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Media Death Watch: The Sports Edition
There have been several threads in these parts noting the threat to traditional media from technology. The conventional wisdom is that live sports is the only thing going for cable and broadcast. Mostly, that’s true. Forbes had a story that 25 of 29 domestic local telecasts of MLB games led their markets in cable viewing this summer. A third of those also led when broadcast stations were included.
But that doesn’t mean anyone is breathing easier tonight. Your sports watching experience is about to get, well, different. In order to compensate for smaller fractionalized audiences and escalating rights fees, both ESPN and Fox Sports are changing the way they cover games.
This winter, chances are you may be physically closer to the action than the production teams covering the college sports telecast you’re watching. These media behemoths have gotten in bed — literally and figuratively — with the conferences and schools they cover and, as a result, they’ve invested heavily in infrastructure.
Instead of the producing the game on site, individual camera feeds and audio are fed to studios in Bristol, Charlotte, Chicago, and Los Angeles via fiber lines. With only cameramen, video operators, and two audio guys on site, a single production team can do a game almost every night of the week without a speck of travel.
That, of course, will put hundreds of remote techs, producers, and directors on the sidelines with diminished incomes (including yours truly). And because the schools are business partners, they’re also supplying some of the camera people as unpaid interns. Unfortunately, these kids are training for jobs that won’t exist if this experiment turns into a permanent feature of the TV landscape.
Where you will see the difference is with the announcers, because they won’t be there, either. Instead of sitting in the booth or at the table on the sidelines, they will watch the game from a sound booth, calling the action as it unfolds on their monitors. They will have to rely on gathering information from the web and talking to coaches by telephone. They will no longer be able to attend practices and talk to players. They won’t be able to observe who seems to be playing hurt. And if something happens off camera during the game they will be as clueless as you.
Of the 2,700 NCAA basketball games covered by ESPN last season, less than 50 were produced this way. But this fall, they have begun experimenting with football as well. Network executives promise that big events will still be produced the traditional way.
Unless this works out better than even the bean counters dream it will, and suddenly the idea of “big” becomes a matter up for debate.
Published in Culture, Entertainment, Sports
That’s right you couldn’t. Neither could the Cardinals. Go Cubs!
Sorry Casey. I was going to refrain from any and all gloating until the season is over, but that one just kinda slipped out. My lips are now sealed for the duration.
A little gloating is appropriate. NL Central was the toughest division by far.
It is hard to know though. Conceivably the commentators adapt and become more colorful, more witty, more analytical or entertaining.
As for the second point, I am strongly in favor of the ‘advances’ we are seeing. I have hope that people working remotely is a trend that works in Republican’s favor, as it ‘decentralizes authority’ to some degree. In a similar vein, if we can get technology to replace brick and mortar (generally Democrat leaning) education, this would also benefit more autonomy.
Yeah. I watched that game. No announcing other than the field announcer. Nobody observing of the team that was losing “what they have to do now is score.” No reminiscing about the shrimp cocktails they had for dinner the night before.
It was quite relaxing.
When the game was over, they asked for comments – from the guys that would have been in the broadcast booth.
They were agin it.
I spent hundreds of hours working as an intern doing closed circuit TV classes, running camera for the PBS affiliate, running camera for the Agriculture Department doing a TV show shot at the CBS affiliate. I got paid nothing.
But when ABC came to town to shoot the college football game…I got paid as much for 2 days work as I made a McD’s in two weeks. YES!!!
Now, I guess they stiff the interns on the network stuff, too.
Heck yeah it was. This year just feels a little different for me. I had no expectations at the start and I still don’t have any expectations – it’s already been a grand success no matter what happens, because it’s made baseball fun to follow again. After all, it’s just entertainment and I’ve been thoroughly entertained following these young fellers.
They’ve been doing Formula 1 races this way for a while. The race might be in the Ardennes forest but Leigh, David and Steve are in some facility in the states — I know not where.
It works well enough but there are clear cases where important information is lost. You’ll hear them refer to the “world feed” or subtle frustration at not being able to work through the slo-mo replay they’d like to.