Akron and Ohio State technical difficulties.
ESPNNCAABy Andrew Bucholtz on

The latest broadcast to hit major technical difficulties is ESPN’s coverage of Tuesday’s Akron Zips-Ohio State Buckeyes men’s basketball game on ESPN2, the season opener for both teams. The broadcast had several minutes of technical difficulties near its beginning, then hit further issues about five minutes into the first quarter. Here’s some of how that looked early on:

And here’s how it looked a few minutes later:

And later still:

The “I’d like to tell you what’s happening, but that’s not currently possible” line in the second clip from play-by-play voice Jason Benetti (calling this game remotely alongside Jon Crispin) is great. But it does speak to the wider challenge of the increase in remote broadcasts, something that began for college basketball long before COVID-19, but has escalated there (and in other sports) since.

Remote broadcasts have plenty of merits from a health and financial standpoint, but they have led to issues with commentators’ home setups conking out, and this time, it meant that while the announcer voice feed was still present, the announcers couldn’t see anything thanks to the in-game cameras crashing. If they’d been in the arena, they would at least have been able to provide what they were seeing with their own eyes. (That is, of course, presuming that this was more of a camera issue than a transmission issue from Columbus to ESPN’s studios, and that’s not assuredly the case.)

At any rate, it’s certainly notable to see those kinds of sustained technical difficulties on any broadcast. And it’s interesting to see them on a season-opening broadcast. We’ll see if ESPN is able to sort those out for the rest of this broadcast, or if there are more issues ahead.

[Ben Koo on Clippit]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.

View all posts by Andrew Bucholtz

1 thought on ““I’d like to tell you what’s happening, but that’s not currently possible”: technical difficulties hit ESPN2 Akron-Ohio State broadcast”

  1. “The broadcast had several minutes of technical difficulties near its beginning, then hit further issues about five minutes into the first quarter.” – Men’s CBB still has 20 minute halves.

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