Local sports anchor Owen Siebring (L) did quite the tribute to Freddie Mercury (R) and Queen. Local sports anchor Owen Siebring (L) did quite the tribute to Freddie Mercury (R) and Queen. (Owen Siebring on Twitter/X, Live Aid on YouTube.)

There have been many cases of sportscasters embedding a lot of references to a particular pop culture subject in a single sportscast. There have also been cases of sportswriters embedding hidden messages with the first letter of each sentence in a column. But using the first word of each sportscast over a 10-month period to perform the entire lyrics of Queen’s 1977 hit We Will Rock You? That’s new, and that’s what Owen Siebring, a sports anchor at Cedar Rapids, Iowa CBS 2/Fox 28 affiliate KGAN, just pulled off:

That drew quite a bit of praise on Twitter/X for Siebring. Here’s some of that:

Respect for the long game indeed. What’s perhaps most impressive here is Siebring’s dedication to doing the entire song. The first verse alone would have been remarkable enough, but putting in the whole thing really elevates this. For reference, here’s the famed 1985 live version of “We Will Rock You” from Live Aid:

And there are some advantages to a long-game approach like what Siebring did here. Individual themed or reference-filled broadcasts can be a lot of fun, but they do run a risk of alienating viewers not interested in what’s going on. By contrast, using just the first word of each broadcast for the bit makes the rest of the broadcast normal, with the bit only showing up when put together in a cut like this. At any rate, this was remarkable from Siebring, and it certainly drew some positive attention.

[Owen Siebring on Twitter/X, Freddie Mercury image from Live Aid on YouTube]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.