I demand a seperation of marketing from journalism in sports... to an extent

To whom it may concern,

I have been thinking a great deal lately about the structure of popularity or marketing, or what some networks consider to be fact, or in some cases righteousness. I recall a time when sports coverage was simply what the biggest story was in the sport (or sports world) at that time. Those were good times and I remember them fondly.

There was a time when television and media coverage of sports was not an unabashed highly efficient hype monster. Perhaps I am an early developing curmudgeon or the main character in some modern day Ayn Rand novel drowning in my own need to be an individual fighting against some evil oppressive monstrosity (that may or may not live in Bristol, CT)

With all of that said I do not have anymore qualification to comment on this than that of a television producer who does a lot of live sports. I am also qualified as a connoisseur of television production, sports and especially coverage of sports on television.

As some of you may know I spend a fair amount of time in sports arenas, stadiums, parks, fields, field houses and so on. I often see people who dress up in effort to show that they support their teams. These people wear jerseys; shorts; sweaters; pants; jackets; knit caps; giant foam products; all manners of clothing and paraphernalia that these people shell out a cumulative $200 BILLION in the united states alone in a single year. That according to the New York Times news service. Now that number was not intended for any other reason to show how absolutely rabid American sports fans are. Networks like ESPN, Fox Sports, and all of your local "RSN" or Regional Sports Networks" make a killing peddling 24 hour a day sports coverage, information and so on.

So now we are acutely aware of the major business that sports has become in this country. At risk of sounding like some Forbes reporter prattling on with a story on the business impact of sports on the American economy, I assure you I am not that guy at all. I am however in the guy who has been in this business for more than 10 years and have seen how the power of sports marketing has had on the quality and in some cases integrity of the coverage of sports. I know its kind of laughable to associate a word like integrity with the coverage of something with as little poignancy on the global stage as sports... Or is it?

Ok I don't think I need to remind all of you of the global impact of the last world cup. The tournament that makes the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, BCS Series and just for spice the Stanley Cup Playoffs wish they had that kind of popularity. Every country in the world watched as soccer players played for a small humble trophy. They played so their country could possibly be crowned champions of the world... of soccer. Now take the United States of America for example. Our country is the single largest consumer of sports/events/merchandise in the world. Americans typically hate soccer. The reasons for the lack of popularity in the United States is for another debate. What I want to talk about here is the lack of interest, and more importantly why. I believe sincerely that the single biggest reason for the hierarchy of sports popularity in the U.S. is the hierarchy of sports coverage. The principal in this subject is the Entertainment Sports Programming Network... i.e the worldwide leader or ESPN.

When ESPN first started out they were a great underdog story waiting to be developed into a great success story. Guess what it happened and they became the single biggest voice in all of sports in the United States and arguably the world as market share goes. Many of you know the loudest voice is the one you hear most. ESPN has now had the power of the Disney corporation behind them for some time. That money pays for market research and and endless train of production budgets and good old wholesome family association. People love ESPN. People eat at ESPN restaurants. People wear ESPN clothing. There is a magazine, a website, and in some cases ESPN has even added to the lexicon of American popular culture. With all of that power comes (I can't resist so I am sorry in advance) great responsibility. ESPN has lost its self along the line somewhere as a sports network and has adopted a Frankenstein format of broadcasting.

If the TV network execs at Disney/ESPN decided to be Rachel Ray for a day it would go something like this...

"Ok today we are making the Worldwide leader of sports." "Ok first we will change from that old fun sports center format where Keith Olberman and Dan Patrick will be smart asses and do hilights." "So we will adopt the cable news format and add everyone's favorite spice to a national newscast.... PUNDITS!" "Everyone loves pundits!" "Now we will add more flavors of a fewer things like Football, Baseball, Basketball, Golf and Nascar!" "We here at ESPN have decided to rid the popular world of less tasty things like Hockey and Soccer"

Ok thanks Rachel! Its true ESPN has become the sum of pure market research and the association with major sports leagues and collegiate sporting governing bodies. They spend so much time and money combing over ratings, market research to find out what their viewers want to see. Where the fault is or more appropriately when the fault happened is murky. I do however had some idea of the model upon which the fault was based.

