Cal Pro Am announcers SO GOOD

[Than_Bogan]

I was super-impressed by the great insights, enthusiasm, information, and genuine fandom that was displayed by literally all of the announcers on this event.  Apologies if I forget anyone, but I wanted to specifically call out really excellent announcing by Brian Deitrick, Kevin Bishop, Allie Nicholson, Freddie Winter, Marcus Brown, Corey Vaughn, and Rob Hazelwood.

Seems unfair that these folks are such crazy amazing athletes AND truly excellent behind the mic.

Edited August 28, 2023 by Than_Bogan

[APB]

agreed. very refreshing.

[chaloux]

Quality of announcers was great! I was streaming in a hotel room and YouTube was maxing it at 480p, was that normal for everyone else? I wonder if it will up the quality in a few days. It was acceptable but even one notch up in bitrate would have helped a lot. 

[Interjon]

I enjoyed it.  Thank you.

[AdamCord]

Along with the announcers the webcast in general was really good. TWBC has really raised the bar and it’s good to see that other non-TWBC webcasts putting together high quality webcasts. My hat’s off to Kevin Kelm and the webcast team in Cali.

[jhughes]

Great webcast. For Kevin and Brian my only feedback is lots of "you know" as filler, this got better in day two. Day one was like you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know!

Altogether an awesome production, we really enjoyed it at our house!

[skihart]

I agree it was a pleasure to watch with those announcers.

I especially liked Marcus @FlowPointMethod because of his analysis of the actual technique.  Super informative and a great learning moment.   I loved when he was asking Charlie or almost pushing him (in a good way) about elaborating on some of keys he has.

[Wish]

So the only thing I noticed was the mic volume difference. Brian D was much louder than anyone on the other mic. Had to keep turning it up and then back down and then up again. Just something for next years event to monitor. Otherwise as mentioned in the other thread, my wife and I enjoyed the webcast. 👍

[bishop8950]

We appreciate the feedback, especially when it’s constructive.  Announcing is harder than a lot of people think it is. Both Brian and I do the best we can and true to our personal styles.  Others would do it differently or suggest we do it differently.  

Right or wrong, I assume our audience is familiar with the sport.  We tried to do some explanation of the format and sport in general, but mostly playing to the experienced skier audience.  Listening back to it today, I think maybe a bit more speaking to the less experienced.  What do you think?
 

[Than_Bogan]

My thought is that *most* of the discussion should assume an expert audience.  If anyone is seeing serious waterskiing for the first time, the main takeaway should be that this is a serious sport, and that is best achieved simply by *treating* it as a serious sport!

The only "nod to the newb viewer" that I think might be a good idea is to point out the specific hard parts.  I was recently reminded that even a VERY good technical athlete, seeing slalom for the first time, focuses on the turns, thus completely missing the most fundamental challenge of strength and technique.  Pointing out the massive forces the skier must hold and the incredibly short amount of time to get from 30ish to 60ish mph, are things that anyone can grasp and be amazed by -- but that aren't obvious just watching it.

It's tempting to try to explain that shorter ropes are harder, but actually the viewer CAN see that.  They may not know why, but it's obvious that longer lines look very easy and eventually shorter lines lead to failure. 

[whitem71]

Agreed also. Kevin was great. Corey was particularly good, his comments were spot on. Video was good, I got 720p mostly but I’d have liked more in-boat footage but the camera on the pylon was a bit ‘to the left’ and regularly missed 2,4,6 balls. But hey a vast improvement on last year.