Though those who run live commentaries on both Radio and Television are referred to as commentators, those on TV are better described as annotators because they are supposed to be guided by the televised pictures on their screen as directed by the director through the cameraman and are merely nudging the viewers into attention.
The TV commentator is usually mindful of the televised pictures which the viewer is also watching unlike his counterpart in radio who is deliberately verbose in his commentary since he is talking to people who are only following the action through his commentary.
You are the ears; the eyes of your listener who draw their story from the commentator’s perspective. This is why radio is described as a blind medium. On radio, you must shout out when a goal is scored or when a penalty is awarded so there won’t be any doubt in the minds of your listener but on TV you can simply shout the player’s name in place of goal or just say; “it’s given” to indicate a penalty award as demonstrated below:
Radio commentator: It’s a gooooaaaal! A goal for Manchester United, scored by their indefatigable captain, Bruno Fernandes. Or oh, Bruno Fernandes is pushed down in the penalty area and the referee is giving a penalty. Penalty to Manchester United.
TV Commentator: Bruuuunn oooooooo!……..and this is enough to convey the message that Manchester United had scored a goal. Or, oh, Bruno wins it as referee points to the spot. It’s given! With this, the TV commentator has passed his message.
The Radio commentator takes every detail to heart. He calls the names of the players in full while with TV the first names are enough.
A radio commentator says, here is Sunday Oliseh pushing the pass to Austin Okocha who takes a diagonal pass to Stephen Keshi and Rashidi Yekini takes a powerful shot with his right foot….but the TV man can simply say Oliseh to Okocha, Keshi, Yekini, it’s in the net.
Whether the ball is headed or kicked with the right or left foot should not be the bother of the TV commentator. His colour party can then interject on how the goal was scored and build up to it. The colour commentator is the one that explains in detail the build up to a goal, to a miskick, to any incident on the field. He adds colour to the commentary. You can also use a playback, usually referred to as slow-motion to explain vividly what happened. Such luxuries are absent from the radio. Despite this, the radio commentator is fully in charge of happenings on the field and that adds up to the excitement for the radio man.
It is a practical necessity that the TV commentator must have a monitor to be able to synchronize his commentaries with the pictures on the monitor. It’s not compulsory for the radio commentator to have a monitor before him in the commentary box as long as his vision of the pitch is not impeded.
Just as the processes are different, booking for the broadcast lines is done differently. On radio and tv, you book a 4-wire circuit if you are going for live commentaries. This aids to to and fro communications between the circuit providers and the Engineers at the base because they are in constant communication as the commentary is on. It also helps in communication between the home studios and the field of action, so you know when the commentary is smooth or distorted.
For TV, you go a step further to book the pictures and then mix and match them with the audio. This gives rise to a slight delay when a goal is scored or when an issue occurs. Radio announces the goal, and celebrations are ignited by radio listeners before you see another explosion of shouts from the TV viewers. Many people who don’t know this either think we on radio shout goals before the goal is scored.
There could be a commentators’ goal and that happens when the expectations are high with adrenalin running riot or when a goal bound move is almost sure before the striker fluffs it. There could also be the issue of style or mannerisms. Our first indigenous commentator, Ishola Folorunsho “sees” a goal before it’s scored and so you were wont to hear him say “it’s a goal, it’s not”! This had become his style that friends and admirers used to refer to him as “Ishola, it’s a goal Folorunsho”.
Sebastien Offurum believed that a goal was a goal no matter which team scored and so you must remain steadfast in his commentary to know first-hand who scored. Offurum would say a “good goal, a fantastic goal by Theophile Abega of Cameroon against Nigeria”.
With Ernest Okonkwo, you already know the scorer as he would start stuttering, “what? Is it against Nigeria? is it? The ball is inside the net, the referee says it’s a goal against Nigeria. It’s a case of Nigeria scoring against Nigeria, meanwhile Emma Okala is having an argument with Godwin Odiye who scored the own goal” and he went on with the monotone. What will Emeka Odikpo say or do? I will announce the goal and count it against Nigeria and move on to describe other actions. Yes, we were told not to show our biases but also not to celebrate our misfortune.
