Speaker 1: College football is a game of sights and sounds, west
Speaker 1: touchdown credible, from screaming fans to marching bands. It's the
Speaker 1: raucous atmosphere that sets college football apart from everything else.
Speaker 1: Except during a pandemic last fall, media partners and broadcasters
Speaker 1: were forced to adapt on the fly to unprecedented circumstances.
Speaker 1: This is how they made it work from the solid verbal.
Speaker 1: This is a special production. So now what welcome back?
Speaker 1: My name is Ty Hildenbrandt, joining me as always over
Speaker 1: there in Chicago, the one and only Dan Ruvenstein, Sir,
Speaker 1: how you doing. I'm good.
Speaker 2: I'm licking my proverbial chops. I don't know if that's
Speaker 2: too evocative over this episode, because we have done already
Speaker 2: a couple episodes looking at the twenty twenty season in
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty year from a college football perspective as
Speaker 2: a whole, and this episode is all about how you
Speaker 2: and I and I think a majority of people consume
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty season. Obviously a lot of people went
Speaker 2: to games, but not nearly as many as normally do,
Speaker 2: and not nearly as many people socialized in the way
Speaker 2: that they normally do around college football. So This is
Speaker 2: an episode that I think we are going to dedicate
Speaker 2: to the broadcast and fan, the home fan experience and
Speaker 2: how different it was in twenty twenty, and hopefully how
Speaker 2: it will never happen again, but just sort of debrief
Speaker 2: on what it was like consuming college football only as
Speaker 2: a TV product, which I know you and I did.
Speaker 2: I know a lot of people also went to games
Speaker 2: once again, but it was more than it ever was
Speaker 2: a TV product, So debriefing essentially that product itself.
Speaker 1: What amazed me the most in watching from home last
Speaker 1: year was how much, for the most part it felt
Speaker 1: the same. There were a lot of elements, as we'll
Speaker 1: find out here shortly, that needed to be made up
Speaker 1: on the fly. They were very much shooting from the
Speaker 1: hip b DSPN or CBS or anybody broadcasting a game.
Speaker 1: But I think for the home viewer, by and large,
Speaker 1: the product mostly felt the same.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes and no for me, just because I didn't
Speaker 2: watch it with anybody. My wife feigned interest at times
Speaker 2: during Michigan games that we watched a little bit of
Speaker 2: because that's where she went. But even it was not
Speaker 2: a fun year to watch Michigan football for Michigan fans
Speaker 2: and there was just, you know, the lack of electricity
Speaker 2: watching the TV product. Even when stadiums were empty and
Speaker 2: they piped in sound, it didn't feel the same. There
Speaker 2: would be those big wide shots after a touchdown and
Speaker 2: you wouldn't see anybody or nearly anybody, depending on the
Speaker 2: conference you were watching in the stands. I think there
Speaker 2: was a certain amount of energy that was extremely hard
Speaker 2: to replicate that. I'm sure broadcasters and broadcast teams and
Speaker 2: networks tried to do their very best, but it was
Speaker 2: it was very different from me. But also my personal
Speaker 2: life was very different and moving around the country and such,
Speaker 2: So maybe my experience was unique.
Speaker 1: But it was different to me. It definitely was different.
Speaker 1: It was still good to have the product on TV
Speaker 1: and to help us unpack a little bit more about
Speaker 1: what that was like, we brought on a Niche Shroff
Speaker 1: from espno broadcaster has called college football games for a
Speaker 1: good long time now, A niche longtime friend of the show.
Speaker 1: We asked him, what were your thoughts when all hell
Speaker 1: was breaking loose in March, taking a longer view on
Speaker 1: what it could mean for a college football season.
Speaker 3: I had as busy of a month as I can
Speaker 3: remember in March of twenty twenty, and I remember when
Speaker 3: I got done, I had done three games in three
Speaker 3: cities on three consecutive nights, and I thought, wow, March
Speaker 3: is just getting started. And then the next week everything
Speaker 3: goes away, everything shuts down. Realistically, at the time, I
Speaker 3: felt kind of how I think a lot of people felt, Okay,
Speaker 3: there's no way this is going to stretch into the fall, right.
Speaker 3: I thought we would be okay or close to okay.
Speaker 3: And then as the news kept on trickling in and
Speaker 3: every week would copine, things got worse and worse. You're like, oh, man,
Speaker 3: are we.
