Through the Field Glasses

Baseball, television's pride & joy, attracts TV's biggest summer audiences. But one entertainment critic believes that the fans are not getting their money's worth. Last week Variety rapped television for the "mediocre job" it has been doing on baseball, charged that TV camera directors were "missing ten or more plays a game," and complained that "the Fancy Dan at the controls is more interested in camera techniques than baseball; hence his incessant camera switching (changes of view) and his endless parade of closeups, murder to those interested in the game." Variety called the result "binocular baseball," because the televiewer feels as though he were at a ballpark watching "a game through a pair of field glasses."

All the stations were guilty, but Variety found some worse than others. CBS "has shown [the only] real photographic advance" by providing "a view that includes the plate, mound, second base and a good piece of ground on both sides of that bag." But even CBS, after four or five innings, will "suddenly fall apart. It will leave the ball to follow the batter or move in so close on the battery that it is necessary to pan the camera on every pitch (terrible on the eyes) or lose complete track of the play because of [camera] switches."

There were hard words for the commercials, too. "Ballantine beer pours it down the viewer's throat every inning, for nine innings, besides the pre-and post-game routines. That's a lot of beer." And Chesterfield "constantly reminds everybody of its charity to the veterans. Home runs and double plays are 600 more cigarettes before they're anything else."

To Variety the remedy lies in finding "a [camera] director who knows as much baseball as the 'name' announcer" or in placing a baseball expert alongside the director to give him guidance. "If there is no improvement over last year's coverage of the World Series,"* the trade sheet warned, there may be a "slightly sensational" protest from the fans. "Televised baseball can no longer expect to get by . . . on the miracle of its electronics."

* This year's World Series will be telecast by Mutual, which has had relatively little experience with TV baseball.

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