In a move that "could mean more" local jobs for ESPN's Charlotte-based SEC Network and ESPNU, six ACC baseball and softball games this month "will have the production and announcing done" in the city, according to Erik Spanberg of the CHARLOTTE BUSINESS JOURNAL. The motivation for testing remote TV production of games "is obvious: Save dramatically on travel costs for production crews typically numbering 30 to 40 people and reduce the amount of money spent on freelancers in many different places by potentially hiring a smaller number of full-time people to work on many more games from a fixed-location studio," ESPN Senior VP/Production & Remote Events Mark Gross said that technology "has made these remote productions a viable alternative." During the '14-15 college basketball season, 45 of ESPN’s 2,700 games "followed this model," with Bristol-based producers, directors and announcers "calling and working games." The experiment to date "has gone smoothly, prompting the expansion to Charlotte this spring" for ESPNU and SEC Network. Meanwhile, Univision has "employed the same approach" for its MLS games this season. Charlotte-based Raycom Sports President & CEO Ken Haines said that the trend is "likely to expand, but mostly for lower-profile sporting events." Gross said that it is "still too early to estimate how many jobs could be created in Charlotte if the remote production trend continues to grow as expected" (BIZJOURNALS.com, 4/30).
