Uncertainty still surrounds what sports might look like when the games get going again. So how can anyone know the full specifics about what sports broadcasts will look like?
Answer: They don’t, and that includes those that make their living in sports broadcasting. Like the rest of us, they’re waiting to see what the logistics of the sports world opening up might look like as professional leagues attempt a restart even as the COVID-19 pandemic lingers.
“Everything can change so much in a couple of days, let alone a couple of weeks or a couple of months when they hopefully start again,’’ said Mike Breen, ESPN and ABC’s lead NBA play-by-play announcer. “You just don’t know. No one does, and they’re probably not being upfront if they tell you that they do.”
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The NBA’s board of governors is scheduled to vote Thursday on commissioner Adam Silver’s recommendation to restart the season with 22 teams in Orlando. The NHL announced the framework for a return-to-play plan this past week that was complex and vague at once — the two cities the playoff teams will play in and the length of those series remain undetermined.
Given that there is no vaccine for COVID-19, which has killed more than 100,000 Americans, and no assurance the virus will fade in the coming months even if social distancing is maintained, any restart plans must come with caveats and alternatives. As for the broadcasters and networks that bring the games to us through our assorted devices, all they can do for now is keep their thumb on the pause button.
“At the moment we’re in a holding pattern while we wait for the league to decide how all of this is going to be executed,’’ said Chris Wayland, senior vice president and general manager of NBC Sports Boston, the television home of the Celtics.
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“Obviously, we’re trying to think of every possible scenario and to be as prepared as we can to make sure the local broadcast looks and feels as close as possible to what we’ve always done. But we can’t really make any final decisions on that stuff until really the league tells us how they’re going to produce the games and how the feeds will be available to us.”
Long-distance approach
If there is a near-certainty, it’s that broadcasters will not be on site when the games return. Televised golf and NASCAR events have been broadcast from a studio in recent weeks, and that will include Fox Sports 1’s telecast of the Supermarket Heroes 500 Sunday.
Bruins play-by-play announcer Jack Edwards and Celtics play-by-play voice Mike Gorman have some experience calling games from a studio. Gorman did play-by-play of basketball and handball during the 2012 Summer Olympics in London — except he was not in London, but rather in a small studio with a 15-inch monitor at NBC Sports headquarters in Stamford, Conn. “It’s a challenge,’’ said Gorman.
“It’s also a challenge if it’s the first game you see in person,’’ he added with a laugh, noting he had to take a crash course in the rules of handball. “That’s a bigger challenge.”
During his time at ESPN, Edwards once called a World Cup soccer qualifier between the US and host Guatemala from a studio. He also did it from afar for a couple of Bruins games, when they opened the 2010-11 season in Prague.
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“In the first game, there was an empty-net goal,’’ he recalled, “and because the feed didn’t provide a picture-in-picture of the goalie going to the bench or any notion of the goalie going to the bench, I discovered the goal was empty at the same time the viewers did.”
Having to follow exactly what is on the screen at all times can require a different approach for the play-by-play broadcaster. Edwards said NESN shows longer replays during Bruins games so analyst Andy Brickley can detail the origins of a play that led to a goal. That broader view of the ice and the game might not be possible on a single generic feed.
Breen said he watches the live action but turns to the monitor after fouls and whistles, which means he’s sometimes looking at something other than what the viewers are seeing. Gorman noted that director Jim Edmonds almost always bases what he shows on screen on what Gorman and analysts Tom Heinsohn or Brian Scalabrine are talking about ― the camera gets its cues from the broadcasters, rather than vice versa.
“[Jim] is always listening and backing up what we’re saying with pictures,’’ said Gorman. “If there ends up being one feed for all broadcasts, I may be talking about Jayson Tatum and they’ll show the Nets’ coach or something. We’d probably have to swing the dialogue back around to the coach just because he’s on the screen. So that lack of communication is going to exist, and there’s not really any way to solve it.”
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Interaction important
NBC’s Mike Tirico, who has been a play-by-play voice or studio host for an impressive résumé of big events, including the Olympics, NFL prime-time broadcasts, golf majors, thinks it will be a relatively easy adjustment to calling games off monitors. He’s more concerned about the effects calling a game off-site would have on preparation rather than execution.
“I think what you’ll miss is the interaction we have with everyone, from fans to athletes, to coaches, to executives, to fellow media members,’’ said Tirico, citing the trust and candor that has come from having production meetings with the likes of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady in the days before prime-time games.
