Soccer host Schiller: Noisy stadium caused trainwreck but we don’t deserve Twitter lynch mob
The host of Wednesday night’s widely derided ABC coverage of the Sydney versus Liverpool match has addressed the controversy, saying fans should have treated the broadcast in the fun spirit it was intended.
Schiller: Speakers in the stadium were extremely loud
Speaking on his drivetime show on ABC Radio Adelaide last night, Julian Schiller attacked the Twitter “lynch mob”, said he was not ashamed of the chaotic coverage, and that the stadium was unexpectedly noisy.
Fans don’t want to see or hear “comedians” mock their game and stars. They want commentators who know the game. Schiller doesn’t seem to get it.
As a huge football fan, and Sydney fc fan, this game was a light hearted exhibition match to please Liverpool fans. No biggie. So the ABC lightened it up. Based on that clip I thought it was pretty funny. Cringeworthty funny like the NYE coverage, but it’s a little bit of authentic Aussie at the same time. The anger does seem a little misdirected.
Julian Schiller, (edited under Mumbrella’s moderation policy) on Aus TV. Reallly don’t understand how he gets so much airtime?!!!?
“The stadium was too noisy” “We did our best with limited preparation” Give me a break! The lesson here don’t ever give ABC any live TV.
Look what did with NYE broadcast. They are a shambles
When this goes viral, people think this is a normal Australian broadcast. We become an international laughing stock
ummm, Roy & HG didn’t mock games and stars for 25 years did they?
Julian is right – as much as i hated the broadcast and the fact that the national broadcaster couldn’t broadcast live throughout the country, someone else decided to put that mess to air.
ABCTV has covered live sports throughout its history though in recent years through budgetary restrictions sport has become a minor genre. Obviously the expertise has been lost over this time as any experienced operator knows the sound will be completely different in a full stadium rather than an empty one during rehearsals. Secondly the ABC seems to make much of its entertainment programming hosted by comedians in an effort to appeal to the missing younger audiences. Sport skews very old demographically on TV and so fails to attract the younger audience and is losing the traditional older audiences as is being seen in news and current affairs. Finally I watched the coverage of the game and the hosting was a disgrace.
Could this be a result of tensions between ABC and FFA? ABC were the only FTA network to submit a bid for the Saturday night A-League games. ABC’s Sunday afternoon coverage of the W-League is actually quite good. Was this really an accident?
Schiller’s responses show how little he understands about football, the audience, and what it takes to accept responsibility when you stuff up.
It’s unfortunate that Schiller and Co are getting slammed (though they were very poor) but the ABC program executives deserve the real heat. Sarah Walsh (the only actual talent on display during the broadcast) was criminally under-used – case in point, she got an interview with Steven Gerrard at half-time and whoever was in charge chose to broadcast a cringeworthy fan interview segment instead. Just embarrassing.
100% correct
You are comparing oranges to apples.
A) people have the choice to watch a proper broadcast whenever HG and Roy do a game, soccer fans did not on Wednesday night
B) HG and Roy are smart and funny, the fools used by the ABC on Wednesday night are not
I don’t understand the ‘noisy venue’ thing: this is a professional broadcaster and if anyone should know how to operate a microphone in a high noise location it’s the abc who have a research group. It’s not rocket surgery, you either close-up mic the speaker, use a highly directional gain microphone, use some kind of active noise cancelling or all three. Even just turning the audio inputs to point away from the noise source can work wonders. A booth perhaps? There is a reason race callers used to have microphones with lip-bars… The only basis for this excuse is because they wanted some faux ambient experience and stuffed it up. Where was the producer and head O.B. in this?