Speaker 1: Going to have a season that rings so true? I
Speaker 1: remember doing our live streams, we were yeah, in the
Speaker 1: very beginning, alarmed, as we all were alarmed that this
Speaker 1: could have some impact not just on society but on
Speaker 1: the sport we know and love. And then yeah, as
Speaker 1: the summer wore on, as we got closer to the season,
Speaker 1: as we detailed in our first episode of So Now,
Speaker 1: when we talked through the big ten decision making, it
Speaker 1: became very apparent that this was going to be a
Speaker 1: different kind of year. I'd imagine if you're a broadcaster,
Speaker 1: this being your livelihood and all, it's rather concerning. We
Speaker 1: asked a niche, what were your thoughts as we got
Speaker 1: a little bit deeper into this thing, and it became
Speaker 1: a parent that, yeah, you might not be able to
Speaker 1: go to games. You actually might have to call them from,
Speaker 1: say a remote studio somewhere in Charlotte.
Speaker 3: And I'd done some games remotely from studio, but football
Speaker 3: is a different animal altogether. There's so many moving parts,
Speaker 3: so many things to see, and all of a sudden
Speaker 3: it was, oh, Okay, this will be challenging. This is
Speaker 3: going to be a piece of the puzzle. And then
Speaker 3: you're sort of formulating a game plan. What do you
Speaker 3: need to see? Where are your eyes going? Well, we
Speaker 3: have cameras for this, who's going to be or liaison
Speaker 3: on site? And it really became this collaborative process on
Speaker 3: essentially trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle.
Speaker 1: I did not know until just this past year that
Speaker 1: they could pull this off in terms of.
Speaker 2: Remote broadcasts, having the play by play and analyst in
Speaker 2: a studio in Charlotte or Connecticut or Los Angeles or something.
Speaker 1: Not to this extent, I had visited the Big ten studios,
Speaker 1: Big ten Network studios at some point, and I saw
Speaker 1: the closet where they, I guess, would do remote broadcasts
Speaker 1: of other events, but sure in none of those cases
Speaker 1: was it ever something as robust as a football broadcast,
Speaker 1: where you've got so many different moving pieces, so much
Speaker 1: to account for different camera angles, what have you. When
Speaker 1: it became a pair that this is a direction they
Speaker 1: were headed, my ears perked up. I'm not in the
Speaker 1: broadcasting business to the same extent and niches, but I
Speaker 1: was wondering at that point, how the hell are they
Speaker 1: going to pull this off?
Speaker 2: Same and I knew that football had been called remotely,
Speaker 2: but those generally, those remote broadcasts, from what I know,
Speaker 2: are the quote unquote smaller games, fewer cameras, fewer graphics,
Speaker 2: fewer replays, stuff like that. So there was not a
Speaker 2: huge need to have a big, robust remote situation. But
Speaker 2: the thing is with the networks, they had the lead
Speaker 2: up time. This wasn't something that snuck up on them,
Speaker 2: so they were able to get their ducks in a
Speaker 2: row for weeks, months whatever to say, Okay, this is
Speaker 2: how we're going to operate with this, This is how
Speaker 2: we're gonna operate with that, this is how we're going
Speaker 2: to do this remotely, so they were at least able
Speaker 2: to plan for a different kind of broadcast year, so
Speaker 2: it would feel normal too idiots like you and me,
Speaker 2: and so I I think I noticed certain elements. Obviously,
Speaker 2: it's hard not to notice the announcers not reacting to
Speaker 2: things happening with crowd energy in the same way. That's
Speaker 2: easy to see that, like, okay, this is a little
Speaker 2: bit different when you're calling a Boston college game and
Speaker 2: it's just a bunch of cardboard cutouts, it's hard to
Speaker 2: sort of match the energy of the moment. But largely technologically,
Speaker 2: you know, graphics would come in, replays would come in,
Speaker 2: there were different camera angles, and I maybe there were
Speaker 2: fewer games where you had the zipline cam whatever that's called.
Speaker 2: But I don't know if I fully noticed it. So
Speaker 2: I by and large thought, you know, ESPN, CBS, Fox,
Speaker 2: the regional networks, the conference networks did as good a
Speaker 2: job as expected. So I came away very impressed because essentially, ty,
Speaker 2: they're you and me, right, they're better versions, but they're
Speaker 2: at home or they're in a studio just podcasting games live.
Speaker 2: That's what it kind of is.
Speaker 1: I didn't really notice the small details right, that might
Speaker 1: have been off with a broadcast. Obviously, you look out
Speaker 1: in the stands, there are no people there, yet you
Speaker 1: hear crowd noise, which we will talk about momentarily, right.
