Embrace the volume buttons or more appropriately the mutant button which is used when mutant geniuss like those employed by Nein are let near a microphone.
I wanted to hear the crowd and the onfield noises. I made a decision very early to treat every sneering comment from the commentary as the words of mindless dickheads.
I actually did a study of this once.
How do we get rid of these clueless talking heads? It seems we have a few choices:
Hit the Mute Button
Hitting the mute button will instantly free yourself from the monotonous gibberish. Unfortunately you lose everything else, the sounds of the crowd, the bone crushing tackles etc. For mine, that's simply not good enough.
Turn down the TV and tune into radio
If you're lucky enough to have the same game on radio, you can exercise some choice over which commentators you want to hear. But the same problem exists, you still have to hear someone talking over the preferred sounds of the game.
Pretend to call the game yourself
It might sound silly, but you could always talk over the top of the commentators and convince yourself that you're doing a better job. The more people in the room with you, the more entertaining it can be. This method works equally well by just barracking and cursing loudly. The downside is that you may ultimately get told to put a sock in it.
Have an out of body experience
Torture victims sometimes speak of removing themselves from the scene while coping with the trauma of torture. Apparently it's highly recommended as a way to stop government secrets falling into enemy hands. Meditation or mentally blocking out the commentators sounds great in theory, but maybe it's a tad unrealistic.
Go to the game
Well of course. If you really want to get the full experience and totally avoid the media mumbo-jumbo, then get on your bike and go to the game. But sadly, the tyranny of distance doesn't always allow for this. Our scenario here is specifically for those who are forced indoors for the day.
Agitate for new technology - power to the people
By far the best solution is to put the power of audio into the hands of the viewer. There must exist technology where we can actually choose what we hear.
Any audio that goes to air must also go through a sound engineer's desk. Microphones have their own channels. The sound engineer controls the volume and tone of each channel. If he/she wishes, the engineer can mute or turn down a channel. They can effectively silence any part of the audio feed. In a perfect world, we should be able to control this in our homes.
I believe the technology is already there, so why isn't it freely available?
Well for a start, it would take away the commentators spruiking some product or network TV show. After all, nowadays that seems to be their prime objective. Sadly, it may take a revolution before it's 'power to the people'.
Of course, I don't speak for all. Believe it or not, some folks actually prefer to hear the commentators over the crowd noise. Alas, I can't help everyone. Suffice to say, they'll be first against the wall when the revolution comes.
F7s
