“Social networks are Chekhov's Complaint Book”: Cherdantsev about commentator’s everyday life, emotional broadcasts and colleagues’s work

“The viewer hears what he wants to hear”

- How pleasant is it to be one of the most discussed commentators in Russia?

- It is better to be discussed than not discussed. Ignoring the public means that you are simply not interested in her. As for the polarity of the ratings, I’m used to it. Accepted this. I do not plunge into this atmosphere, I try to step aside. Everyone decides to come into contact with her or not. I don’t drive my name in a Google or Yandex search to see what they write. Only the wife sometimes watches.

“And what does he say?”

- Nothing. In fact, there is no horror. I do not see any problems, because this is normal. There are different opinions, but the world consists not only of comments on the network. But here either the modern world with all its features must accept, or engage in something else.

- Was there a period when it was causing psychological discomfort?

- Yes, and very long. You know, I believe that thoughts are material. That energy, including negative, has the ability to form and influence a person. If you write about someone bad, then it will affect him. But there are many good words about me, so everything is balanced among themselves. Only annoying is the lack of the opportunity to speak face-to-face. If everyone who has any claims would express them in my face, then a dialogue could turn out, one could argue, listen to criticism, answer it. But practice shows that in private meetings no one ever does that.

- Have you been convinced of this by your own example?

- Yes. After the release of the book, I had meetings with readers in different cities of the country. There was no face control, anyone could come, including “haters”. But there has never been a single hint of an incident. Therefore, in fact, there are no constructive complaints. These are just splashes of emotions that our profession suggests. I learned to treat this as part of my life. I can only say that we, commentators, get more than anyone else. Even the athletes themselves discuss and hate less than us.

- In general, there is an understanding of why people love and for what - no?

- Hard to tell. The viewer hears what he wants to hear, not what they are told. Any fan wants empathy in unison with himself. Therefore, my most successful reports are matches of the Russian national team or performances of Russian teams in European competitions. Everything is there with you on the same wavelength. And the hardest thing is when competitors play in the Russian championship or European grandees among themselves, when the audience is split into two parts. If you rejoice at the goal of Spartak at CSKA goal, then the red-blue fans at that moment want to kill you. And vice versa.

- Was there a case when it was necessary to take the side of one of the teams, but did not want to do this? Or was it unpleasant to look at some football players because of internal prejudices?

- I remember only one case. Then my really unstarted career should have ended. This was my first experience commenting a big match with a Russian team under the picture. CSKA lost in the qualification of the Champions League Molde 0-4.

At some point he was confused and did not know what to say. Not that I did not root for the Russian team, but it played so disastrously that it was not clear how to behave. Honestly, even now there might be problems with the wording: it is important not to go too far with the negative, the fans of the losing team are sitting at the TV and every sharp word hits them twice as painfully. And then I didn’t have any experience at all, and now during the match a man enters the studio, he has a piece of paper in his hands. I unfold and read: “Burkov (our director) just called and told you to stop teaching them how to play football immediately!”

- What thoughts were then in my head?

- I thought that my career was over at that, and the first person I met with when he arrived at Ostankino the next day was Burkov himself. I wanted to fall through the ground, and he broke into a smile, shook my hand and said: “Hello, well done! Cool worked. Just keep in mind that you are not a coach or a football player. Therefore, there is no need to explain to professionals how to do their work. ” Good lesson for life.

- Dmitry Guberniev once said that his hysterical passages are the only way to compensate for the lack of results, not to allow the viewer to leave the screen. Can a commentator’s voice save an uninteresting match?

- If it was possible to measure the broadcast rating of the match with different commentators, then we would have an objective picture. But she is not. I had a leader who was absolutely convinced that a good commentator adds a couple of percent to the rating. This is if the match is good, but if it’s absolutely nothing, then the commentator is unlikely to help here, especially since it is not about biathlon, but about football, where if our team plays poorly, it is difficult for the viewer to suggest the opposite. Biathlon is a completely different sport in its essence, in football everything is clear. Therefore, the presenter needs to convey this feeling to the viewer.

