Zoren: Why we’re starting to feel high on Kate Bilo
I admit it.
As much a I prefer newscasts to be straightforward, I enjoy clever byplay among the anchors on news teams.
My favorite commentator, Lucy Noland, was unceremoniously ripped from my sight at the end of May, so I’ve been looking at people who are adept and entertaining – remarking about the news while never getting in the way of it.
Channel 29’s Sue Serio is always on that list, but by searching, I’ve found some others who are taking the edge from my missing Noland. (And miss her I do.)
One is Channel 3 weather anchor Kate Bilo.
I’ve always liked Bilo because she is a voracious reader who consumers a variety of books each year and can be counted on to recommend something interesting to fellow bookworms.
Until recently, I did not appreciate how intelligently glib she is in her anchor chitchat with Ukee Washington and Jennifer Kartalija. These three have an easy rapport. I would say Washington has covered as much of the waterfront as anyone in local news, but it is Bilo who makes me laugh, raise an eyebrow, or nod in appreciation of the offhand line or observation.
I feel remiss at just noticing this. Unless it’s a new freedom or sense of comfort Kate recently developed. I find myself focused on “Eyewitness News” weather reports, and more, on the dialogue as control is transferred from Kate to Ukee and Jen and vice versa.
Channel 3 has another team I enjoy watching, its morning crew of Jim Donovan, Janelle Burrell, and Katie Fehlinger. There’s sharpness amid their friendly patter.
A Salute to Miranda
As I watched station after station report how people lined around the block to buy tickets for “Hamilton’s” late August arrival at Philadelphia’s Forrest Theatre, I thought of the first time I saw and was introduced to the show’s creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and how far Miranda’s come since then.
I’m sure Miranda would not remember the occasion, one which only goes to show you never know how famous someone with whom you have a brief, chance encounter will go.
Miranda’s first off-Broadway transfer to Broadway, “In the Heights” was in early previews at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, which would later become “Hamilton’s” New York home. A close friend of mine is a cousin of one the original cast members, Tony-winner Priscilla Lopez, known mostly for introducing “The Things I Did For Love” in the original company of “A Chorus Line.”
After seeing “In the Heights,” which made an impression as a show and for Miranda’s moving performance of the lead character, Usnavi, I accompanied Lopez’s cousin and her sister to Lopez’s dressing room. We were preceding to dinner, when one landing below, there was Miranda, just about to sit down to a dinner his mother brought for him to eat between shows.
Introductions ensued. Compliments were given. Miranda was as natural and as eager to hear what people thought as a star-in-the-making can be.
My lasting image of the day is seeing Miranda’s mother serve him dinner and the simple family warmth it engendered. It made me a Lin-Manuel Miranda fan beyond his work.
That work has extended to television. Although Miranda has not yet composed a work for the little screen, contractual deals are in place to make one think he will contribute a major work in the future. Meanwhile, he played “All That Jazz” star Roy Scheider in the recent mini-series, “Fosse and Verdon,” and he will appear later this year playing Lee Scoresby in a television adaptation of Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials.” Scoresby is a balloonist-adventurer who is called upon to help rescue orphan children.
That seems like something that would suggest, or attract Miranda, who in the movie “Mary Poppins Returns” and other works, tends to play characters as upbeat as he seems to be on stage and in personal appearances.
Others in “His Dark Materials,” which comes to the BBC and HBO this fall, are James McAvoy, as Lord Asriel, and Ruth Wilson. Dafne Keens plays focal character, Lyra Belacqua.
In addition to the theater and television, I read extensively about the American Revolution. My favorite Founding Fathers are George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. Another “thanks” I owe Miranda is rescuing Hamilton from being considered a questionable revolutionary and giving him a period as the admired hero he deserved to be.
Crying ‘foul’ on baseball telecasts
I am a baseball fan who tends to read box scores of my favorite teams, the Phillies and the Dodgers, online because I don’t usually have the time to watch games on television. (Too busy watching and fleeing from the first half-hour of new series to look at anything recreationally!)
This year’s MLB All-Star game was an exception. Conditions were right for me to tune in, so I did.
Forget the baseball. From a television point of view, there was a lot that annoyed me.