Michael Jordan and David Stern.

The NBA marketed Michael Jordan as a savior of an interminably weak professional sports league. David Stern prayed for and was granted a miracle. Throughout the time M.J.'s memorable career the NBA flourished, suddenly the NBA became healthy, thrived and has become the 3rd most popular sport in America by heads and shoulders above a frail NHL and NASCAR. Even though NASCAR is racing and cannot be taken seriously as a major league sport no matter what ESPN, FOX, NBC or the state of North Carolina tell me.

I believe that the "MJ model" is the root of this issue. David Stern had a stroke of genius, or luck or more likely both. Michael Jordan was charismatic , athletic, marketable and perfect for the proliferation and subsequent globalization of basketball. That kind of single icon, or sports demagoguery so to speak has had a profound effect on the way sports are marketed and delivered to the fans. If you look at the way the NBA is marketed now it seems like they are waiting for lightning to strike a second time. It goes as far back as Hardaway and has continued through Grant Hill, Kobe Bryant, and now LeBron James. Since MJ hung up his NIKEs for the last time the NBA has gone from searching for that certain something, to the second coming. The NBA is an amazing marketing organization. They have an incredible amount of influence on the content that is delivered by the television networks that follow it. The NFL has probably the most amazing grip on the content delivered in any medium. The NBA probably has the most finesse. The NBA has conjured up brilliant talking points over the years that range from frozen envelopes in the draft lottery to preferential treatment of star players by the officials. With all of that said I have been nauseated by this year's coverage of the NBA playoffs. I know that people are easily irritated by the obsessive coverage of any one story line. At the same time those same people are tuning in to see what happens.

ESPN and every other sports broadcasting organization has latched on to that marketing technique as a fundamental block of their system of delivery. When the worldwide leader adopted the cable news format as their principal method of delivering sports news and information I began to fade in my loyalty to sportscenter. For a long time I was an avid sportscenter viewer and a staunch proponent of the nightly highlight show format. In the last year or so I have seen a metamorphosis. Sportscenter has gone from a witty delivery of condensed play by play from the perspective of a smarmy sharp witted desk jockey. Sportscenter has now become a highly polished hair helmet clad news anchor having taken himself and his topics far too seriously. I now see Brian Kenny interviewing a number of pundits and former jocks and coaches to see their opinion on whether or not Barry Bonds really took steroids, or what impact Roger Clemens will have on the price of gold in the middle east. Between the grand finale of Pardon the Interruption and the throw to the baseball tonight set - we are lucky enough to see a 5 minute highlight package on the minor league start Roger Clemens had last night. This was during the Stanley Cup Finals. They did 2 minutes with Steve Levy and Barry Melrose in the 1 hour 6 o'clock sportscenter. During that very same sportscenter they spent 12 minutes on the yankees. So with ESPN adopting a propaganda oriented news format its no wonder the NHL is floundering and suddenly we are watching Jay Harris break down this weeks NASCAR event in Darlington. No offense to NASCAR fans but seriously, 2 years ago ESPN would devote exactly 45 seconds a show to NASCAR highlights on sportscenter and now it gets more play than the NHL.

I find myself feeling indignant towards the networks because of the decision making of a few executive producers and network executives and professional sports league marketing weasels. I get annoyed when I can turn to cnn or the ultimate in propaganda Fox News, then mute the television and click back and forth between ESPN and any one of the Cable news networks and see the same action and format. Anchor, video clip (usually controversial) anchor, pundit, pundit, anchor commercial. Over and over again until the top of the hour when it all gets reset. The only thing that I can tolerate about ESPN is they usually have some kind of sporting event that airs between episodes of sportscenter.

Listen I understand that sports is a big business. I understand the temptation to take yourself seriously enough to begin to control the flow of information to suit the end result you prefer and your associates prefer. But please for the love of what used to be good about sports, stop taking yourselves so seriously. Please!

