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Lack of TV time for College Marching Bands


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Oh yeah...nothing gets a crowd going like a sweet diminuendo... :music:

Cmon...college bands are supposed to be loud!!!!!!

Yeah, buuuuuuttttttt...

There is a big difference between loud and musical and loud and offensive. Most college marching bands fit into the loud and offensive category. I have heard college marching bands that play musically. I wish there were more of them.

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It's not too much to ask that all the networks that broacast college football games give every marching band a minute or two at halftime. These bands put in too many hours of practice during the week to just be totally passed over. It's insulting. Everybody that's currently in a college marching band should send an email or letter to CBS and ESPN and ask for such consideration. If they're bombarded with requests, maybe they'll listen and start showing a few minutes of the halftime shows...........

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I am watching the vast amounts of advertising and analysis going on at halftime of last night's BCS Championship game and occasional shots of each band in the stands during the game. I know, a vast number of people watching a football game could care less about the band, but isn't that same viewpoint continuing to make all marching arts...including drum corps...more and more irrelevant?

I remember one year.... back in the day.... at the Texas-Texas A&M game, the network televising the game showed the entire halftime shows of both bands. (Which was fine by me, because I love both of those bands!)

Those days are long gone, unfortunately.

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In 1970, after they won VFW Nationals, the Troopers did half time at a Viking's game. The network showed the entire performance. One of the announcers, impressed by how good they were, actually said "they must practice one hour a day, 365 days a year!"

On the way from Garfield to Dallas for 71 VFW Nats we stopped off in Miami for a Dolphin/49'er summer ex game...NBC showed our entire show...in the pouring rain. Goodness did it ever POUR! There was a picture on the front page of one of the main Miami newspapers the next day showing our timpani line with the rain bouncing off the drums as they played.

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And they did that just for you!

Yeah....I was something like 15 years old at the time. I had a lot of clout with the networks then. :tongue:

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I was just thinking about something my kid said after he joined a college marching band after a DCI summer and a high-school marching band experience. He called his college band a "show band" as distinguished from a "competition band."

There's something to that distinction. When we went to a football game at his school, I was not very impressed with the wavy lines on the field at halftime. But the shuckin' and jivin' as they performed before and after the game was entertaining, to say the least. And the sound was great.

I was a bit bored at listening to the school fight song, or fragments thereof, about 15.3 million times that day, but the alumni probably doted on it.

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When was the last time halftime shows got any real airtime?...

November 2010. In fact, every November around Thanksgiving, NBC has been showing much of the "Battle of the Bands" between Southern and Grambling for a while, even promo-ing during the game (there is a football game too).

It's not a total win for us band geeks. The producers don't mic the field appropriately for band sound, so we tend to hear whichever baritone is overblowing in front of the camera mic at any given moment. It's too bad because those of us fortunate enough to have heard Southern live know what a glorious sound it can be.

HH

NOTE TO READERS: Sorry if I ruined anyone's day by using the term "mic" but I felt it necessary in context. It was not meant to remind you of drum corps's current condition. Nor was it intended to divert this topic. Mic can be a neutral term. It certainly was intended as such here. Can't we all just get along? Speaking of halftimes past: I'd like to teach the world to sing ...

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November 2010. In fact, every November around Thanksgiving, NBC has been showing much of the "Battle of the Bands" between Southern and Grambling for a while, even promo-ing during the game (there is a football game too).

It's not a total win for us band geeks. The producers don't mic the field appropriately for band sound, so we tend to hear whichever baritone is overblowing in front of the camera mic at any given moment. It's too bad because those of us fortunate enough to have heard Southern live know what a glorious sound it can be.

HH

NOTE TO READERS: Sorry if I ruined anyone's day by using the term "mic" but I felt it necessary in context. It was not meant to remind you of drum corps's current condition. Nor was it intended to divert this topic. Mic can be a neutral term. It certainly was intended as such here. Can't we all just get along? Speaking of halftimes past: I'd like to teach the world to sing ...

Yeah, I still think your comments amount to a "blood libel."

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Anecdotally, when I was in the Ohio State Marching band...

By law, I thought you were required to always refer to that particular educational instituion as "THE Ohio State University..." with a very heavy emphasis on the "THE" part of the name. You must not be proud of your alma mater.

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