“Those interactions really can separate an average broadcast from a good broadcast. It gives you a depth and context, a certainty of what you're saying. It allows you to clarify a point that may not come up on a Zoom call.”
Breen said he feels the same way, noting that it’s valuable to be on the scene and gauge the moods of the players and the vibe in the arena. Some of the best information gathering comes from pregame conversations, he said.
“When you do your preparation for a game and you're reading through things and going over numbers, you might ultimately use 20 percent of that research on the broadcast,’’ he said. “But then when you go to the arena that night and you talk to players and coaches and assistant coaches and maybe team broadcasters, you use like 80 percent of that stuff because it's up to date That's right from the horse's mouth.”
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Sounds of the game
With the announcers off-site and the likelihood that the stands will be devoid of fans at least when the leagues ramp up again, there is the opportunity for innovation.
“You’re in a building now with no fans, which means you can put cameras anywhere,’’ said Gorman. “That could be beneficial to a broadcast. The guys with the NBA like to take chances and try new things. So maybe there’s a chance to see things from court level and stay with that shot up and down the court a couple of times. Let the people see what it’s like to watch a game from that vantage point.”
Breen wonders whether there will be some type of audio enhancement to broadcasts since there will be no crowd noise.
“NBA games have music playing while the ball is in play all game long,’’ said Breen. “Will they do that again, to at least get a little bit of ambiance? There’s a lot of talk about how you’ll be able to hear the players and the coaches and the officials and the interactions without the fans there. I think that would be fantastic, fans to be right up close.”
He paused: “Now, I’m certain there’s a lot of stuff they would prefer not to be heard.”
Gorman, who has called Celtics games from courtside since 1981 and has heard more than his share of colorful language, put it another way: “I think they’ll figure out a way to give you good sound without giving you really good sound.’’
Offering some clues
Even with the current scarcity of live sports, there are some clues about what sports broadcasts will look like while we’re still navigating the effects of the virus and practicing social distancing.
ESPN’s broadcasts of baseball in South Korea have been successful enough, even early in the morning, that the network recently decided to move all of broadcasts to ESPN. (The Tuesday-Friday broadcasts had aired on ESPN2.)
ESPN gets the feed from a company in South Korea that uses a subtle din of recorded crowd noise to make up for the absence of fans. Mark Gross, senior vice president of production and remote events, said he was initially skeptical.
“I thought it wouldn’t feel authentic. Like, what is this, a laugh track?’’ he said. "Is this going to be cheesy? But I’ve been pleasantly surprised, because at the right level it makes the broadcast sound less hollow. We’re not looking to fool people, obviously, and make them think a crowd is there. We just want to make it sound a little more well-rounded.”
The KBO broadcasts are illustrative for another reason. Broadcasters such as Karl Ravech, Jon Sciambi, and Eduardo Perez have been game for the games, getting up in the wee hours to broadcast them remotely from their homes. And it’s worked, to the point that one wonders whether remote broadcasts, which certainly are less expensive, will remain prominent after the pandemic passes.
“If somebody told me six weeks ago that we’d be bringing in a feed from Korea, the play-by-play announcer in one state, the analyst in another state, and then we’d be bringing in a guest from another country, I would have been like, I don’t know what this is going to look like at the end of the day,’’ said Gross. “But technology has been our friend. It really has. Is it better being in the stadium and having the announcers there? Yes, for all sorts of reasons. But it’s not like you can’t do the games from home.”
The degree of difficulty is certainly greater. Zoom calls with coaches may not yield the insight that being at an event might. Playing without fans is going to be strange at first, if not eerie. But the KBO has worked because the broadcasters and behind-the-scenes personnel have made the most of it. Tirico said he believes that effort and passion of those involved is why sports broadcasts will still be of high quality when the games return, no matter how many variables and changes will have to be contended with.
“Whatever hurdles we may have to deal with," he said, "it always reminds me of what a golf superintendent or the person that manicures Fenway might say. ‘Just make the place look great. I don’t care how much rain there was. I don’t care how cold it was. I don’t care if it hasn’t been 75 degrees out in forever. Just make it look great.’ And you do, you make it look great in spite of the challenges, and in the end you hopefully go, ‘Man, that’s a beautiful ballpark.' ”
Chad Finn can be reached at chad.finn@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeChadFinn.
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When the games start again, what will sports broadcasts look like? - The Boston Globe
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