I used to enjoy watching your networks 24 hours a day. Now it has become intolerable. I beseech you and throw myself on your tender mercies. Please return the state of sports coverage to where it was. When sports reporters understood that they were reporting on a subject and allowing the audience to decide for themselves what they thought about something. Please return the sense of humor to sportscenter, when it was a renegade sophomoric silly little highlight show. Pull the stick out of your butts and return the sports network and lose the news format.


I am sitting down to watch sportscenter now to see if they changed anything. Justin Verlander of the Tigers threw a no hitter tonight, maybe that will get 45 seconds or so behind the Yankees story about how Alex Rodriguez' divorce is going.

Super Bowl XL

Dateline Detroit, Michigan

Ok so this is over a month late. February 5, 2006 a day which will live in infamy? Not really, no.
In all of my years covering sports I have never seen a spectacle quite like the Super Bowl. Usually it was spent in my living room eating submarine sandwiches and deciding what team to root for. I am a Detroit Lions fan so it comes as no surprise that for all 30+ years of my life I have had to latch on to a team on Super Bowl Sunday and root for them. I equate this ritual to choosing players for your gym class basketball team. "Oh I guess I will take the Denver Broncos...again" or "Hmmm perhaps its time for the Patriots to do well" You don't really become emotionally involved with the team, but for now they are on your side and you have to root for them. This year it was the Pittsburgh Steelers. I have always liked the Steelers and have always appreciated the mystique that they have brought to the game of football. Rarely in sports do you see a team that has such an identifiable and persisting identity. I can think of the Oakland Raiders and the quasi outlaw, Mad Max meets the longest yard sort of thing. The Glitz, glamour and Texas sized aura of the Dallas Cowboys. I don’t see too many other franchises in professional sports with a distinct identity like the Steelers. With the Raiders and Cowboys I see traits that identify the teams but now how they play. The Steelers are the only team that really shout out to me and scream "old school, smash mouth football." It was amazing to me to see the Super Bowl in person this year. While I don't typically have time to really appreciate what I am involved in or covering as I have quite a few assignments to deal with.


I was fortunate this year as I had a pretty cake job to do. I got an email from one of my favorite clients PMTV from Pennsylvania. They can be found on the web at www.pmtv.com for a little plug. They were looking for a crew to cover the Super Bowl for ARD1 the German television network. I have done international shows before for Hockey and Baseball but never for football. There is a commonality among championship games/series as it relates to the media. The amount of media covering the event is generally 10 or more times larger than normal. Generally this is due to the international media and newspaper and television nationwide are there to cover the event. In the case of the super bowl it’s the same thing only way bigger. The popularity of the NFL in the United States is unquestionable. The popularity of the NFL worldwide did surprise me though. I am not sure how many countries were there broadcasting but I am sure every populated continent was well represented. This is where I come in. PMTV had a call to cover the game from ARD1 in Germany. In order for there to be enough space/camera positions to cover the game there has to be a pool feed of the play by play action for all of the international networks to use on their broadcasts. This pool feed is called the world feed. The world feed is a crew that comes in to just cover the action of the game. Imagine watching Monday Night Football with no ABC graphics and the TV muted. That’s kind of like the world feed. What happens is that video signal and stadium audio are sent to who ever is covering the game. Just for example ARD1 receives this feed and needs to add German speaking commentators to the show to send back to Germany there is a production truck outside the stadium that receives the signals from the world feed and mixes in their own audio and whatever graphics they need to add and suddenly ARD1 appears to be covering the Super Bowl with their own Cameras. The same principal applies to the Olympics. The problem is that doing pre-game, halftime, and post game shows in 15 languages is a tall order for the world feed to provide so they don’t. The receiving networks will produce their own segments during those times. At the Super Bowl there needed to be a place for all of the networks to do a studio show. The NFL (who thinks of everything) thought of this and built a giant tower on the concourse level of Ford Field. This concourse tower housed 8 studios for international media to go on camera for their respective networks. ARD1 was in this tower and that is where I wound up during the game. In this tower there were 9 rooms, 8 studios and one room that controlled where all of the various audio and video signals were going. Since there were hundreds of production trucks in the north lot there had to be a vast amount of video and audio cable that had to be strung from the trucks to the studios. Most stadiums have enough cable to have up to 3 independent TV productions going on simultaneously built in to the building so you don’t have to run much cable. The Super Bowl had more than 15 TV crews there. ARD1 was responsible for 2 cameras, 3 video monitors, microphones and that was it. By comparison ABC had more than 30 cameras 4 production trucks, hundreds of microphones etc…

