There’s long been a push for cutting down on the costs of producing live games for television, but that’s become particularly apparent lately. Whether it’s with questionable production trucks for Pac-12 games or questionable cameras for MLS matches or with the general uptick in remote broadcasts (which were happening even before COVID-19, and since then have often been framed as a pandemic safety measure, but that’s not always accurate), there’s a lot going on that’s provoked complaints from viewers used to higher standards. The latest discussion here comes around the No. 23 (AP) Seton Hall Pirates’ 64-60 men’s basketball home win over the No. 7 Texas Longhorns Thursday, a game broadcast on FS1, but a game that featured remote announcers, no on-screen shot clock for the first half, and many other problems. Here’s some of the commentary on that:
among other issues there was no onscreen shot clock for the first half, and there is clearly, visually, an electric atmosphere but you cannot tell that from the audio AT ALL. a complete disconnect. https://t.co/dVLdGlcl6g
— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) December 10, 2021
Great game, and the Seton Hall under-four timeout playlist was THUMPING. Fun atmosphere here, imagine if the FS1 broadcast showed any of that. https://t.co/uJQs0Z6hkx
— Rob Dauster (@RobDauster) December 10, 2021
I'd love to know what the hell is going on right now. Has TV said anything about the delay?
— Rob Dauster (@RobDauster) December 10, 2021
Broadcast crew is reporting on this Seton Hall-Texas like it’s a message board rumor mill, complete with random posts about hijacking the topic to kill time.
— 𝓜𝓪𝓽𝓽 𝓓𝓮𝓜𝓪𝓻𝓲𝓷𝓲𝓼 (@mjdemarinis) December 10, 2021
Watching FS1's coverage of the Seton Hall/Texas game and the broadcast crew has no idea what's going on during the delay because they're 3,000 miles away in L.A.
Stop 👏 putting 👏broadcasters 👏in 👏studios 👏to 👏save👏 a 👏buck!
— Paul Roper (@Paul_Roper) December 10, 2021
At this point in time, remote broadcasts are probably not going away entirely. But they do often come with a significant decline in quality from announcers unable to see what’s happening in the building apart from TV feeds, to say nothing of what happens when a camera feed is lost. And the pandemic excuses really don’t play at this point; yes, absolutely, there are still concerns with having people gather together, including at sporting events, but all broadcast networks have made it very clear that they’ll take the risk of sending in-person announcers when they deem it worth it. So, at this point, it’s really a discussion about which games deserve the superior in-person announcer treatment. And it’s curious that Fox Sports decided not to do that for a ranked-on-ranked Texas-Seton Hall matchup.
[Ben Koo on Clippit]