To replay, I think, in any case, it’s not worth it, the public always feels false. But it’s really possible and even necessary to play along a bit, to stretch a not very interesting game due to drive and voice dynamics, to make the viewer understand that everything is cooler than it really is. But this is if it is a global event. All this does not work in competitions for the primacy of water pumping. However, it can be argued that the submission of the material is the most important quality of any person working live.

- Acting is necessary, right?

- Of course. This is one of the important components of the profession. Vladimir Maslachenko was my favorite commentator when I just started watching football as a child. Then we talked a lot with him. Therefore, one way or another, I adopted something from him. Once he said this phrase: "The commentator is an artist at the microphone." I fully share this point of view.

- When working in pairs, there are situations when a partner openly causes discomfort?

- There are. Therefore, I rarely work in pairs. Fortunately, our management understands this. I was against it from the beginning, but I was not able to convince the former leaders that it was wrong, because they took American sports for the model. But football is very different from them in speed and lack of pauses.

In addition, the Russian language is more cumbersome than English. Therefore, when two people begin to speak such a language at once, it becomes very difficult to perceive, and often such a paired comment turns into a conversation between two friends, and the commentary on a sporting event on the air is still a different story. In addition, due to circumstances, it was not possible for us to invite former footballers to comment on NTV + so that a classic leading-commentator and expert pair would be created, as is done in English-speaking traditions.

- There is an opinion that our players are not interested as experts?

- Now the situation has changed. I could only dream that we had such a roster of experts on NTV + as now on Match TV. It's cool when people like Andrei Arshavin, Roman Shirokov or Andrei Tikhonov go on the air and talk about football. And they do it cool, interesting. When we started making television programs, the biggest problem was finding a guest. And in the end, they always came to the conclusion that there is a narrow circle of people, consisting of two and a half people that you walk on. Today, specialists in studios and the level of expertise on Match TV channels are in no way inferior to colleagues from foreign channels.

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Publication by George Cherdantsev. Commentator (@ cherdantsev71) Mar 7, 2020 at 5:25 PST

“Too self-critical of my work”

- Is it hard to work in one genre for so many years?

- Yes. This is hard. I felt that I had commented on more than a thousand matches in 20 years. I think this is a lot.

- If you try to divide these 20 years into periods, then at what point did you most like yourself as a commentator?

- I do not like to engage in narcissism, I rarely listen to myself. Only if I don’t like something. You know, they often say that nobody knows about the result of a person in a creative profession the way he does. For example, I re-read my book “History of the World Championships” with pleasure and sometimes I think, “Have I really written this, cool!” This is the work that I'm really proud of. As for reporting, it happens that you listen and it’s kind of nice, and sometimes you don’t even want to turn it on.

“Even if there was some really fiery ether, and you yourself understand that you have surpassed yourself?”

- Usually in such cases, the first message I get is: “So you die” or “You are the worst commentator.” So, he commented well. This is the biggest minus of our profession. We have no natural backlash at all.

- That is, the sane in social networks does not write?

- Anonymous and addressless? Of course not. Social networks are the Complaint Book by Anton Palych Chekhov. Just multiplied by 100 million people.

- How much time do you need to recover from the match?

“Long, sometimes even a few days.” You come back to some moments - here he made a slip of the tongue, there the episode was incorrectly evaluated. Now there are a lot of repetitions, and even if you don’t really want to dive into it, you still come across comments on social networks and realize that you made a mistake during the broadcast. The viewer has the opportunity to review any fact or story, recheck. Now there are people who specialize in catching commentators on mistakes.