The NFL was even good enough to provide studio lights and power cables in our studio. This was to cut down on how much equipment was brought in by the various networks. My job was to shoot the pre-game, halftime and post game shows. During the actual football game we were free to watch the game. This was miraculous for me since I am usually shooting the game and not able to truly appreciate what was going on during play. So basically I got paid to watch the Super Bowl and be a camera operator for a studio show.

My day began with a trip to down to the Fox Theater parking garage across from Comerica Park. I had to park there and walk about a half mile to the parking structure where the Detroit Tigers and Tiger suite holders park during baseball season. There was a perimeter set up around Ford Field blocking off access to both Comerica Park and Ford field from all sides unless you had special clearance. So I had to walk through the first of many security checkpoints. This checkpoint was like a line for a roller coaster, only you get frisked at the end. I got through the first checkpoint without incident and had to walk by a group of people that were declaring camera equipment to security. When you do this you have to take it apart and turn the power on and off for every camera and piece of electronics you are carrying. Once I got through that I was allowed to go out to the street that leads between Comerica Park and Ford Field. That street led to yet another check point. I had to show the 2, yes 2 photo credentials I needed that day to the guard at this check point. He approved me to go in to the North parking lot to find hundreds of production trucks. All of these trucks were rentals and did not have discernable markings on them that would clue you in to which network they represented. It was like being at TV Woodstock. Luckily I ran into our tech manager and he showed me where our truck was. A small blue satellite truck a little bigger than a UPS truck. I got my assignment for the day and walked into the stadium with the other camera operator on the show with me. We had to go through another security checkpoint. There I was at the Super Bowl, only it was real and not on TV.

Olympic T.V.

An open letter to national television executive producers, T.V. production junkies and sports fans:

The last two weeks of my life were spent predominantly glued to the 2006 Winter Olympics from Torino Italy. It seems that every 2 years I become a slave to the television purely as a fan. I am rarely allowed that privilege anymore given what I do for a living.

Being a television producer/director and camera operator has allowed me almost unmitigated access to amateur, collegiate, and professional sporting events consistently over the last 10 years. Over this time I have covered innumerable NBA, NHL, MLB, NFL, and NCAA events. I have covered 2 NBA Finals, 3 Stanley Cup Finals, 1 Super Bowl and countless playoff games. With all of those wonderful events in my past I have never been involved with an Olympic Games. I would relish the opportunity to do so, in fact salivate, cut off pinky toe, and appear on a reality show are more appropriate actions I would shamelessly endure in order to cover an Olympics. Alas to this point in my career I have not. That brings me to where I left off, being a fan.

I can rarely marvel at the athletic prowess of a human being, or be dazzled by the “thrill of victory” or try to empathize with the “agony of defeat”. More often that not (and I am NOT complaining) I am relegated to finding the most interesting story line at any given moment. I help tell stories to people at the speed of attention deficit disorder. Occasionally there is a moment where I look back at the show I just finished with and go wow, and in a flash that memory is gone. I don’t even know the score of the game half the time. For me appreciating the purity of sports is a rare treat to only be enjoyed once every 2 years-ish.

This past two weeks I was fortunate enough to watch as much of the Olympics as the Canadian and American television networks in conjunction with my TIVO would allow me to watch. I was inundated with stories of Bode Miller and Seth Wescott and Apollo Anton Ohno and many others. I could tune in to MSNBC to watch a seemingly endless stream of Men’s and Women’s curling instead of the usual capitalist propaganda. I could be wooed by the Canadian coverage of the Women’s Super G (which is not a dirty word I might add) I could see the Italian Alps in High Definition upconverted to a standard 4:3 aspect ratio, since I don’t yet have an HD TV. NBC touted over 400 hours of Olympic coverage. CBC our neighbors to the north were kind enough to carry a similar amount.