Speaker 1: You know that that's fabricated, and you can sense that
Speaker 1: maybe announcers are a bit disconnected from the moment. But
Speaker 1: a lot of the little stuff I thought they did
Speaker 1: a pretty good job of papering over. And that's a
Speaker 1: credit to everybody involved in these productions. You know, you
Speaker 1: talk to somebody like a niche again, whose livelihood is
Speaker 1: broadcasting games, and you don't necessarily have a level of
Speaker 1: understanding of the nuance that goes into it. These guys
Speaker 1: take it very seriously. Every little inch of the football field.
Speaker 1: They're trying to get a description of what's going on
Speaker 1: out there. Little things like context that you might be
Speaker 1: able to pick up before a game.
Speaker 3: It's just different. You know, there's something about game day
Speaker 3: at a stadium. There's something about that game day environment.
Speaker 3: One of the things that I usually like to do
Speaker 3: when I get there just survey my surroundings. What do
Speaker 3: you pick up using your eyes and ears to ask questions?
Speaker 3: You don't get that anymore. You're at the mercity in
Speaker 3: a lot of ways of the school providing you with information,
Speaker 3: and as we all know, schools will provide information to
Speaker 3: make them look as good as possible.
Speaker 1: And even little things like building rapport with the broadcasting team.
Speaker 3: Just being on the road with your colleagues and going
Speaker 3: out the night before the game and grabbing dinner, having
Speaker 3: a glass of wine, just building chemistry and camaraderie. You
Speaker 3: just don't have that. Everybody's masked up. We are all
Speaker 3: socially distant. They're very careful about where you can sit
Speaker 3: and how far you can stand.
Speaker 1: Now, in a Niche's case, he broadcasted games remotely from
Speaker 1: a studio in Charlotte, and thankfully Tom lougan Bill was
Speaker 1: in the same studio as him, so at least he
Speaker 1: had some report or being so he had his announcing
Speaker 1: partner physically there with him. You and I can speak
Speaker 1: a lot to what it's like when your co host
Speaker 1: is not with you. Correct. It has taken us the
Speaker 1: better part of a decade to build up this rapport,
Speaker 1: So you can imagine, especially going into a new football season,
Speaker 1: sometimes teams are mixed and matched on the broadcasting front
Speaker 1: to try and build up that level of understanding with
Speaker 1: your co hosts so quickly. In a new setting, everything
Speaker 1: is completely new. There are new inputs, new outputs. I
Speaker 1: again am really surprised and quite impressed that it all
Speaker 1: went as well as it did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's not just the on air people, right,
Speaker 2: it's the people that are spotting who's tackling who, or
Speaker 2: who's substituting in for whom. There's the producer in the
Speaker 2: broadcaster's ear. And you know, certain broadcasters work better with
Speaker 2: certain producers. They understand what they like. They understand like, okay,
Speaker 2: this is when I like the replays coming in. This
Speaker 2: is how quickly I want to see the replays in
Speaker 2: a step display or whatever.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of nuance behind the scenes that and
Speaker 2: even in times when things are quote unquote normal. We
Speaker 2: all remember those games where all of a sudden, there
Speaker 2: is no wide cam available because it's foggy, and we
Speaker 2: need only the cameras on the field, or all the
Speaker 2: other cameras go out except for one main one, and
Speaker 2: the one main one's trying to track all the action.
Speaker 2: And that's normal times. And so in terms of communication
Speaker 2: behind the scenes, it is that element of you know,
Speaker 2: the duck looks common, serene above the surface, but underneath
Speaker 2: it's paddling like all hell. And so I think there
Speaker 2: was more of an element this fall than ever before,
Speaker 2: and the better broadcast just masked everything a lot better.
Speaker 2: But no, it was fascinating to hear him talk about
Speaker 2: the different elements that needed to come together.
Speaker 1: Just so, how do you overcompensate for the situation not
Speaker 1: having the crowd noise, not being there on site?
Speaker 3: You're trained depending on where you're calling the game, if
Speaker 3: you're at a Clemson or an LSU or Virginia Tech
Speaker 3: one of these raucous environments. A lot of times, the
Speaker 3: best thing you can do on third and one is
Speaker 3: shut the hell up and just let that crowd roar,
Speaker 3: especially if it's the defense looking for a stand or whatever.
Speaker 3: You just let the crowd go, and the crowd becomes
Speaker 3: that extra person in the broadcast, and that amplifies the
Speaker 3: moment more than anything that you can say, Well, that's
Speaker 3: not there now, And you always worry about over talking
Speaker 3: and saying too much, And in some of these cases,
Speaker 3: when you scale it back a little bit, all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, it's sound of silence. Right where is everybody?
Speaker 3: And you almost feel, all right, do I need to
Speaker 3: jump in a little bit? So you almost have to
Speaker 3: recalibrate your process a little bit.
Speaker 1: Recalibrate the process.
Speaker 3: Dan.
