivial and unimportant.

This may be deliberate on the part of the BBC, but is also due to what PoolBoy touched on his second point. A lot of the commentators are woefully misinformed about the professional game.

I watched an episode of Question Of Sport with Dennis Taylor on, and he too was clueless when it came to the snooker questions. And I mean clueless. There were several about snooker. (They try to add questions that are about the sport the guests participate in.) One question he was asked to name a Crucible finalist whose surname began with T. He sat there looking baffled for a few moments and then went; "Oh, I was one of them." Literally, he struggled to answer a question about his own World Championship winning performance. (That the BBC have been mentioning every tournament since.) He didn't get any of the other snooker questions correct at all.

I suspect it's a combination of both the BBC blase attitude, and commentator laziness/dislike of watching televised snooker. If their employee doesn't care that they know nothing about a sport they are paid to be experts in, why should they bother to keep themselves informed?

North Long time fan wrote:Dennis taylor I personally think he's the worst commentater on snooker ever. He thinks he was a world beater. And talks far too much about rubbish mainly puts me off watching good matches.

New member.

The_Abbott wrote:I've never really had much problem with the commentators but they go off track too much about golf etc... And like you say they don't know half of the new players. They should do some research. AT least someone like Doherty is still on the tour therefore has more information about these newer players. Dropping Willie before JV or Taylor though is unforgiveable.

Surprising maybe. But not unforgivable.

Lets face it, he is a marmite commentator. He won absolutely nothing in his career. His big boast is that he got a load of 147s in practice. And yet, all he does is sit round bellyaching if players don't go for the shots he wants them to, even if it proves to be the correct decision.

Being able to name commentators that are worse than him, doesn't automatically make him a good commentator.

Dan-cat wrote:Here's the news. If you don't count proper snooker anoraks like us, Dennis Taylor is the most popular commentator.

Yeah, that's true. He has a lot of support amongst casual, only watch when it's on BBC type fan.

That's kind of the BBC's MO, and one of the things they do well. Market their product at people who only wish to watch the Majors. People who will watch The Masters, but don't give a stuff about the Welsh Open or the Champion Of Champions, like the BBC punditry.

It obviously has a higher budget, has more features and celebrity appearances, has commentators they've heard of because they use famous names. The commentators refer to the 1980s which is the supposed 'glory days'.

Fans like that don't care that the commentators are clueless as to who 50% of the players are. Just assume that if the BBC commentators are unaware of a player, they can't be up to much. Also golf banter etc probably goes down better. It's less formal, more aware of other interests outside snooker.

Us losers who get up at 6am to watch snooker from China on Eurosport aren't the majority sadly, and aren't the people for whom the BBC aims it's product.

Andre147 wrote:That's the thing isn't it...

BBC aims at casual snooker fans, who basically only watch BBC tournaments, ITV and even ES aims at die hard Snooker fans who take Snooker seriously and hate when clueless comms like Taylor are just clueless.

Sadly, Andre, there's more of them than there are of us.

Dan-cat wrote:Good job, or there wouldn't be a TV sport!

The numbers could stay the same, we just the same fans to gain more knowledge, dammit.


Naah. I'm kidding.

Badsnookerplayer wrote:

Dan-cat wrote:TWITTER ATTACK

@stephenfry

How wonderful to hear veteran #snooker commentator Clive Everton at the @ChampOfChamps this evening. His tones have been much missed

Hear hear

Where where?