A new contender for worst broadcaster of all time (Leah Hextall)

[AnInjuredJasonZucker]

Kind of seems like people commenting on the talk she gave either didn't watch or didn't understand it. Not like it would matter what she said.

Anyway, so, you're a major media conglomerate who has just spent $2.8B for the broadcast rights to a product. Currently, that product is marketed almost exclusively to 49.5% of the potential audience. You want to try and attract the largely ignored 50.5% and figure that a good place to start would be to highlight voices that represent that demographic. Well, no problem! Just go through the reams of resumes from qualified people. What? No reams? But why?

Perhaps not having any representation for that demographic has resulted in the group not considering that industry to be a viable career path.

Whelp. I guess there's nothing that can be done.

 

[Puckclektr]

Oh really Joe Buck dad was a play by play guy .so yes it happens to both gender.

I never said it didn't happen to both genders. Nepotism happnes to both genders. But if she was a man she wouldn't be donig play by play. She is doing play by play becasue she is a woman. Joe Buck also isn't terrible like Leah is and deserves the position

 

[Puckclektr]

Not according to some ,Joe buck awful apparently.

some people Think Rick Jeannoret and Doc Emrick are nails to a chalkboard, but them along with Joe Buck are among many "top commentator" lists.
Leah Hextall is virtually unanimously terrible amongst the people. She isn't just not good. She is terrible. There is a huge differnece between her and buck. She was hired becasue she is a woman. Not becasue of family.

 

[SoupNazi]

she says names wrong constantly
she doesnt know the rules well enough
she talked too fast to be understood when shes on play by play
she has no chemistry with the team around her and the broadcasts suffer and feel flat and boring

these are all non-subjective reasons that she is bad at her job, and have nothing to do with gender

All of these are absolutely your subjective opinions.

 

[Chips]

Kind of seems like people commenting on the talk she gave either didn't watch or didn't understand it. Not like it would matter what she said.

Anyway, so, you're a major media conglomerate who has just spent $2.8B for the broadcast rights to a product. Currently, that product is marketed almost exclusively to 49.5% of the potential audience. You want to try and attract the largely ignored 50.5% and figure that a good place to start would be to highlight voices that represent that demographic. Well, no problem! Just go through the reams of resumes from qualified people. What? No reams? But why?

Perhaps not having any representation for that demographic has resulted in the group not considering that industry to be a viable career path.

Whelp. I guess there's nothing that can be done.

She also responded to accusations of nepotism in those tweets with “my family members are famous hockey players, I earned this job!” That’s the “entitled” part.


She could argue for the promotion but there were how many levels of hockey between her previous pbp and the NHL lol.


I seriously doubt ESPN had a focus group go “oh WOW! Like butter! I don’t watch the NHL but I will now!”


People’s arguments about “setting women back” are along the lines of “if you’re going to put an unqualified woman in there to get her experience, make sure she learns names and rules first or she’ll “prove” in the minds of actual misogynists that “see women can’t do this well” if she’s unpleasant to listen to

 

[AnInjuredJasonZucker]

She also responded to accusations of nepotism in those tweets with “my family members are famous hockey players, I earned this job!” That’s the “entitled” part.


She could argue for the promotion but there were how many levels of hockey between her previous pbp and the NHL lol.


I seriously doubt ESPN had a focus group go “oh WOW! Like butter! I don’t watch the NHL but I will now!”


People’s arguments about “setting women back” are along the lines of “if you’re going to put an unqualified woman in there to get her experience, make sure she learns names and rules first or she’ll “prove” in the minds of actual misogynists that “see women can’t do this well” if she’s unpleasant to listen to

Hiring in sports is obsessed with pedigree, but I guess it doesn’t apply to her.

And she’s being held to a higher standard regarding pronunciation and rules issues by the high-minded membership of this forum. PBP is a very hard job, and it is the exception that does not remind knowledgeable viewers of that on a nightly basis.

Really, though, it comes down to the supposition that an 8 year old girl won’t much care that a Jesse Pulujarvi’s first name wasn’t pronounced “Yessa” as much as she might care that yes, a woman can aspire to have that cool job.

 

[Chips]

Hiring in sports is obsessed with pedigree, but I guess it doesn’t apply to her.

And she’s being held to a higher standard regarding pronunciation and rules issues by the high-minded membership of this forum. PBP is a very hard job, and it is the exception that does not remind knowledgeable viewers of that on a nightly basis.

Really, though, it comes down to the supposition that an 8 year old girl won’t much care that a Jesse Pulujarvi’s first name wasn’t pronounced “Yessa” as much as she might care that yes, a woman can aspire to have that cool job.

It’s not mispronunciations, it’s straight up using the wrong names regularly, occasionally with names who aren’t even playing

She isn’t being held to a higher standard, she’s just not qualified for a big national role.