Speaker 1: One of the questions that you had for a niche
Speaker 1: that I get the sense you were very excited to ask,
Speaker 1: was about the crowd noise, right, yeah, the fake crowd noise,
Speaker 1: the fake crowd noise. What were your thoughts on fake
Speaker 1: crowd noise this year?
Speaker 3: Dan?
Speaker 2: It was very strange, And it was strange because I
Speaker 2: found myself getting comfortable with how normal the broadcast would
Speaker 2: feel in those games in which maybe it was only
Speaker 2: friends and family, maybe it was a few, a few hundred,
Speaker 2: or no fans at all. The one game that specifically
Speaker 2: stood out to me that I really was able to
Speaker 2: connect to the fact that there were no humans watching
Speaker 2: the game. I'm almost positive this is true. Michigan, Michigan
Speaker 2: State in the Big House, which is of course already
Speaker 2: in a cavernous place defined by how large and overwhelming
Speaker 2: it can be. Michigan State has the upset, and there
Speaker 2: would be a number of wide shots that were supposed to,
Speaker 2: I don't know, add environmental character to the situation, and
Speaker 2: there was a feeling of these players snuck onto the
Speaker 2: field on a Wednesday morning to play a game, almost
Speaker 2: like I'm almost positive there's a tradition like the student newspapers,
Speaker 2: the Michigan and Michigan State student newspapers, they played the
Speaker 2: night before, and it had that feel to it where
Speaker 2: it was, why don't we just all throw it like
Speaker 2: a pop up?
Speaker 1: It's a pop up game.
Speaker 2: Why don't we just I don't know, why don't we
Speaker 2: mess around on a Saturday morning and play some college
Speaker 2: football and just let's just do it. Let's go crazy
Speaker 2: and do it. So that stood out to me. When
Speaker 2: I would hear the crowd noise followed up by shots
Speaker 2: of no humans, I was my brain almost felt like
Speaker 2: it was it was getting tricks played on it.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 2: It was very strange.
Speaker 1: I get the sense that a niche was in a
Speaker 1: very similar spot. First and foremost, we asked him where'd
Speaker 1: the crowd noise come from?
Speaker 3: Well, as far as I know, for the games that
Speaker 3: I did, most of the fake crowd noise was being
Speaker 3: pumped in by the schools themselves. So it was the
Speaker 3: PA at the school that would be in charge of that.
Speaker 1: So the schools are pumping it in, which is an
Speaker 1: important bit of context. We also asked him like, was
Speaker 1: it helpful to you to hear this noise at all?
Speaker 1: Or what was your take on it?
Speaker 3: From my standpoint, it was helpful not being there, because
Speaker 3: if you are there and it's okay, we're looking around
Speaker 3: and I see two hundred people in the seats or nobody,
Speaker 3: and you're rocking all this crowd noise, come on, who
Speaker 3: are you fooling? But not physically being there, it actually
Speaker 3: gives you this fake sense of hey, something is happening
Speaker 3: and something is important, and it props up your energy
Speaker 3: by proxy.
Speaker 1: So the crowd noise helped him more being off site
Speaker 1: than it would have if he were there.
Speaker 2: Can I tell you something, I have no reason to
Speaker 2: doubt a niche Okay, he would know better than you
Speaker 2: or I would. But I have been in the Fox truck,
Speaker 2: like the a team Fox truck, NFL Fox, not college Fox.
Speaker 2: So this is like the team that would do a
Speaker 2: Super Bowl or a you know, NFC championship game. The huge,
Speaker 2: the biggest of the big crew, the Aikman Joe Buck crew.
Speaker 2: And this was for a documentary thing I worked on
Speaker 2: a few years ago, and I got to watch the
Speaker 2: audio mixer do his thing mid game a huge game.
