Wednesday, February 06, 2013

What I Should Have Said Theater

Where was Steve Tasker when the lights went out? In the dark.
CBS did a horrible job updating the fans throughout the entire blackout, but none worse than Steve Tasker, who despite being a television reporter, couldn't coherently report what was going on.
Remember, fans at home saw the lights go out, then 30 seconds or so of ambient crowd noise, then a commercial. We knew nothing, and they came back to Tasker who said "welcome back to New Orleans, I'm Steve Tasker sideline reporter for the uh, Super Bowl 47, if you're expecting to hear our friend Jim Nantz it may be a moment before he gets on. Half the power in New Orleans Stadium, the Superdome here, almost a perfect semicircle of the lights, half the stadium, went out, the scoreboard is also not working as well."

Here's what Steve Tasker should have said:
"I'm Steve Tasker, there has been a power failure at the Superdome. Half the lights are out. There is no power in our broadcast booth where Jim Nantz and Phil Simms are. There are enough lights still on, so no one is panicking. We do not know what caused this, and we do not know how long it will take to fix it. Both teams are just milling around wondering when they will be able to resume play."

Granted, I have the benefit of time, he didn't, but a reporter should always say his most important thing in his first sentence. If he practiced that enough, it would become habit. The first thing he said should have been about the blackout or the lights going out, not about the Superdome and our friend Jim Nantz.

4 comments:

Bill said...

I think you're being too hard. Was he Cronkite? No, but I thought he handled himself well.

focks said...

i think you consumed too many pieces of cookie cake

Paul said...

There's no middle ground, either you do a good job explaining what's going on, or you don't. His report was horrible. I transcribed it verbatim, it took him way too long to say the lights were out.

Paul said...

In total, I ate two pieces of cookie cake. I took a second piece, but I put it down to clean up after Julian and Mrs. Nails threw it away. So that's why I had to take a third.