About pedigree, messier and Chelios have also been criticized a ton for sucking at their roles and being hired for their names

 

[gritdash60]

"Stop whining other announcers make mistakes too" Like what? Jeebus Kribdus.

 

[Xanlet]

All of these are absolutely your subjective opinions.

Saying names wrong and getting rules wrong are not subjective. Either it is correct or it is not. Setting aside subjective evaluations of her, she makes objective, factual errors consistently. Again, even she admits she is not qualified for the position and is only in the role to artificially inject a female presence into play by play.

 

[summer tooth]

Years from now when she's inducted to the Hockey Hall of Fame it'll be so funny to look back at this degrading horseplay.

 

[Chips]

Years from now when she's inducted to the Hockey Hall of Fame it'll be so funny to look back at this degrading horseplay.

Unless she massively improved over that time, the HOF thread will literally be identical to this lol. No need to look back

 

[Washed Up 29YearOld]

clearly its not, theres no threads complaining for 'every announcer' but there is a thread for Hextall....really makes you think

also your being placed on ignore after that riveting reply, so i wont have to see your shitty takes anymore

Maybe she really is just that bad and people don't like forced unearned diversity which is fairly unique to her as a broadcaster??

 

[TheBeastCoast]

Years from now when she's inducted to the Hockey Hall of Fame it'll be so funny to look back at this degrading horseplay.

The Hall of Fame? Really?

 

[AnInjuredJasonZucker]

It’s not mispronunciations, it’s straight up using the wrong names regularly, occasionally with names who aren’t even playing

She isn’t being held to a higher standard, she’s just not qualified for a big national role.


About pedigree, messier and Chelios have also been criticized a ton for sucking at their roles and being hired for their names

You’re missing the point, and given the specifics of how, I’m thinking it may be intentional.

 

[CapsFrontOffice]

Or else I and others keep turning the games off. It sucks

Being a Caps fan I rarely have to suffer through it. I probably would stop watching as well if I had to hear her more.....but you know in the spirit of equality and all

Hextall (along with many other reasons) is also why I refuse to subscribe to ESPN+. ESPN will just simply never be able to do hockey like they use to. For a while hockey and basket ball was all they had so ESPN covered several NHL games nightly on multiple channels. Hockey just filled ESPN's void for having no other content and you could tell the broadcasters lived and breathed the sport.

The quality of the broadcasts was much better with Darren Pang, Gary Thorn and Bill Clement. Even the opening night broadcast theme song sounded better than a new version of the same song. Or maybe I just liked the way it sounded on a tube tv lol

I was actually excited when I found out ESPN got the rights to the NHL and figured it would go back to how it was in the good old days. Then I saw the list of broadcasters announced and was like "this is a joke right?" who are these people?

Then it was announced only certain games could be seen on ESPN+ and was like F that

Then I heard and witnessed Hextall and knew God was sad

Apparently last Caps game during the broadcast a ESPN announcer stated " The Capitals Lethal Power Play Unit...." Dude at least do SOME PREP on the Sport you claim to like enough to have a job broadcasting in it. Everyone knows the Capitals power play is their weakest aspect of the team.

NHL Network is slipping now too.....

 

[hockeyfan666]

One that matches her awfulness is Brian Anderson from TBS, he is destroying baseball right now.....also does other sports

Great championship series, yankees and astros............. just a shame about Brian Anderson, holy **** he is horrible, he cannot stop talking for just 2 seconds and that monotone voice puts you to sleep.

talks constantly about stats and past games , while the game is going on...... anyone else cant stand this guy?

 

[3074326]

Maybe she really is just that bad and people don't like forced unearned diversity which is fairly unique to her as a broadcaster??

I don’t like listening to all the god awful dude announcers. But, where’s our never-ending debate about that?

Let’s be honest. HFBoards get a stick up it’s ass whenever a non-white dude gets airtime. EDIT: Clarification - it’s the entire hockey community, not just HFBoards.

Because the state of commentary is disgraceful. And has been long before Leah Hextall. Even the national broadcasts.

The dudes don’t deserve the jobs either. Shut up with the unearned diversity bullshit. There just aren’t enough broadcasters out there who are good.

 

[Hockeyfan2390]

Years from now when she's inducted to the Hockey Hall of Fame it'll be so funny to look back at this degrading horseplay.

Why on earth would she be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame?

 

[Chips]

Why on earth would she be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame?

Guarantee she will, first full time female play by play in US

 

[Glorydays22]

Somehow Leah hextall is on the air again for games as ESPN has her at ice level for the knights kings game tonight.

I cannot believe how awful she still is after a summer to reflect on the damage she did to the eardrums of audiences last playoffs.

