Variety: Post-rush hour, the drive from the Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills to the Los Angeles Rams’ practice facility in Thousand Oaks, Calif. is a manageable 50 minutes. On Friday, Nov. 15, most of the core broadcast team for NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” — analyst Cris Collinsworth, sideline reporter Michele Tafoya, executive producer Fred Gaudelli, director Drew Esocoff and researcher Andy Freeland — make that trip together in a luxury van, departing the hotel shortly after 11 a.m. Laptops open, Collinsworth and Tafoya are prepping for the interviews they will do with players and Rams head coach Sean McVay after they spend more than an hour observing the team’s practice.
3 comments:
This is an interesting look on the inside of Sunday Night Football and Football in general. Often it feels as though looks into football are about the actual production side of it, such as the half time show or something to do with the cameras before and during the show. This really takes a look into the people and what they are doing to actually prep all the content for a huge live show that is Sunday Night Football. I especially love this because it takes a look into the Los Angeles Rams, my home team. The people really prepare a lot of content to present on these nights and clearly put in a lot of time for it and it seems that very little of it actually makes it into the broadcast. As was stated in the article and apparent as a viewer, the actual football game really takes over once it begins.
I have had the wonderful opportunity to be family friends with Artie Kempner, who has been a television director for a variety of sports, including the NFL. This article does a great job yet still only scratches the surface of what goes into putting on the 'performance' of an NFL game. This very much reminds me of the description of touring concerts or productions, with the box trucks, late nights, and compressed time-frames, with a lot more gadgets and gizmos to get it on the air. I found it particularly interesting, as a side note, about the level of detail the commentators go into the game for the Sunday nights, since they are trying to reach a wider audience. The shear number of split-second decisions that go into picking out highlights vs replays vs analysis on the fly really makes you think the next time you watch a game on TV. I would love to learn more about the live-broadcast business when it comes to the production side, since I think many of us in our program would be great at it.
I have watched shows like Sunday Night Football and College Gameday for as long as I can remember and have always been fascinated with the work that the analysts and the teams do in order to prepare for them. This article talks a lot about something that I think a lot of people don’t initially realize about these television programs in just how much work is put into the content that makes it on screen and how much of it gets left out. Recently I was listening to a podcast with Pat Macafee and Kirk Herbstreit talking about how much preparation goes into their shows and hearing about the crazy schedules and commitments it takes to fill shows like College Gameday on top of calling other college games the same day having to be in multiple locations on the same day many times preparing for 4-16 teams in the same depth as Sunday night football and working to create narratives for them all to follow.
Post a Comment