I cannot but worry about this because I am responsible and too self-critical about my work. Senior comrades told me that after the end of the report you need to turn the page. But all the same, there are always small blots and mistakes. Honestly, I get great inner pleasure when I manage to feel the game, analyze how it will develop, or the scenario that was in my head before the game is realized. But when it later turns out that something was missed, mixed up or forgotten, it depresses. Well, the emotional component is not going anywhere. Chemical processes in the body, adrenaline and everything else.

- How do you relieve stress?

- Nothing. You won’t drink vodka - on-air work is in the high season every day, besides, I drive all the time, and in our time it’s better not to risk it and not drive even with a light hangover. Plus, I have a child, and I have to get up early. Yes, there is a gym, but it does not help me, because stress is in the head, not in the body. Probably need more walk in the fresh air.

“So you're not a drinker at all?”

- No, I can drink, of course, rarely, but aptly. Because there is such an opportunity only when the next day I do not have ether, which means I can afford to relax. But the work is intensive, and this happens far from not every day, but not even every week.

- Have you done crazy things in this state?

- In childhood and youth there were so many things that I wonder how people of my generation generally survived to this day. How much we did in the pre-television era!

- And behind the wheel they sat under a degree?

“They just drove drunk, what are you talking about?” ( Laughs ). Just kidding, of course. Yes, this is something you can’t call a machine. I had an old rusty "Lada", in which the muffler fell off, the headlights did not work. But for the 1990s, it was a typical story.

“I do not like to discuss other journalists publicly”

- Which of the colleagues is most pleasant to listen to?

- We have a large group of different, interesting commentators. There are practically no random people: everyone has come a long way in natural media selection. As for the names, I will not name them. In general, I do not like to discuss colleagues publicly, because we all communicate, so I am sure that there must be solidarity and respect.

- With whom would you be interested to work on the air?

- It seems to me that there is no such person with whom I have not yet worked in tandem. Moreover, I worked together with such people that it would never have crossed your mind: with the famous TV presenters Alexander Gordon and Vladimir Solovyov. Once we shared radio reports together. As I said, I don’t really welcome work in pairs, especially without a clear division into a leading commentator and analyst. As for my colleagues, I’m comfortable with Konstantin Genich, with whom we constantly work together in matches of the FIFA computer game, but in real life he also doesn’t really want to work in pairs.

- Why?

- This is the clearest example of a solo commentator who made himself and embodied the main aspects of our profession: an analyst and a leading commentator. Kostya is the only professional football player in Russia who has become a top commentator. Given that in England he would be an ideal expert. It is customary there: who played on a professional level is an expert, what’s in the frame, what is behind the scenes.

But they have had this tradition for decades, but in our country it has not yet really formed, and I'm not sure that it will ever be compromised. Look at how many cool experts there are on “Match TV”, but not one of them became a commentator, although some wanted to, tried, then removed the headset, soaking wet from sweat, and said: “Wow, how it turns out is complicated! How do you do that? ”

- How do you see the development of commentatorial art in the future?

- I think that sooner or later it will become more interactive. Like in a FIFA game. Some people like emotions, others don't. Probably, everything will go to the point that the viewer will be able to choose for himself as in the navigator of a commentator with a suitable voice timbre and emotions. After all, an ideal commentator does not exist, and electronic services go towards personalization. Therefore, humanity will soon come to the option of personalizing the lead air.

- So, the viewer will be able to vote for the commentator you like and can this be used for commercial purposes?

- No, this can happen only with a bad leader. If the public decides, then why is a leader needed? In addition, the appointment of a commentator by voting is a bad idea for two other reasons: the viewer, not knowing the intricacies of the profession, cannot be aware that, for example, this commentator has poor eyesight, and he cannot work from the stadium, and the other did not work out relations with some club, and you should not put it on a match of this club, and so on. There are a lot of nuances that the viewer cannot and should not know. Secondly, in our time, any electronic voting is biased. A person who knows how to work with media, with SMM and technology will easily make you the result you need.

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Publication by George Cherdantsev. Commentator (@ cherdantsev71) Feb 12, 2019 @ 8:55 am PST