If you've been a reader for a little while, you'll know that I'm a tennis fan.
If you're new here, just know, I'm a tennis fan.
As I write this, one of the four major tennis tournaments of the year is happening.
This one is the Australian Open. You can guess where it's held.
I was deep into an intense men's match the other day between a player from Australia and a player from England.
As you might guess, the crowd was rooting for the Australian. No surprise there.
What surprised me, was how biased the commentating was.
Sidenote: In tennis, the commentating is almost always biased.
In this particular match, I was really noticing a stark difference between how the commentators—two men, one from Australia, the other from South Africa—were commending the shotmaking of each player.
Whenever the Australian would make a good shot, it would be described as the best thing since sliced bread.
As for the English player, his shots were being described as the long-winded equivalent of meh.
Right as the match was nearing its intense end, I had to stop watching because I needed to take our kids to an activity.
So, I switched to listening to tennis radio.
Yes, it's a thing. It's also free.
When I switched to the radio broadcast, a very strange thing happened.
Firstly, you should know that the radio commentators are different from those on the TV broadcast.
The radio commentators on the channel I was listening to were two men as well. One from
England and one from Australia.
The strange thing that happened was it felt like the biased commentating disappeared.
***
If you've never heard the radio broadcast of a tennis match before, it's fascinating.
It's like listening to a professional auctioneer.
The ball travels so fast and the commentators have to (or try to) describe every single shot.
The best commentators build each point up like a crescendo.
An intense match to watch, is even more intense to listen to.
***
Back to my match. When I switched to radio, the biased commentating disappeared.
This made me curious about something.
I watch far more tennis matches than I listen to.
Is it possible that the radio commentary of a tennis match is far less biased in general?
Suppose that were true, what might be behind that and what can we learn from it?
My hypothesis is that when you're commentating for a radio broadcast, there is simply less time to be biased.
You have to (or try to) describe every single shot in detail.
When you watch a match, sometimes the TV commentators don't say a single word for several shots in a row.
They craft a narrative out of a series of shots, once they are over.
The radio commentators, need to craft the narrative shot by shot.
In other words, the radio commentators have to describe what they are seeing.
The TV commentators often describe what they've seen.
***
Too often, we behave like TV commentators.
We make up stories based on the things we've seen. Particularly when it comes to people and the way they behave.
I wonder what might happen if we switch to becoming more like radio commentators.
The difference looks like this:
You're on a Zoom call with a few colleagues. You notice that one of your colleagues isn't saying much and that their face looks pretty stoic, whereas others are smiling and laughing.
After the call ends, you reach out to your colleague in one of two ways:
As a TV commentator you might say, "You seemed upset on that call, is everything ok?"
As a radio commentator you might say, "I noticed you weren't laughing or smiling on that call, is everything ok?"
Describe what you see. Then get curious about it.
I think we will make far less assumptions this way.
More radio, less TV.
