Sports Broadcasting

[Morpeth]

It might just be my age, but why is football on TV so mind numbingly tedious these days.

I've had Sky Sports News on this morning and it had two young annoying kids on talking about footy, then Carragher repeating himself again about Man City with his meaningless opinions.
None of it is news and it's a complete con. Even the live matches are mental. I don't think you need as much analysis so just show the bloody game. Breaking news is hours old; news alerts say that a press conference is coming up - do they think we're all just thick?
Now it's a load of twentysomethings wanking on about made up transfers.

MOTD can bugger of with the analysis too - just show more highlights and stop trying to educate me. It's not fun.

Maybe it is just me though as I've just deleted:

Facebook - which was all adverts
Instagram - just a bunch of showoffs
Tiktok - unbelivably shit

Bring back the good old days of football, and life (with slow internet)

 

[Harvey]

 

[Morpeth]

Well he was right. Why the hell BBC Nottingham decided to use that as a title of a podcast, i'll never know.

 

[MaxiRobriguez]

Guess the 20yearoldwankingaboutmadeuptransfers reflects blogging culture. Personally I don't get that either.

Overkill of tactical analysis I don't actually think is too bad on MOTD. Only a couple of mins after each highlights reel, mildly entertaining. Although much prefer reading Forest Boffin's in depth stuff he releases every so often.

Sky Sports news has been the same for two decades now... nothing new there!

 

[Strummer]

I‘m just happy listening to Lothar Matthäus eviscerate some hapless defender when he’s just been absolutely done for pace.

The grumpy old man was in fine form on the Weekend, as ever.

 

[Statto]

I've had Sky Sports News on this morning and it had two young annoying kids on talking about footy,

They found a friend for crewton?

Joking aside it was quite good when they had some 11/12 yr old kids commentating on a match a while back, well actually the kids weren't that good but it made a change from Jamie Carragher or whoever trotting out the same random cliched nonsense. Plus actually it's a good way to get kids interested in broadcasting as a career.

 

[valspoodle]

In the good old days we had one match a year, the Cup Final, plus maybe the odd European game just to see how Johnny Foreigner did it.

Then slowly more and more games crept in and there was a need to talk about football. Unfortunately too many people love the sound of their own voices while talking out of their arse.

As a result we now have all sorts of crap coming at us from a wide variety of sources. Most of it I avoid like the plague, having perfected the technique of tuning into matches a just the right moment. Then muting the commentators and delivering a stunning commentary to myself.

Happy as a sandboy am I.

 

[Rzar]

I bang on about it all the time but I wish it was an industry standard that they offer matches without commentary as an alternative. I am sick to death of games getting ruined by somebody shouting at the audience about stuff we can clearly see anyway.

And I don't wanna mute the TV because I like atmospheres.

I genuinely look forward to the games on Prime because they are the only ones that offer it. Last time Man City fans were chanting at Leeds fans about Jimmy Saville for all too hear. That's what football is all about.

 

[Statto]

I bang on about it all the time but I wish it was an industry standard that they offer matches without commentary as an alternative. I am sick to death of games getting ruined by somebody shouting at the audience about stuff we can clearly see anyway.

And I don't wanna mute the TV because I like atmospheres.

I genuinely look forward to the games on Prime because they are the only ones that offer it. Last time Man City fans were chanting at Leeds fans about Jimmy Saville for all too hear. That's what football is all about.

tbf you can hear the rounds of Forest Are Magic over the chattering drivel bots anyway.

 

[Strummer]

Actually, one serious post for a minute; someone mentioned the other day about accountability of Referees, and how they should be asked to explained contentious decisions; I replied this was normal here in the Bundesliga (but I can‘t find the post - d‘oh!)

Anyway, there was another example of this, this past matchday weekend. In the friday evening match, when Bayern travelled to Leipzig, there was indeed a controversial decision on 66 minutes in the second half, when Bayern centre-back Dayot Upamecano - formerly of Leipzig, of course, - charged out and absolutely took out Leipzig striker Andre Silva, who was making a run on goal.

