KEY POINTS:
If there's anyone who actually believes that a picture is worth a thousand words, you'd think it would be the folks who bring us the six o'clock news.
After all, much of what appears on the TV news seems to have been selected on the principle of "because it's there". The footage, that is. These items have negligible newsworthiness, significance or human interest. What they supposedly have is visual impact; that is, they're marginally more diverting than watching Ken and Barbie grapple with the autocue.
Thus the news might feature footage of a skateboarding fox terrier or a monkey that can eat a boiled egg in the approved manner, a Tiger Moth crash-landing at an air show in Yokelville, Manitoba, or a tornado de-roofing a barn in Bumpkin County, Arkansas. And don't car and motorbike crashes have an enduring fascination for those who compile the sports segment?
One News' Olympic coverage included footage of a Hungarian weightlifter dislocating an elbow in the course of a lift. Presenter Peter Williams warned it wasn't for the "squirmish", whoever they are, and officials at the event quickly erected screens to allow the athlete to suffer in private. TV One, though, knows the value of the vision of an arm flopping around at a grotesque angle.
The assumption underpinning the notion that a picture is worth a thousand words is that the visual image speaks for itself. If only.
BBC commentators certainly used to operate on that basis, whether covering a state funeral or a Wimbledon final. I once saw an American sports show mock the Beeb's low-key style by showing a protracted and enthralling rally throughout which the commentators said not a word. After the applause had died away, one murmured "Goodness gracious", allowing the merest flutter of suppressed excitement into his voice.
The Yanks thought this was hilarious. I thought the commentators grasped that the drama playing out before their _ and the viewers' _ eyes didn't require comment, or indeed that comment would only have detracted from the spectacle.
Sometimes the action does require explanation or embellishment, but why should something be brought to our attention if we've already registered it? For instance, as we watched members of the New Zealand team waving to the crowd and taking photos during the opening ceremony, did it add value to have a reporter point out that they were waving to the crowd and taking photos?
In the rush to gush we had Simon Dallow casually drop Tiananmen Square into a recitation of tourist attractions, and Toni Street warbled "Everybody's behind Mahe" as if even his opponents' friends and families have flocked to Beijing to cheer on our boy rather than theirs.
Peter Montgomery has given his larynx for New Zealand yachting but if I had $10 for every time he's told us our rowers are "laying into it", I'd be in Beijing rather than listening to him.
It's easy to sneer at commentators who often have to, as the saying goes, react to what's in front of them. It's also fun. Since the 70s Private Eye magazine has gathered their gaffes and idiocies in the "Colemanballs" column, named after British broadcasting stalwart David Coleman.
Coleman's most notorious eruption occurred at the 1968 Olympics. When Britain's David Hemery won the 400m hurdles, Coleman brayed, "It's Hemery first, the West German second and who cares who's third?" Actually most of the BBC's audience did, seeing the bronze went to Englishman John Sherwood.
Many of the best-known examples of the genre are apocryphal. The jovial English cricket commentator Brian Johnston swore he never actually said, "The bowler's Holding, the batsman's Willey", although he did admit to, "There's Neil Harvey standing at slip with his legs wide apart, waiting for a tickle."
David Vine's "Here we are in the holy land of Israel, a Mecca for tourists" proves it is possible to keep politics out of sport, while Partick Thistle manager John Lambie's response when informed that his concussed striker didn't know who he was _ "Great, tell him he's Pele and get him back on" _ suggests professional sport isn't quite an irony-free zone.
A personal favourite comes from American television and was the work of one of those fragrant female news anchors whose emotional tics are so pre-programmed she would, as the satirist Terry Southern put it, "cry at card tricks if you tell her they're sad".
Handing over to the weatherman during a wintry blast, she turned her baby blues on him and pouted, "So, Bob, where's that eight inches you promised me last night?"