I watched as the IOC recognized the Snowboard Half-pipe as a medal sport, and even watched the Biathlon, yes cross country skiers with guns, an event that is about as TV friendly as watching mimes read from the Quran. I can however blame the Executive producers and programming “execs” at NBC. Let’s get one thing straight, I cannot blame NBC completely for what was an otherwise lukewarm coverage of the Olympics. Aside from the Chad Hedrick/Shani Davis scandal, or the Michele Kwan premature exit from Italy they had to manufacture a lot of story lines. Even though it has some time since ABC was the broadcaster for the Olympics I became acutely aware that Jim McKay is no longer doing the Olympics. NBC did try to use Mckay as a feature story presenter at the last winter Olympics in Salt Lake in 2002. Jim Mckay is/was one of the greatest television personalities in the history of television. He would bring the enthusiasm of a man that was passionate about amateur sports and deliver it with the integrity of Walter Cronkite or Peter Jennings. He has a wonderful sense of what a television personality should be. I am bothered that a generation of children will grow up being influenced by Bob Costas’ self ritous editorials to close out every broadcast. Being a studio host bears a relatively small but powerful responsibility. In the world of television the studio host is the face of the telecast like the Olympics more than any other. This responsibility is to excite the audience about what they have so generously tuned in to watch. Hearing Mckay introduce cliff diving on ABC’s Wide World of Sports was exciting to me. Hearing Bob Costas tell me that we are about to go to Oval Lingotto to see Shani Davis race the 1000m vs. Chad Hedrick should excite me as well. Bob Costas setting up a 1000m speed skating race is accompanied by a well written albeit hollow introduction to an event that is shadowed by controversy and scandal.

Personal dislikes amongst national teammates should be a side note to what is a world competition, not the central selling point or storyline. Growing up the Olympics were always presented as the competition itself and nothing more. Sure there were great story lines leading into each segment. Those story lines usually had a positive outcome, or were born from tragedy or hardship which for the athlete or coach the Olympics were an outlet or way to get away from their hardships for a while. I think Rune Arledge and the folks at ABC were the ones who got it right. We were exposed to wonderful story lines like some unknown bobsled team from Austria beat out the incumbent big Austrian team to qualify for the Olympics. Not Gunter and Deiter did not get along so they parted ways and refused to compete in the same events. Perhaps the world is a little different now, but I am more inclined to think that our American sensibilities have mutated to a lesser impression of humanity and competition.

A perfect example of that is the wildly popular CBS show “Survivor”. On a weekly basis we can see the very worst kind of human behavior manifest itself in the name of a competition. Perhaps all of the market research and focus groups have told NBC’s “executives” that Americans are more likely to watch a TV show or sporting event because there is deplorable human behavior to be witnessed rather than the most noble and passionate reasons. Yes America there you have it, tonight on Survivor – so and so will stab such and such in the back to gain headway in the competition they are involved in. Amongst all of the intolerable tripe there is to watch on television, the crown jewel of drama, comedy, action, highs, and lows are captured into one two week event, and the kind folks at NBC would rather we watched as if it were some trashy reality show. To me the Olympics is about the world coming together for a short while, curbing our political and economical problems and getting along all the while showing the world how great we can be as one and as individuals on the field of competition. It’s good that it only comes once every two years that we are given the opportunity to witness this. That way there is hope that another Rune Arledge and Jim Mckay will come along and save this country from “Survivor”.

Ok forgive me as I step down from my soap box for a moment. I suppose I am less qualified to comment on the social and political ramifications of sportsmanship as an example of the good in humanity. Oops there I go like Marlon Brando in Superman the Movie.


Enough of that and on to the stuff I am qualified to comment on. THE REALLY COOL STUFF NBC DID.