Leipzig Coach Marco Rose almost spontaneously combusted in the technical area, ranting and raving and earning himself a yellow card for his trouble, the same colour of card was also shown to Upamecano; despite Leipzig protestations that the Bayern man should have had first use of the soap and an early bath.

So, post-match, after a thoroughly entertaining 1-1 draw, Referee Daniel Siebert comes back onto the field, and is interviewed by Sky Deutschland, alongside Rose. Calmly, the man in charge explains his decision, that whilst it was a clear foul, Bayern had a covering defender, Upamecano was not the last man, and in any case, Silva was not directly through on goal - and Siebert was absolutely right, as accompanying replays showed.

Marco Rose, to his great credit, then apologised to the Referee for his behaviour, and accepted he was in the wrong. Both men shook hands, the match official gaining plaudits for an absolutely correct call, and Rose, for his apology.

I do wonder why the Premier League does not do similar?

 

[MaxiRobriguez]

Actually, one serious post for a minute; someone mentioned the other day about accountability of Referees, and how they should be asked to explained contentious decisions; I replied this was normal here in the Bundesliga (but I can‘t find the post - d‘oh!)

Anyway, there was another example of this, this past matchday weekend. In the friday evening match, when Bayern travelled to Leipzig, there was indeed a controversial decision on 66 minutes in the second half, when Bayern centre-back Dayot Upamecano - formerly of Leipzig, of course, - charged out and absolutely took out Leipzig striker Andre Silva, who was making a run on goal.

Leipzig Coach Marco Rose almost spontaneously combusted in the technical area, ranting and raving and earning himself a yellow card for his trouble, the same colour of card was also shown to Upamecano; despite Leipzig protestations that the Bayern man should have had first use of the soap and an early bath.

So, post-match, after a thoroughly entertaining 1-1 draw, Referee Daniel Siebert comes back onto the field, and is interviewed by Sky Deutschland, alongside Rose. Calmly, the man in charge explains his decision, that whilst it was a clear foul, Bayern had a covering defender, Upamecano was not the last man, and in any case, Silva was not directly through on goal - and Siebert was absolutely right, as accompanying replays showed.

Marco Rose, to his great credit, then apologised to the Referee for his behaviour, and accepted he was in the wrong. Both men shook hands, the match official gaining plaudits for an absolutely correct call, and Rose, for his apology.

I do wonder why the Premier League does not do similar?

There was a "trial" if you can call it that around ten to fitteen years ago in which refs did just that, explained decisions in a post match interview.

For whatever reason it stopped and never returned. Shame.

 

[HBB]

Ok let me shed some light on this, and I hope this doesn't come across as too patronising, but this was my job for many years, albeit I was a sport producer on Sky News not on Sky Sports News.

As a producer you have to fill an hours worth of news. You inherit the previous bulletin and look at it constantly to decide what's your lead story, second and third etc, then you have your fillers (sometimes called News in Brief or NIBs). In effect you're putting out a front half hour and back half hour, broken in to four 15 minute bulletins. Your first 15mins is top stories, then less and less important stories as you go. Live sport is pretty much always your lead if its Football, England international Cricket, maybe F1 and then each sport sits in a general hierarchy or tiers of importance per sport, so International (non-England) Cricket generally goes up high in the running order, probably front half hour second quarter, ahead of things like racing or athletics, but lower if its domestic cricket highlights. This hierarchy isn't set in stone and a big event will always lift a sport out of its everyday tier e.g. Cheltenham, tennis and golf majors etc.

If you've a strong lead you'll be looking to refresh it constantly, so you'll rewrite the cue and look to update the video (I'm old school and we called them VT, video tapes, but its all digital now) with new footage etc. You'll assign it to a reporter who will follow the story all the time while its your lead and you may have more people on it if there's a reporter on scene send video back and another working on a piece in the office. The videos are called packages by the reporters and producers, a match report for instance can be a package but more usually a package is a piece done by a reporter with "grabs" or interviewees speaking. For a big story you might have a mixtures of packages, video grabs and guests. As a rule you might get away with running the same lead package 3 times before you either refresh or move it down the running order. You might refresh with a different part of an interview, look for new interviewees to get a fresh perspective, maybe get a guest in (in the background the guys on the production desk will be looking to set up interviews and send film crews and reporters out if its deemed worth it by the Editor). As times passes a top story will age and if there's nothing happening it will appear lower and lower down the order and turn from a package and guest, into a package, into a single interview grab and finally into just a short piece of video that the presenter speaks over (we called them LVOs or local voice overs but they have different names in different places). Or you just drop it. You'll always have access to filler pieces or mini features to block fill your back half hour and you get regular feeds of sports action from around the world via AP and Reuters for instance and your in house production team will turn them into packages or LVOs and you can mix and match them during the hour as you fill the hour. At Sky news we would cannibalise some of the SSN output and use grabs from their packages and guests but SSN itself will always think first about what it can use from the likes of Carragher etc to bolster their bulletins to keep the story fresh and move it along.

