Media Critique: Tampa Announcers Way Over the Top

The south Florida fan base out in full force

As far as a sports fan is concerned, satellite radio is a godsend in that you can listen to any game you want. It's a league pass for your radio.

The only downside is that you are sometimes saddled with fingernails-on-chalkboard broadcast teams. You're given access to every game, but 90 percent of the time your only option is to listen to the home team's broadcast. Some of the broadcasters you wouldn't otherwise hear are good, some aren't.

Some are downright un-listenable, like Tampa Bay Lightning broadcasters Dave Mishkin and Phil Esposito.

There are homers, and then there are Mishkin and Esposito. In the Lightning's 7-2 loss to the Flyers, the home team never committed a penalty and was simulaneously getting jobbed by the officiating crew. They didn't just critique the officials, like every broadcaster does, they undressed them for the most insignificant of judgments.

Other offenses included:

• Mishkin ascending from an even level broadcasting voice to full-throated scream on a dime nearly every time the Lightning entered the offensive zone. A shot on goal nearly causes your speakers to explode. Think Michael J. Fox getting blown backwards by Doc Brown's speakers in the beginning of "Back To The Future."
  


• Esposito questioning every time an official would talk to a player in orange and black and saying a Lightning player "didn't go high enough" when high sticking the Flyers' Dan Carcillo.
  


• The guy in the studio providing scores from around the league consistently and without emotion referred to the (we assume) rival Florida Panthers as "The Stinkin' Panthers." First of all, drumming up a rivalry with the Panthers would be akin to Joe Paterno calling Coastal Carolina "The Stinkin' Chanticleers." There is no comparison, given the product Florida puts on the ice year after year. You'd think a franchise that actually won a Stanley Cup would be above sophomoric stuff like this.

But this is south Florida, home of the worst sports fans in the country, where the locals are from everywhere but there. A Tampa Bay fan looks in the paper and says "Hey honey, want to see a hockey game? It says here the Lightning are at home." Win or lose, they'll shrug their shoulders and go back to what they were doing.

These attempts at cultivating an emotional investment is all by design. The idea is to have announcers that will manufacture (hopefully) an emotional response out of the listener, therefore enticing them to follow along more closely and, if all goes well, eventually spend money on attending games.

When you're in the worst sports market in the country, you have to resort to cheap gimmicks.