Speaker 2: It was Patriots Saints, I believe, in Foxborough and he
Speaker 2: had a mixer with like, I don't know, sixty four channels,
Speaker 2: thirty two channels, some crazy number of audio channels, and
Speaker 2: I got to watch him as a player was carded off,
Speaker 2: move the button up, the lever up for the sad
Speaker 2: Fox theme the butta dunt dut du dun dut du
Speaker 2: dun dunt into commercial. So I know the pure raw
Speaker 2: power that television has from an audio perspective, and it
Speaker 2: is still hard for me to believe that that a
Speaker 2: version of that guy didn't exist in Bristol or in
Speaker 2: LA to sort of level out the environment as the
Speaker 2: game was going on, because I do know the raw
Speaker 2: audio power available to these networks, so no reason not
Speaker 2: to believe a niche. But at the same time, it
Speaker 2: would it wouldn't. It doesn't fully make sense the networks
Speaker 2: would give that much control over the TV broadcast audio
Speaker 2: to the random stadium audio engineer. I don't know, and
Speaker 2: I think it was different depending on the sport. I
Speaker 2: know back in the fall, if you watched any like
Speaker 2: Premier League soccer, you could watch one channel that had
Speaker 2: the crowd noise and another that really yeah, they would
Speaker 2: allow you to watch a different station that didn't have it,
Speaker 2: maybe online or through one of the pay services. So
Speaker 2: just a really weird again layer of context that some
Speaker 2: of the networks tried to add in to make the
Speaker 2: product feel a little bit more authentic. The audio junkie
Speaker 2: between us, you are the person who pays attention to
Speaker 2: things like that, whether it's an audio form or the
Speaker 2: audio during a TV show or whatever. Where were your
Speaker 2: ears and brain connected watching these games? Were you just
Speaker 2: accepting this fake noise as like, yep, okay, this is
Speaker 2: I've accepted it and I'm not.
Speaker 1: Paying attention to it.
Speaker 2: Or were you paying closer attention as you were watching
Speaker 2: a game in a bigger moment, knowing like, I don't
Speaker 2: know which game it was. I think Notre Dame was
Speaker 2: at Boston College, right, so you at least had one
Speaker 2: Notre Dame game where there were zero people in the crowd.
Speaker 2: Did that take you out of anything? Were you paying
Speaker 2: extra close attention to how the audio engineer was riding
Speaker 2: the levels? Was that something you paid attention to.
Speaker 1: Riding the level? Sure? I tend to pay attention to
Speaker 1: the volumes of the two commentators. It's really easy for
Speaker 1: those volumes to get a little bit out of sync
Speaker 1: and to feel a bit disconnected from the game, especially
Speaker 1: when someone's doing a broadcast remotely like that. And there
Speaker 1: were a few instances is where you heard it, But
Speaker 1: by the end of the year they got really good
Speaker 1: at it. They got really good at mixing everything down.
Speaker 2: You're talking about with the with the fake crowd noise,
Speaker 2: you're talking about it with the.
Speaker 1: Crowd noise, with the other microphones that maybe they had
Speaker 1: on site, the whistle, the sound of the players hitting
Speaker 1: each other, things like that. It was really easy, I
Speaker 1: think in the beginning for some of the voices of
Speaker 1: the commentators to be a little bit too loud, or
Speaker 1: one to be too loud, in the other to be
Speaker 1: a little bit too soft. And by the end they
Speaker 1: got really good at doing it.
Speaker 2: I noticed I was able to hear whistles and yelling
Speaker 2: from the sideline onto the field early on in the season.
Speaker 2: I couldn't tell you a specific game, but like when
Speaker 2: an offensive coordinator was trying to get the attention of
Speaker 2: his quarterback, or when there were substitutions being made and
Speaker 2: somebody was yelling for a linebacker to run off the field.
Speaker 2: I did notice that I was hearing those more than
Speaker 2: I normally would, which makes sense. Obviously there's there's less
Speaker 2: sound to interrupt everything. But yeah, I think you're right
Speaker 2: that in the beginning of the season there were there
Speaker 2: were audio instances that felt different.
Speaker 1: We asked a Niche, what was the remote studio set up? Blake,
Speaker 1: If you sat down at your desk, what was in
Speaker 1: your field of view?
Speaker 3: The peripherals would be. I'd be sitting on the right
Speaker 3: side of this extended broom closet if you will. Logan
Speaker 3: Bill is to the far left in front of me.
Speaker 3: I have a desktop computer, and on that desktop monitor,
Speaker 3: my stats guy Paul Newman, would type in there and
Speaker 3: I would see what's going on. To the left of that,
Speaker 3: I had my monitor a little bit elevated. That was
Speaker 3: our program feed. That's the game itself, it's what the
Speaker 3: viewers are seeing on television right above that. They could
Speaker 3: give me one extra monitor, one extra camera, so I
Speaker 3: had the all twenty two, and then in that same
Speaker 3: monitor I had the stats feed. Then I had a
Speaker 3: second monitor or a second laptop which had net return,
Speaker 3: which is the feed on a delay, so sometimes it
Speaker 3: allows you to see a play twice if your replay.
Speaker 3: It allows you to see the highlights when they do
Speaker 3: a cut in, so you're able to kind of watch that. Okay,
Speaker 3: you're showing Kyle Pitts here from Florida. We can react
Speaker 3: off of that. And then there was an ISO monitor,
Speaker 3: which is where our producer can show us things before
Speaker 3: they come on air, whether it's a graphic or an
Speaker 3: edit or a package. Hey, look in your ISO. Let
Speaker 3: me know when you want to go to this. It's all,
Speaker 3: you know, broadcast jargon. But there were a lot of inputs.
