Doing it this way there is going to be a bigger learning curve. A local broadcaster will at least have their players down going into a match whereas a studio announcer has to be able to figure out who both teams r off a monitor. It tends to lead to a very error filled broadcast. If it happens a lot it takes u out of the match to some extent and the PbyP person becomes a bigger part of the match than they should.
I think your making the learning curve bigger than what it needs to be. There's no reason to suspect the Lifetime crew won't have at least 1 or 2 top name broadcasters that you would otherwise hear on Fox Sports or ESPN. Foudy, Wagner, or Diccico for example. Honestly, I'd much hear those opinions & comments than those of the "local" color. We have to wait & see who the broadcast team ends up being before we grouse about not being able to listen to Dan Lauletta or Jen Cooper.
The travel team of course will (the one that will do the televised games). Those games won't be done out of a studio. The studio team for all of the other games will not. They are lining up amateur hour for those games. Take away the presence at the stadium, the local knowledge and no material improvement in the quality of the crews for those games and it is a big step back. As for doing it to make it easier, etc. They aren't. They already have to interface with 5 stadiums each week. Adding in local crews doesn't make it materially more difficult. They are doing it because this is what they want to do. Of course none of this is the most concerning stuff, that is yet to come.
Should add that you can get a rough guess of who will be covering the 4 non-TV games each week. They aren't going to fly broadcast teams in and out of Florida for these. They aren't going to hire anybody full-time or relocate people. So, you're left with whatever you can get locally in Fort Lauderdale (I think that is where the studio is if I remember correctly).
These "amateurs" are professional broadcast people who are amateurs in regards to Womens Soccer, not amateur broadcast people who are professionals at Women's Soccer. Don't undervalue the importance of consistent, professional broadcasts, even if they are manned by people who don't know much about Women's Soccer. I feel like we all have to give them a chance to do their homework & buy into the job they've been hired to do. It's way too early to be calling this a "step backwards" until then.
Why would they put the studio in Fort Lauderdale. Is NBCSN based there? I would've expected them to be in Los Angeles (where Fox Sports is) or whatever city it is in Connecticut where ESPN is.
But they doing five matches per weekend. U might get someone like Markgraf or Wagner for the tv game but the other four matches get catch of the day type announcers. If ur really saying u prefer that type of announcer doing the Courage games as opposed to someone like Dean Linke who is local, Im quite surprised.
That's contrary to today's culture: Put your friend who attempts to take a positive step in the center of a circle of friends, load up your muskets, and start shooting at him/her because the attempt wasn't exactly what you'd have done!
Might not be Ft Lauderdale, but it is somewhere in Florida. At least that was the case a few weeks ago.
I believe NBC Sports and ESPN are in Connecticut. FOX and ESPN have LA studios, but espn is based in Bristol, CT. Ft. Lauderdale is popular for several small networks. It can often be labeled as Miami on the cheap for international exposure. A lot of soccer broadcasts (especially from monitors and in Spanish) have come from that area.
Since 1 of the games is supposed to be the backup for TV, I would expect they'd want a similar level of production for that.
Hmm... trying to find out where Bein Sports' studios are located. Can't seem to find it. But I guess if there are some people with experience calling games remotely from monitors in the southern FL area, then it makes sense. Though I know Fox Soccer used to do it out of a suburb of LA, so I wouldn't thought it was that expensive here either... oh well.
American Sports Network was a Sinclair group that's on my mind right now because they're going to shutdown at the end of the month, but they did quite a few sports and smaller conferences/schools from monitors and I think I read they were in West Palm Beach although Sinclair is based in Maryland.
Hmm... I'd never heard of them. I guess when you said small networks, you meant really small! (Interestingly, it seems they were a subchannel of a local broadcaster here, but not carried on the local cable system...)
There are quite a few groups that are IPTV or primarily for international distribution that surprise me when I find out they're in Miami. beIN USA is Miami. Univision does a lot of stuff from their Miami area studios.
FWIW I thought I saw that these Lifetime broadcasts will be made out of the same studio that USL uses for its games.
Well we still don't know the basics so hard to speculate. Could be all games not on tv have one person and if the games get switched for weather or whatever the one analyst just gets plopped down in a different chair. Maybe they want to be able to go in and out of both games for updates or the like which would require equal talent on both. It will be interesting to see if clubs have added content and maybe u see some local flavor there. Dash had Ben Crook as a sideline reporter last year. Maybe that stays and production uses him if they want. Last year when Portland had tv games they still used Schatz to do her video pieces for the team. Stuff like that.
if all the games are broadcasting from one studio , why would they need more than 1 or 2 broadcast teams at once? As long as the games don't over lap too much, would it be difficult to do 2 or 3 games if your in the same place for all the games? I mean... I watch all the games in the same place. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
U can do that if the games r at the same site...College Cup comes to mind...because u know u won't get an overlap. But if u have a non tv match starting at 7 pm est in NC and another 7 pst in Portland and the first match gets a rain delay, uve got a problem
Just have the announcer use two microphones and switch back and forth... I mean, half the time they're not even talking about the game at hand, anyway...
This is u should be commissioner! Actually ur my second choice for the job. Ive already emailed an application with Jill Ellis' name on it.
No, from what I am told only the "official" game of the week will have the traveling crew. The base case is the backup game will never be on TV.
You can, but of course the more games you are doing in a weekend the worse your prep. Remember, these are unlikley to be salaried individuals. Prep work will be on their own time.
I'm only the 2nd choice? Did you not hear about my idea for the league-wide mandate that all teams must use a 3-5-2 with at least 3 CAMs out of position?