TB’s commentary style is like the baseball radio broadcasts of the 1920s. Those broadcasts were totally balanced (i.e. afraid of offending a team’s fans when that team sucked), full of artificial sound effects (e.g. hitting a wooden block to fool the listener that the broadcaster was actually at the game), and generally offered showmanship over accuracy (i.e. pretending the game was live instead of being re-enacted via box score reading).

I do agree with TB’s criticism of Idra’s broadcasting style. Casting alongside Gretorp, who stumbles, mumbles and bumbles his way thru a NASL cast, Idra does drone on. You should, however, check out his work with DJ Wheat on the EG masters casts. Their synergy works really well as DJWheat leads Idra to provide his (often prescient) insights. I would compare their combo to Madden and Summerall (to continue the NFL analogy). DJWheat is energetic like Madden; Idra is spot on accurate in analysis like Madden. Idra has a monotone like Summerall; DJWheat describes the action well like Summerall.

Just my 2cents.

I have yet to hear a complete commentator that had enough knowledge to not really ever say anything wrong. Day9 is the closest it gets to that but he’s not even up to date on everything that’s going on sc2.

A few points for clarity:

The purpose of the article was not to highlight IdrA as an ideal, or even terribly good caster. It was instead to highlight a series of his specific traits, and heavily imply that popular casters could improve considerably if they acknowledged their importance.

In particular, his willingness to be openly honest about lackluster play, one-sided situations, and moments where decision-making is far from ideal. This is what I’m referring to with the idea of “telling it like it is”, which you appear to misinterpret in the following statement:

“Now onto the main point of this article, the idea of ‘telling it like it is’. This is fairly ironic in itself, since casters frequently get criticized for doing such shallow things as telling people what’s going on. Half the time it seems some hardcore viewers have an Inception mindset “WE HAVE TO GO DEEPER!”, demanding almost precognitive casting and metaphysical insight. Lasers may also be involved.”

I am not suggesting that casters monotonously repeat what is occurring, but rather that they make an effort to be as true to the integrity of the game as possible. The crux of it is that some things simply aren’t worth being excited over. While you may be under the impression that your job is often to MAKE those moments exciting, I think doing so is a disservice to moments that really ARE worth getting hyped over. It also encourages people to watch the game in a way that is ultimately shallow. There’s VALUE in the nuance.