Speaker 3: A lot of inputs.
Speaker 1: Sounds very complicated. It doesn't sound unlike some of the
Speaker 1: rigs that you and I have put together. Obviously a
Speaker 1: lot more sophisticated, sure, but it's very clear the more
Speaker 1: we talk to a niche how they were cobbling this
Speaker 1: thing together. Again, I think they all did a very
Speaker 1: admirable job of doing it, but a lot of it
Speaker 1: was shooting from the hip, trying to get the best
Speaker 1: information they could to the posters. Like one of the
Speaker 1: interesting things that Aniche said was that he's not usually
Speaker 1: a phone guy, you know, a cell phone guy during
Speaker 1: the game, but you're trying to get as much information
Speaker 1: as you can in the moment. And so whereas before
Speaker 1: maybe he's tweeting and texting periodically throughout the course of
Speaker 1: a game, now he's tuned into his phone throughout the
Speaker 1: entire broadcast, using it to get whatever information maybe the
Speaker 1: school is putting out or someone on the ground is
Speaker 1: putting out.
Speaker 2: If that particular game didn't have a sideline reporter, didn't
Speaker 2: have producers on the ground overhearing seeing a player get
Speaker 2: carried off because of an injury or whatever, the circumstance
Speaker 2: taken into the injury tent, whatever, that they're searching for information,
Speaker 2: just like the rest of us. There's a certain helplessness
Speaker 2: I'm sure that comes from broadcasting a game remotely, and
Speaker 2: I can imagine looking at screens and trying to be
Speaker 2: an authority on what's happening eighteen hundred miles away. It
Speaker 2: feels inauthentic. It feels like you are are literally read
Speaker 2: now literally maybe figuratively, reaching to appear to be.
Speaker 1: In the know. So Aniche mentioned the All twenty two
Speaker 1: camera Dan right, it's the coaches angle from way up
Speaker 1: high that they watched tape from Yeah, interesting story on
Speaker 1: why that monitor ended up being one of the ones
Speaker 1: in front of him.
Speaker 3: You may have had a camera guy have a COVID test,
Speaker 3: and so now I've got a backup camera guy. And
Speaker 3: that's the stuff people don't realize. And guess what play
Speaker 3: action pass he's fulled and he's not following it. Well. Now,
Speaker 3: us as play by play guys and analysts, for the
Speaker 3: most part, we can only see what you see on TV.
Speaker 3: We had that early in the year and they said, hey,
Speaker 3: what if we had the ALL twenty two? So you
Speaker 3: have that on an extra monitor, and so that situation
Speaker 3: happened in a game and I can look up and
Speaker 3: I can see, Okay, I'm off to the other monitor.
Speaker 3: Now I can see that it was indeed a pass.
Speaker 3: He threw it downfield and the ball was intercepted or
Speaker 3: it was caught or whatever, and you can still call
Speaker 3: the play.
Speaker 1: You have a lot of instances like this. The Deeper
Speaker 1: we got into conversation with a niche a bunch of
Speaker 1: instances where they tried something, maybe it didn't not work,
Speaker 1: but through the course of their normal business, decided there
Speaker 1: were other things that they could do to further optimize
Speaker 1: another example, spotters. You know what a spotter is, right, yep.
Speaker 1: Spotter's a guy who is keeping track of who's making plays,
Speaker 1: keeping track of key events in a game, feeding all
Speaker 1: that information back to the broadcasters.
Speaker 3: We had a spatner who was on site and basically
Speaker 3: had a gizmo where he's got my spotting board, and
Speaker 3: when substitutions are coming in and out, he can point
Speaker 3: and say, hey, this guy's in, this guy's out, or
Speaker 3: update me on injuries.
Speaker 1: Figuring out how to communicate with the remote staff. It's
Speaker 1: hard enough you're in a studio somewhere in Charlotte, physically
Speaker 1: removed from the game, artificial crowd noise again through your headset,
Speaker 1: a bunch of monitors that you're not accustomed to in
Speaker 1: front of you, trying to paint a picture with your
Speaker 1: voice as to what is going on. All the while,
Speaker 1: you still got to communicate with others who are connected.
Speaker 1: I don't know if a Niche said, maybe Skype, maybe phone,
Speaker 1: maybe zoom. Who knows you are trying to collect all
Speaker 1: of these parts to put together a broadcast.