Why/how did ESPN make the decision to keep exposing fans to her random "contributions" to these broadcasts??

She is horrible, when she called the games, I would put the TV on mute

 

[Chips]

I don’t like listening to all the god awful dude announcers. But, where’s our never-ending debate about that?

Let’s be honest. HFBoards get a stick up it’s ass whenever a non-white dude gets airtime. EDIT: Clarification - it’s the entire hockey community, not just HFBoards.

Because the state of commentary is disgraceful. And has been long before Leah Hextall. Even the national broadcasts.

The dudes don’t deserve the jobs either. Shut up with the unearned diversity bullshit. There just aren’t enough broadcasters out there who are good.

There’s plenty of shot talk about male announcers, including the famous Pierre, and I still see frequent comments about olczyk which are exclusively negative . Fortunately most of them are local and super easily avoidable*

The Sabres past guy was mercilessly shit on at the end despite public knowledge his declining voice was affected by cancer.

Pens guys, or at least the old guy have been crapped on by pens fans even.

Personally the suuuuper old guys on both the Wild and Detroit broadcasts are pretty annoying but they may be respected, idk. I try to watch their opponents feeds

Also, I don’t watch much Canadian broadcasts so I don’t know his name, but that Sikh guy? I don’t think I’ve ever seen him get anything but praise here or Reddit whenever he’s mentioned. I literally know he exists almost exclusively because I’ve seen him praised. You’re generalizing and brushing off actual concerns and lumping together people who might have completely different motivations to feel the same way about Hextall.

AJ Mleczko? Where’s the overwhelming hate for her? She talks about as much as Hextall does in any of her games

Kaplan is much more popular and has improved on the job, tho some people probably just remember the early interview videos that made it on Twitter



*why are they local and thus avoidable? Because often they are passed over/ignored for job openings by national networks because they’re unappealing to too many people, and wouldn’t just get the job anyway. That’s where some of the Leah critics have a shorter patience for her. She’s not just annoying, it’s not just the only feed they can watch the game on, but she’s there because of her name and public “trailblazer” persona she’s crafted, rather than because she’s broadly appealing.

That doesn’t add anything to it for me, her just not being that good is enough to avoid a game she calls unless the matchup is too good, but it’s pretty clear why it’s gonna irk some people more too on top of that.

 

[Space umpire]

Great news. I love her work.

 

[holy]

Love Doris Burke. Kathryn Tappan is the best studio host the NHL has ever seen. AJ Mleczko is pretty good. Liked Phyllis George back in the day. Linda Cohn, pretty solid.

Leah Hextall just plain has no business being on the air.

How dare you try and take away her right to airline travel? Misogynistic scoundrel.

 

[Mike C]

How dare you try and take away her right to airline travel? Misogynistic scoundrel.

I'll pay for her flights as long as she doesn't assault my eardrums.

 

[MarkusNaslund19]

Why can't we do any nuance on these boards?

Yes, misogynistic dipshits will find any reason to hate on a female broadcaster. No, that does not, in and of it self, mean that every single take they have is wrong.

some people hating her for the wrong reason doesn't make her likeable.

She is objectively amateur hour. It's absolutely awful.

Also, I am absolutely all about advancing the cause of marginalized groups and I loathe when bigots say 'virtue signalling' as a place holder for 'I don't understand human empathy", but that doesn't mean there is no such thing as virtue signalling.

Saying you like Hextall and that nobody would care about her quality if she was a man is just disingenuous.

Further, she is NOT marginalized. She's an extremely privileged nepotistic conservative white woman.

I agree that it would be wonderful for little girls to have a female announcer to look up to, but filling it with a privileged nepotism hire who is objectively terrible is the equivalent of pink washing.

Sprite recognizing gay awareness month is a positive because it reflects progressive ideals in society. They realize they will sell more units if they support gay rights than if they oppose them. That speaks well of our societal progression in this area, and will indeed serve to help normalize the rights of gay people.

With that said, it doesn't mean they give a shit about gay people. It's a corporation trying to appeal to public opinion. I deeply wish there were more ethical companies, but for the most part they just chase capitalism.

So the same way that it's technically a positive that Sprite supports gay awareness, but they do it in a clunky and disingenuous way. It's good that we recognize the need for more representation, but that doesn't mean that it isn't a clunky awful execution by a cynical company in ESPN by hiring a token women of privilege who is appallingly, insultingly bad.

Hopefully one day they will hire a woman who is far better than Hextall and give other women a leg-up by offering increasing opportunities for females to start at the grassroots and receive training, work their way up from junior teams, etc.

This isn't that, and lumping in anyone with ears and taste with those who still think women shouldn't vote is just being needlessly divisive.