There's a set pattern to how you cover games usually, so during the game you'll run in tape of goals or sendings off etc (in my time it was literally run in, we would be recording the match feed on separate video recorders and if a goal was scored we'd eject the Beta cassette, run it down the guys playing out the tapes for the bulletins, jam it in, run it back a few seconds and then press play when the gallery were ready, meanwhile briefing the newsreader as to what they were going to see, so they could add some commentary to it as it played out) and have a score graphic, straight after the match I'd have put together and voiced match report video (1 min to 1:15 duration). Then in the next bulletin you'll have the video and play in some manager grabs separately after the game highlights and then if you're the late producer you'll repackage it all and integrate the highlights and different interview grabs into a single package (1:20 - 1:45 duration) for the morning producer who is in early to build the first bulletin of the day for 6am (we were in work at 4am and working through to 1pm)

Sticking with Football, stories are generally sourced from the wires (PA, AP, Reuters etc) or may be phoned in by a reporter, or might be from a diary event or may be embargoed; any new story is compared to the existing stories you're putting out. Among the considerations of where and whether you put it on the TV or in the bulletin and how big you go on it are things like how old any of the existing news is, how big the story is and the subject matter (e.g. A Forest story is worth more than a Norwich story, which in turn is based on things like which league the club are in, the names concerned and/or whether the issue transcends the club and is noteworthy for other reasons)

I should have said one thing at the top, despite the fact that the news is rolling - it really isn't designed around the idea of people watching it hour after hour, its for people to trust that the big stories will be there, for reacting WHENEVER a live story breaks and for people to just drop in to for a bit, get the latest and bugger off again. Hence the use of top story ticker. It was the same when I used to produce the local news inserts in BBC breakfast, you know the old "And now the news from where you are"... those 3 minute bulletins barely ever changed from 6 till 9 certainly the lead was always the same throughout, you might play around with the second and third VT but that was really just so the newsreader didn't fall asleep with boredom. Those bulletins are like that for the people getting up having the TV on for an hour while they have breakfast, get ready for school or work and then head off, so the expectation is that you don't have to refresh then as people will only see one, maybe 2 and be gone.

Anyway I hope that gives a little insight into what goes on in the background and why they are like they are.

 

[Grenville 1898]

I bang on about it all the time but I wish it was an industry standard that they offer matches without commentary as an alternative. I am sick to death of games getting ruined by somebody shouting at the audience about stuff we can clearly see anyway.

And I don't wanna mute the TV because I like atmospheres.

I genuinely look forward to the games on Prime because they are the only ones that offer it. Last time Man City fans were chanting at Leeds fans about Jimmy Saville for all too hear. That's what football is all about.

Agree with your comment about Prime. Personally, I also like to listen to a game with Arabic commentary as, in a strange way it seems to add to the atmosphere. Probably because I haven't a clue what is being said! Anything to avoid listening to Garry Birtles commentate.

 

[Flaggers]

Martin "aaaanitslive" Tyler needs to hang up the microphone.

Last few games if you were just keeping an ear on the game you genuinely wouldn't know if someone had scored or not, so bored and detached does he sound.

 

[Bonfy177]

Martin "aaaanitslive" Tyler needs to hang up the microphone.

Last few games if you were just keeping an ear on the game you genuinely wouldn't know if someone had scored or not, so bored and detached does he sound.

be more

 

[DanR]

Martin "aaaanitslive" Tyler needs to hang up the microphone.