Speaker 2: And the other part of it too is and he
Speaker 2: sort of touched on this, but when broadcasters aren't in
Speaker 2: the stadium and they're not in the town and they
Speaker 2: don't go out the night before, and it's not that
Speaker 2: they're going to get a pulse of whatever it is
Speaker 2: Tennessee football or Missouri football or cal football. They're not
Speaker 2: going to get that in like you know, they're parachuting in.
Speaker 2: They're in and out. But there is that element of
Speaker 2: feeling feeling the energy in a town the night before
Speaker 2: and the seeing the out of town fans, seeing you know,
Speaker 2: the excitement for the game in the morning, and then
Speaker 2: traveling to the stadium and seeing people tailgating. It can't
Speaker 2: help but feel the people broadcasting and producing the game
Speaker 2: that they're part of something big, that it's building to
Speaker 2: a moment. Even if it's a game between you know,
Speaker 2: two unranked teams, people are still so excited for football.
Speaker 2: It's not even just about the noise and energy in
Speaker 2: the stadium, because as we know, college football is a
Speaker 2: cultural thing, right It's showing up at six am to
Speaker 2: set up your tailgate, and so everybody involved in that
Speaker 2: broadcast sees that they can sense the excitement, so they're
Speaker 2: wanting to take that excitement and put it into the
Speaker 2: game themselves. They feel the weight of the scale of
Speaker 2: that game. So it's something that I mean, I'm not
Speaker 2: saying poor them, I'm saying more poor us, because we
Speaker 2: like it when a broadcaster is into it that understands
Speaker 2: that even though Oregon or Notre Dame loss last week,
Speaker 2: we're still feeling good about this week, We're still feeling optimistic.
Speaker 2: We still can't wait to get loud in the stadium.
Speaker 2: And so it's imps possible to me for anybody in
Speaker 2: a remote room, as good as their rapport is, to
Speaker 2: be able to bring that to their microphone. And so
Speaker 2: that to me is something that I noticed a little bit.
Speaker 2: But in hearing a niche talk think, I don't know
Speaker 2: how you possibly fake it. It just seems impossible.
Speaker 1: This was the one that got me when he talked
Speaker 1: about the statistician at home.
Speaker 3: We had a statistician who was watching the games at home. Well,
Speaker 3: how could he communicate with us? So in the beginning,
Speaker 3: it was on a zoom call and he'd have a
Speaker 3: chat box and he would type in the chat box. Well,
Speaker 3: the issue there is what if I'm not looking at
Speaker 3: that chat box and I look at it three plays
Speaker 3: later and he's got something up there? Is that still relevant?
Speaker 3: So they came up with this other system where we're
Speaker 3: both on this website. We both log in and it's
Speaker 3: almost like a whiteboard where he'll type in and then
Speaker 3: once it's no longer relevant, he hits one button, it's
Speaker 3: gone and he can type the next thing. So if
Speaker 3: I'm looking in, whatever I see in there will be relevant.
Speaker 1: Were they using Google Docs for this?
Speaker 3: Dan?
Speaker 1: Isn't that?
Speaker 2: How? Gosh?
Speaker 1: Who what?
Speaker 2: There was a general that was having some sort of
Speaker 2: inappropriate relationship and that's how they were communicating live Google Docs.
Speaker 1: I think so.
Speaker 2: I think that's the case, but I don't know if
Speaker 2: they were using Google Docs, but they're using something very
Speaker 2: similar to it. It sounds like they were using something
Speaker 2: like Google Docs. And this is where it got real
Speaker 2: interesting for me, because you know so much of what
Speaker 2: we do. I'm not comparing what we do, but all
Speaker 2: these years has been very cobbled together with these tools
Speaker 2: that we could find on the internet. And I think
Speaker 2: desperate times called for desperate measures in this case, and
Speaker 2: ESPN and CBS at anybody broadcasting a game, be it
Speaker 2: via TV, radio, you name it, had to improvise and
Speaker 2: had to see what tools were at their disposal and
Speaker 2: basically use all of them until they got the formula right.
Speaker 2: Aniche said openly, look like.
Speaker 3: You have to almost owen thinking, Okay, there's certain things.
Speaker 3: If I miss, it's going to happen, and I can't
Speaker 3: beat myself up over it.