Article after article is written about how television influences sports. High-dollar contracts, and the need for networks to maximize their investments, give television producers increasing say in the conduct of games. More and more, broadcasting innovations, or television’s need to keep images moving and provide a variety of material, gets in the way of those games.
I’ve noticed this on local
broadcasts. Perhaps I’m a dinosaur who can’t see the value of adding TV concepts to sports events, but from the time NBC Sports Philadelphia or its various predecessors began taking the camera off Phillies games to focus it on Gregg Murphy in the stands, I’ve been crying “foul!”
Watching the All-Star game, I cried, “Murder!”
Murphy, who I like and who does a good job, delivers news items from the stands or talks to fans and visiting celebrities as part of his assignment, doing feature stories that accompany the game.
He probably didn’t conceive of the idea. He’s the one who carries out the producers’ bidding.
It just happens that his or her bidding often means several minutes during which viewers cannot see what they tuned in to see, live action on the field.
Years after Murphy began doing his segments, and with total awareness they’re coming, I continue to bristle when some claptrap
that can be covered by audio, or some feature that can be wedged in before an inning’s first pitch, prevents me from viewing even an inconsequential bit of field action. I’d rather take in the least meaningful pitch, or some routine 4-to-3 (second to first baseman) groundout, than watch Murphy report an injury affecting another team or talk to some fan wearing a funny hat.
Again, it’s not Murphy about which I’m complaining. It’s the producer’s choice, and I think nerve, to interrupt a game for things that can wait until postshows or be eliminated altogether. I can’t figure out who the offending segments help or entertain.
At least Murphy never does anything that can jeopardize the outcome of a game.
Not so Fox and its shenanigans at the All-Star Game.
I repeat I don’t often watch nationally broadcast games, but I was appalled when producers and announcers had the temerity to involve players in commentary and conversation while they actually competed on the field.
Sure, congratulate members of
the deservedly well-represented Houston Astros for wearing mikes that let you hear their byplay and let the viewer in on what players might say during a game (or might say specifically because they’re wearing mikes and feel compelled to say something).
So what if some of the byplay is taking place during the course of an active inning?
For me, this creates the wrong kind of suspense. Instead of wondering what an Astro might think, feel, or be moved to express, I kept waiting for one to commit a boneheaded error because he was distracted from his job at hand to suit an idea of Fox that has nothing to do with the game.
Even worse was a late-inning gambit in which play-byplay announcer Joe Buck, never the most illuminating of bulbs, had an ongoing conversation with Colorado Rockies outfielder Charlie Blackmon as Blackmon was providing defense for the losing but competitive National League.
Perhaps if Buck posed an interesting question, or if Blackmon had anything insightful, or even amusing to say, this segment
may have attained some value.
As it was, it brought out my naughtier side. I kept hoping Blackmon would miss a play opportunity because Buck had him listening to and responding to his inanities rather than applying full concentration where it needed to be, his position in the outfield.
The lack of salient information arising from bits like Buck and Blackmon’s make the broadcasters’ imposition even more irritating.
Miking players in a game is not new. The NFL has allowed broadcasters to do it for years. Pulling the camera away from field action for some sideline report has, sadly, also become part of a sports producer’s playbook.
Their institution as routine habit doesn’t excuse them.
Believing that anything an announcer could ask an athlete, or any answer that athlete might give, can be more important than a game at hand borders on hubris. It smacks of not knowing when an idea is bad one, and stupid one, or even a dangerous one.
I often can’t wait for Joe Buck
to shut up, but last Tuesday, I was praying he would. Or that Charlie Blackmon would say, “I’m playing a game here, man.” What’s next? Going into dugouts or to benches between innings, quarters, or periods, to have people cry about the pain they go through in training and practice to perform like the nudniks of reality programs like “The Voice” or “Dancing with the Stars” do?
Perhaps I’m an anomaly. I watch games to see games. I am not beyond muting my television’s audio so I can’t hear announcers. I am not beyond turning off my TV sound during Phillies games so I can hear Scott Franzke, Larry Anderson, and Jim Jackson, whom I prefer, comment in lieu of the TV crew.
Television has to learn its place. It’s one thing to enhance, as with boxes showing a strike zone or superimposed lines showing the distance to a first down. It’s another to interfere.
Fox and its announcers interfered with last week’s All-Star Game. Probably with the consent of Major League Baseball, which makes matters all the sadder.