My criticism is aimed at the guys who are irrelevant to the WCT who somehow continue to appear in the booth for hours at a time in order to plug their new boardshorts and traction pads. All too often, event sponsors toss their team riders in front of the mic without any guidance and let them say whatever they want, so long as they turn their tenure in the booth into an extended info-mercial. In Fiji, two world-class freesurfers talked their way into appearing as a spoiled L.A. jetsetter and an overhyped macho neanderthal, relying on namedropping and clichéd tag lines to fill the silence around their plugs for private resorts. Trestles had a bunch of up and comers—a Momentum generation pro’s ten-year-old son among them—call heats. No shortage of junior competitors visited the Lowers booth to promote their new boards and hollowly claim that they were now full-fledged shapers.
Both events also featured overzealous executives behind the microphone for extended intervals, hyping new products and dropping industry names faster than the judges dropped scores. How often do you see Jerry Jones with a microphone at a Cowboys game? Or Jay-Z calling a Nets game from mid-court? Much less, how often do mainstream sports execs talk about how sick their bro is on the golf course for the broadcast public? Event sponsors and their leadership need to realize that the public isn’t impressed by the industry who’s-who pissing contest. Cut the “look-at-me-cool-guy-on-camera” bullshit and leave the advertising to the edited clips used between heats and during long lulls. Until surfing’s business minds realize that broadcasters can’t approach the commentary booth like it’s their crew of industry heavies in the parking lot at their local beachie, webcasts will continue to be second rate. And in spite of the big money that surfing generates, such an approach is hurting surfing business’s legitimacy—and future profitability—in the meantime.
The biggest challenge to the future of webcasts will be mixing in athletes and industry figures who are capable of contributing analysis to the webcast without privileging their own self-publicity or role-playing their marketing personalities to the detriment of webcast consistency. Every time the Gudauskas brothers, now grown men and not the “igno-frothy-groms-for-life!” that they’re marketed as, jump into the booth and start spouting about how “frothtastic” they are and declare the “ridiculosity” of every wave or turn, they make themselves and their sponsors look like idiots to the surfing and non-surfing public alike. In spite of the fact that the Gudangs have written columns on their literary tastes and strike me as fairly articulate chaps, Dane Gudauskas frothed unintelligibly in the commentary booth at the Triple Crown like a Spicolian caricature. Noticeably, after a well-placed barrage of tweets called him out, Mr. Gudauskas toned down the energy, contributed some strong commentary on the mechanics of performance surfing, and, most importantly, demonstrated that he’s capable of stepping in as a serious surf announcer.
Simply said, pro surfers who aren’t total derelicts have to quit acting like total derelicts in front of the microphone if webcasts will ever cross the threshold of media legitimacy. If a guy is intent on being marketed as a burnout, miscreant, or arrogant über-hipster, then he probably shouldn’t be handed a microphone while he’s acting in character. Industry bigwigs should avoid the booth altogether and put their energies into refining marketing strategies, developing the lull-killing broadcast features, and tightening overall event production. Post-heat and beachside interviews with select personalities will always provide enough color commentary to realize that surfing hasn’t become golf or tennis (yet). Product marketing could be less pervasive and more efficient by maintaining regular commercial breaks, ideally taking more care not to drop ads while waves are being ridden.
Let’s return to longtime surf industry MC Dave Stanfield who provided a favorite broadcast moment at Sunset. After Kelly Slater outlined his ascetic morning routine for the viewing masses, Stanfield deadpanned, “Kelly told me his secret years ago and I’ve been doing it: a cigarette, coffee, and a donut for breakfast. Oh boy did he fool me!” As one of the few lines all year that elicited a sincere laugh, Stanfield’s words and presentation (honed over three decades) stood in glaring contrast to the legions of guest commentators that were largely forgettable. Sufficiently appropriate for big television and genuinely humorous, Stanfield showed how commentators can show surfing’s lighter side without the need for young pros to role play their marketing alter egos to offset Kelly’s consummate professionalism.
Although the customary post-heat request to “take us through your heat, because you were ripping out there” is unlikely to change anytime soon, hopefully the future of surfing webcasts will break through its adolescence by manning the booth with consistent broadcast personnel and working in more appearances by legendary personalities and mature pros with less to prove. That or let’s hand the reins all the way over to Bobby, Wardo, the Fletchers, Paul Fisher, and the marketing minds at …Lost. If ASP webcasts won’t drop the backyard amateurism, then they should just let the sport’s characters get weird and make things really interesting. At least then they could compete with reality television, if not Monday Night Football.