For most of us on Radio, a goal is a goal and who scored for or against Nigeria must be praised or vilified accordingly. After every outing, we did a post-mortem, and it was discovered that I overuse the conjunction “and” so much so that you could count about five in my sentence without me realizing it. I took my time to go through our commentaries and discovered that even some of our seniors were “guiltier” than me.
What was to be done to eliminate or at least reduce the use of “and”, a necessary evil in connectivity. Try your commentary not using the conjunction, try it!
It’s so “freshivating” sharing commentaries with Okonkwo or Fatoyinbo when the national team was winning or a Nigerian athlete was doing well in his/her sport. Or can you imagine sharing commentaries with one when Shooting Stars were winning or the other when Rangers were winning? Don’t just imagine when they were losing. You could hear Tolu say, “aah, what is wrong with these shooting stars boys? Even a pregnant woman would have connected that ball!”
When Bendel Insurance were beating Rangers 3-0 in an FA cup final in 1978, and with 5 minutes to the end, Ernest was still saying that there was hope for Rangers, hope for what, you may ask? Well, a chance was presented to Rangers 3 years later when they defeated Insurance by 2-0 in that year’s FA Cup final.
“Old man” Joe Lartey who joined us from Ghana had his own peculiar pattern of commentary. He would shout,” mine-o-mine” whenever a player missed his chance to score. Buno Uwabor would use the word “power” to describe every action. He would say, Best Ogedengbe powers the ball out to Christian Chukwu who powers another pass to Segun Odegbami who powers the ball to the goalpost……. I would always tease by saying Sylvanus Okpala powers a shortish pass to Aloy Atuegbu who powers another shortish pass to.……..”
We had a fun-filled time doing our work, critiquing ourselves without much rancour Kalu Udochu would always say his mind regardless of what level of counselling he would have received but one good thing that saved him was that most of his tantrums were thrown in local dialect. Kalu named himself the GOC of Onikan Stadium, a way of reminding the Ogas that he had not had a good turn in international coverage.
Ernest would use the local language of each participating athlete in combat sports to ginger them. Like he would say to the boxer Obisia Nwakpa “ gbuo ya” (kill him) in igbo and he would go to find out its equivalent in the language of a non-igbo boxer just like the shouts of “Ali bumayee” in the Congolese during the Rumble in the Jungle heavyweight boxing fight between Mohammed Ali and George Foreman in Zaire 1974.
Every joke was employed in Ernest’s commentary and sometimes such jokes help in giving a name to an athlete. One day he turned to me and said, Emeka, do you know Alloy Atuegbu’s shot can burst blocks? And pronto Aloy was nicknamed “blockbuster”. Uche Okechukwu is a tall super Eagles player and very soft in play and he was named “gentle giant” and before you knew it the nicknames stuck.
Virtually all of us in Sports and Outside Broadcasts, young and old, it appeared we were bitten by the bug of extroverts. We liked to play along and meant to make people happy. For Ernest, he would stop you, no matter who you were to share jokes, all kinds of jokes with you. Sebastien liked to tell what he called “biological jokes” while Tolu Fatoyinbo would tell all kinds including his private onslaughts, Kevin Ejiofor would make “jokes” of your mistakes on air, either grammatical, pronunciation or factual. Not to mention Pius Osemwegie, Richard Asiegbu Walter Batowei, Emeka Odikpo Kalu Udochu or Sina Abimbola whose jokes were always in chains both foreign and the very local. Without sounding immodest, I want to say that most of us used the “story telling” format to run our commentaries which endeared us to the people.
Our commentary box was usually flooded by fans who made it a point of responsibility to come to the stadium with their radio sets glued to their ears to monitor what we say in comparison to their own standpoint. The best way to also gauge your commentaries vis -a-vis peoples’ perception would be to use public transportation. In Lagos those inside the “molue” [mass transit, locally assembled buses] would talk about what you said even to the level where you paused to swallow saliva. Such were the fun, the challenges and the pressures that characterised the period,1981-2016 in the Radio Nigeria of my time.
