It’s not unusual for local news to have a slight bias towards area teams. I grew up in the South Bend market, where the local NBC affiliate is WNDU. Those call letters aren’t a coincidence; the joke for my friends and I was always that if war broke out, the 5 PM news would lead with how it affected Notre Dame’s spring practice.
In that light, Raleigh’s ABC11 going with a blatantly homer highlight call for Tuesday night’s Hurricanes-Bruins matchup isn’t a surprise. But it’s the execution that made Mark Armstrong’s breakdown stand out, along with his admirable transparency. Check it out:
That was note perfect. Some selected highlights:
“This squad has got moxie! It’s got the heart of a lion and the never-say-die attitude that put a man on the moon, I tell ‘ya!”
“Boston fluked its way to a one-nothing lead.”
“The Canes powerplay: the tip of a remorseless spear!”
And then, having delivered all four Carolina goals, Armstrong gives us the standard highlight-ending, zoomed out image of the Hurricanes celebrating, only to drop in how the game actually ended:
“The B’s scored five straight in the third to win 6-4.”
There’s a danger in analyzing why something is funny, and it’s possible I’ve gone too far down that road already. But this works on a few levels. The writing is legitimately fun, Armstrong’s delivery is perfect, and best of all is how he plays with our expectations for a one-minute highlight package, in a few different ways. It’s comedy, and good comedy at that.
Well done.
About Jay Rigdon
Jay is a columnist at Awful Announcing. He is not a strong swimmer. He is probably talking to a dog in a silly voice at this very moment.