Last few games if you were just keeping an ear on the game you genuinely wouldn't know if someone had scored or not, so bored and detached does he sound.

He's fallen into the BBC trap of going on way too long, he must be mid 70s now, I don't doubt his knowledge of the game but it sometimes feels like he's not quite keeping up. Given how Sky have moved on their older cricket commentators and presenters it's a surprise they persist with him.

 

[Erik]

Modern football is the greatest ever form of the game and nothing in the past either comes close or should be recognised as having any merit whatsoever.

And we have countless camera angles, analysts and experts to ram this point home to us all ad nauseum. Before, during, after and 24 hours a day.

And VAR. Only the gods know how we managed without it all these years.

Modern football and the televising of it, is absolutely wonderful.

 

[weejockmcplop]

My favourite content is usually match vlogs as i don't get to go to matches too often.
I prefer the crowd view with zero punditry.

 

[Flaggers]

be more

Isn't that Señor Fray and El Hodgio?!

 

[Eddie Yates]

Just watching the build up to Saints v Newcastle & the pundits are outside stood around a table freezing their cocks off

How does this shite benefit the viewer, what's wrong with a makeshift studio at the ground as is standard practice

Nearly as wank as having to watch a penalty from a drone located behind the penalty taker

 

[HBB]

Just watching the build up to Saints v Newcastle & the pundits are outside stood around a table freezing their cocks off

How does this shite benefit the viewer, what's wrong with a makeshift studio at the ground as is standard practice

Nearly as wank as having to watch a penalty from a drone located behind the penalty taker

Couldn't agree more, one staple of Sky News for years when I was was the reporter outside the ground - we'd have someone there from around 7am doing a live cross. It was part of the idea of showing we were "on the scene".... bloody useless.

 

[Notcher]

Couldn't agree more, one staple of Sky News for years when I was was the reporter outside the ground - we'd have someone there from around 7am doing a live cross. It was part of the idea of showing we were "on the scene".... bloody useless.

Those ones where they are stood outside in a storm to cover it whilst getting pelted by wind and rain get me every time. Like we can't see what it's like out the f***ing window or don't know what a storm is.

 

[Morpeth]

Also, in news broadcasts from Abingdon Square Gardens at Westminster they insist of being there in all conditions with people shouting and screaming with offensive banners.

The media has gone bonkers.

 

[HBB]

Also, in news broadcasts from Abingdon Square Gardens at Westminster they insist of being there in all conditions with people shouting and screaming with offensive banners.

The media has gone bonkers.

That one makes more sense, firstly because its very easy to set-up there, there's a semi-permanent (well it was in my day) position there where you can just plug in fixed cameras that can be operated without a cameraman/person (so cheaper) and the lighting is natural so again cheaper alot of the time, there's also lots of MPs walking around and you can grab them more easily for a chat. They do sometimes film them indoors at the Millbank studios, but they are more for radio, so they'll interview them when they leave the radio studios. Its the place with all the marble stairs - but you don't get backbenchers etc going to Millbank, that's more for bigger beast for the World at One or the Today Programme. So the green is the best location for the producer or PA to grab them as they pass or find them in Parliament and get them to come out - setting up in the lobby is harder, takes more time and equipment so they tend to only use the lobby in extreme cases around votes in particular.

 

[Morpeth]

That one makes more sense, firstly because its very easy to set-up there, there's a semi-permanent (well it was in my day) position there where you can just plug in fixed cameras that can be operated without a cameraman/person (so cheaper) and the lighting is natural so again cheaper alot of the time, there's also lots of MPs walking around and you can grab them more easily - well the producer or PA will generally find them in Parliament and get them to come out - setting up in the lobby is harder, takes more time and equipment so they tend to only use the lobby in extreme cases around votes in particular.

Yeah it’s handy to get MPs but I used to work there and all they do is walk directly across anyway. They could easily walk an extra 30 yards and in to the BBC or sky buildings. It’s sort of fine for the lesser news outlets but the semi-permanent set up at certain points in the year is just irritating as it allows the nutters to come out and shout. It’s already noisy enough with the dickheads who are shouting in to the abyss from the corner of parliament square.