Speaker 1: You're never going to be perfect. But at least over
Speaker 1: the course of the season, it tended to get better
Speaker 1: at it, and I think by the end, honestly, it
Speaker 1: was a pretty close to normal product, albeit there weren't
Speaker 1: the normal number of people in the stands, the normal
Speaker 1: amount of fervor around a football game, just because of COVID.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you remember, we talked to Adam Amin who's
Speaker 2: now at Fox last year he called College Football Forever,
Speaker 2: and he talked about that ability just in reference to
Speaker 2: the All twenty two camera that was added that when
Speaker 2: he or any broadcaster is in the booth, they could
Speaker 2: see Amari Cooper breaking loose deep and so their voice
Speaker 2: could rise to match what they're seeing. And so I
Speaker 2: think the networks piecing together. I know certain networks had,
Speaker 2: you know, people in games or in stadiums, and certain didn't,
Speaker 2: depending on the size of the game or the size
Speaker 2: of the broadcast. But it is that ability to on
Speaker 2: the fly say Okay, I need to add this display
Speaker 2: so I can see this, or we need this element
Speaker 2: to the spotting or the stat guy or the graphics
Speaker 2: or the replays or whatever we'd like to be able
Speaker 2: to shuffle on the fly. I think is fascinating because
Speaker 2: that's nothing you can do typically in the same way
Speaker 2: in the booth itself.
Speaker 1: The operative question now as we move forward is how
Speaker 1: much of whatever new ground we broke in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: will be carried over into twenty twenty one. What do
Speaker 1: you think? I think they've found some ways that they
Speaker 1: can further optimize the broadcast. They certainly have figured out
Speaker 1: that they can do this if they have to. I
Speaker 1: don't think anybody wants to. But in a pinch, if
Speaker 1: you're looking to cut some corners save a few pennies, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's always an option.
Speaker 2: I think. Oh, you mentioned that you were at the
Speaker 2: Big ten network and you saw their setup right for
Speaker 2: doing this with basketball. Yeah, that they would have production
Speaker 2: crews at this and then they would beam back the
Speaker 2: feed and they would have broadcasters in the Chicago studio.
Speaker 2: I think. I mean it, it was happening with football
Speaker 2: before it was happening more and more with some of
Speaker 2: the smaller games I had heard. You know, ESPN was
Speaker 2: doing some of this experimenting with remote broadcasts, which is
Speaker 2: I mean on the broadcaster side, I'm sure they hate
Speaker 2: it for the reasons the niche is already laid out.
Speaker 2: But knowing that you can save money and almost approximate
Speaker 2: a normal broadcast, I think we're going to see it
Speaker 2: way more. Maybe not in the near term, maybe not.
Speaker 2: You know, we're going to see maybe the broadcasters get
Speaker 2: back in the stadium just because it's the healthy thing
Speaker 2: for broadcast crews and production crews. But I think long term,
Speaker 2: I think places are going to look because it does
Speaker 2: cost a ton of money to send a crew and
Speaker 2: broadcast a game remotely from it's not remotely, but from
Speaker 2: a stadium. I think we're going to see it much more.
Speaker 2: I really do.
Speaker 1: And I think they will be able to apply what
Speaker 1: they've learned from twenty two. They will further refine the
Speaker 1: tools to make this more readily available or a better
Speaker 1: product for the home viewer. They will find ways if
Speaker 1: it involves saving money to make the products sound eighty
Speaker 1: five percent of what it normally would if the crew
Speaker 1: were there on site, I mean, we have technology available
Speaker 1: already where you can just have a drone fix its
Speaker 1: sites on a specific you know, on a raft or
Speaker 1: a dog, and just follow it. Right, We're not terribly
Speaker 1: far away from automated cameras following action. Maybe it'll be
Speaker 1: a couple of years or something like that. But as
Speaker 1: technology gets better, technology is gonna get cheaper. That's what
Speaker 1: always happens, and so I think it's definitely going to
Speaker 1: carry over because what are we seeing more and more
Speaker 1: that live sports are the one thing that people will
Speaker 1: pay to view. As it happens, people aren't paying to
Speaker 1: watch dramas or comedies the second day premiere. Cable subscriptions
Speaker 1: are down, but all of these networks are paying an
Speaker 1: astronomical amount of money. We just saw what ESPN, ABC
Speaker 1: pay for the SEC once their deal is up, and
Speaker 1: I think they're starting to broadcast it early. So the
Speaker 1: rights acquisition fees keep going up. Are still through the
Speaker 1: roof for football, especially, so.
Speaker 2: On that back end, the networks are going to Sure,
Speaker 2: they're going to get some streaming money, they're going to
Speaker 2: get advertising revenue, but at the same time they are
Speaker 2: going to look long and hard every single time one
Speaker 2: of these deals comes up and they're figuring out budgets.
Speaker 2: They're going to look long and hard at how they
Speaker 2: can broadcast a high quality game at low quality prices.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to So Now What Technical Difficulties Part one.
Speaker 1: You can catch our full interview with a niche out
Speaker 1: on our Patreon at verbowlers dot com, and don't forget
Speaker 1: to come back soon for part two. Then the co