As many of you may or may not know NBC had a VERY large stake in the televising of the Olympics. They provided no less than 8 High Definition television productions trucks and countless smaller production facilities in and around Torino and the International Broadcast Center. While that does sound impressive, I think it’s even more impressive than it sounds. Starting from the beginning there was a great big ocean between the U.S. and Europe. 8 High Definition TV trucks have to cross the aforementioned ocean in a ship, or airplane or flying saucer or something. Now I am not entirely sure of the logistics of that, but all of the equipment and cables and lights, and set pieces and TV trucks (did I mention that there were 8 of them?) and cameras and tripods and tape machines and electronics and editing systems and connectors and so on…whew! All of that had to be loaded on some kind of conveyance or fleet of conveyances and be shipped to Italy from the United States, Japan, England, and many other Countries providing equipment and services just to NBC. That alone is a Herculean task. I don’t know if any of you have ever tried getting video equipment across an international border but it’s hard. There is a manifest and a carnet asset tags and an inventory (in NBC’s case that would make Best Buy look like 7-11) and people that are directly responsible for this. Each countries customs have different rules and regulations on how to properly prepare these documents.

Ok now that NBC has organized their “stuff” to get to Italy they have to start hiring a number of freelancers to go to Italy to produce these 400ish hours of television. This includes Producers, Directors, Assistant Producers, Assistant Directors, Audio Mixers, Audio Engineers, Video Engineers, Camera Operators, Video Tape Machine Operators, EVS Operators, a staff of Librarians just for the video tape, Production Managers, Operations Staff, Operations Producers, Lighting Directors, Electronics Technicians, Electronics Engineers, Video Editors, an Army of Graphics Designers, Utilities, Production Assistants, Gofers, Drivers, Translators, Animators, and so on.
All of these people fortunate enough to get hired for this event are away from home for as much as 6 weeks working from set up through tear down, and shipping the people and gear back to the U.S. and U.K. and Japan and so on.


No if that were not enough NBC has to use cutting edge technology, some that was designed specifically for the Olympics. This stuff has to be operated by people that are very good at learning quickly and operating this equipment as if they had been doing it for years. In many cases you probably saw some of this equipment manifested differently in previous sporting events. For example football fans in the United States have come to rely on the “yellow first and ten line” that is used in NFL and NCAA football games. This same technology was used at the summer games in Athens to make it look as though the lane in a swimming pool was decorated with a flag of the home nation of the swimmer assigned to that lane. This is now almost taken for granted by television viewers. SportVision a visionary company in the broadcast television industry provides this equipment. Sportvision’s patented video overlay technology has been applied to a number of summer and Winter Olympic Games events. For Speed Skating and Team Pursuit Speed Skating, Sportvision has virtually inserted the athlete’s national flag on to the ice. This technology can also be utilized in other lane orientated events like track and rowing. Virtual Imaging has also been utilized on the all Ski Jumping competitions (K90, K120 and Nordic Combine). Virtual Imagining can identify the leader’s jump distance giving the viewer a virtual ‘line to beat’. This enables the viewer to know immediately how far the next skier needs to jump to surpass the current leader. Virtual Imaging can also be used as historical data markers or event record markers. Events like Javelin and Discus, whose records and event ranks are scored purely on distance, can indicate an athlete’s prior effort or world record. Now a world record is not just a number, but a visible target the athlete is looking to better. Visit their website because its sooooo cool. I even forgive them for the glow puck. www.sportvision.com


Another recent application to sports coverage is the Cable Cam or Sky Cam. This gives a never before seen dimension to camera angles. These days a camera can be put anywhere for any application. I mean FOX network put a camera in the dirt looking up at the batter just because they could. The single coolest application of the Cable Cam was during the Ski events particularly the Ski Jumping. There was a cable cam that followed the skier from the start gate all the way to the landing in synchronous pace with the skier. This gives the viewer a never before perspective on the sport of skiing.

I think with all of this new equipment, all of these new camera angles, startling amounts of technology and human interest at hand that the Olympics should be the most compelling thing on television worldwide. Perhaps it was in other countries, but for a variety of reasons it was not in the United States. In the United States American Idol and Grey’s Anatomy, and Desperate Housewives rated higher than the Olympics. Perhaps people would have been more interested had NBC not put all of their hype eggs into just Bode Miller and Michelle Kwan, it turns out there were many many story lines that were good and human. Story lines that do not result in Jerry Springer-esque drama, but ones that inspire a nation and a world. “They can be a great people kal-el, they wish to be…”
Brando would say here.