Welcome to the Pac-10, Lane Kiffin

If he wants to come on here under his real name and call out those who've been anonymously blasting he and the other reporters there than more power to him. I respect that more than I do those who don't know what they're talking about abusing their anonymonity by blathering on as though they do.

 

I'm definitely not a TV broadcasting expert, but you see it all the time where a coach is speaking during a press conference but footage from the previous game is running. You don't see the coach speaking at all.

How would this be any different? You could run the audio along with old footage, and your viewers wouldn't even know the difference, unless you decided to speak to the restrictions Kiffin set.

You say this is not an acceptable way to cover a news conference. Basically, the TV guy made sure there wasn't an acceptable news conference, period. How is that serving your viewers?

 

TV would have gotten what they needed as well. Just not what they WANTED. If they locked the TV fuckers out of the room than you guys would have a point.

 

Ragu,

I didn't have an opportunity to get more because of any relationship with Kiffin. I don't work for a recruiting site, and I don't work for ESPN, so I'm the same as every other non-national print scribe in his eyes. The man never did me a favor, and that's his right, but everything I got from him was from hard work, patience and attempts at any ethical means necessary to understand how he ticked. He's a difficult nut to crack most of the time. Again, that's fine, and he's not the only one.

Every single reporter in the room could have gotten more information from him by just agreeing to his silly terms and getting him in the room. TV guys could have had field say explaining his ridiculous policy, and that he said more off camera than on camera. Then they would have had more time to take their cameras outside and get footage of the extraordinary events going on around campus. I have a good quality digital voice recorder, and I offered to email him every Kiffin file I collected if he'd just back off and let us work.

I understand TV people wanting as much as possible on camera, but their actions hampered everyone's ability to do their jobs. They would have had more news by talking to him off camera. They could have used the audio, too.

I can't wrap my brain around your stance on this. I don't understand it. We were crunched for time and wasted a good deal of it by picking that silly battle to fight.

 

The TV guys had everything they needed, they just couldn't put video of Kiffin speaking along with the audio. Happens all the time. There are ways around that.

And to speak to your point, seems like the TV guy's argument is if he wasn't going to get everything he wanted, nobody was going to get what they wanted.

 

What you need to do your job and what you desire to make your job easier are two different things. There were eleventy billion better uses for a camera than the way they were ultimately used.

 

TV does interviews with people ALL of the time who don't want to talk on camera. Do they scream and pout then? No, they interview the person and relay the information. There's no disadvantage. It's not what they want, but they get what they need.

 

For those saying Kiffin would have not offered something more had the restrictions not been eluded, didn't he talk with some beat writers and at least one TV person prior to leaving the next morning, or day? I believe that's correct.

So why would anyone not think he maybe would have offered a little more had they just not gone live or whatever. The bottom line is there were ways for everyone to get what they needed (even if not as much as they would have liked), but instead TV chose less info for making some stand.

 

This is correct in every way.

 

Yes, if there's nothing noteworthy visually the talking head does not typically stay up the whole time.

That is an editorial decision that is not his to make.

 

Wes, it's not an issue of easier in the slightest. It would have been a whole hell of a lot easier for that guy to cave.