In Boston, Chad Finn wrote NBC's “Football Night In America” and “SNF” are among the "greatest successes in modern sports media." "SNF" has been "prime-time television’s No. 1 program for the past nine seasons," and “Football Night in America” has been the "most-watched weekly studio program in sports since its debut" in '06. NBC’s Rodney Harrison said, "You think about these shows and people come and go. But this is our 12th together. For us to be able to stick together this many years, man, it just says something about the character of what we’re doing. NBC, they’re not going to have a bunch of (expletives) doing this. They’re just not. If you’re not doing this right, you’re going to be gone” (BOSTON GLOBE, 9/20).
CROWD NOISE ALWAYS POSITIVE: In N.Y., Andrew Marchand wrote for NFL Films VP & Supervising Sound Mixer Vince Caputo, the "biggest takeaway" of augmenting crowd noise on game broadcasts is to "emphasize optimism." Caputo said that "by default, hometown crowds believe something good is going to happen." Marhcand noted viewers should not "expect cascading jeers." Caputo said, “We are not going to boo a home team incessantly. That’s not going to happen." Marchand noted in creating the augmented crowd noise, the NFL "hired local people, who were fans of the team in each market and provided them a unique briefcase of sounds." So, for example, the Jets’ system is "completely different from the Giants and operated by a different person." The enhanced broadcast noise is "all the result of an arduous process that began in June with a combination of NFL Films, NFL broadcasting and Robert Brock from the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences in Arizona, among those working together" (N.Y. POST, 9/19).
GETTING USED TO IT: NBC's Cris Collinsworth said that the empty stadium "threw him off a bit, but otherwise it didn’t affect the broadcasters." He said, “You couldn’t help but look around, and as you’re looking at your monitors in the booth, when you see empty stands it’s startling, so that’s when it would get me a little bit. But I didn’t do anything different. ... [Al Michaels] and I were sitting a little farther away from each other than we usually are, but it really felt pretty normal to me" (BOSTON GLOBE, 9/20).
COACHES SHOWS ENDED: In N.Y., Bob Raissman noted Giants coach Joe Judge and Jets coach Adam Gase "didn’t do the usual coaches weekly spots" on the Giants' WFAN and the Jets' WEPN-FM radio flagships after Week 1 of the season. And they "won’t be doing them the rest of the season." With stations "taking pay cuts because of the coronavirus pandemic, how could the suits justify paying the $60,000-$70,000 it usually takes to get a coach to double-talk his way through a weekly interview during the season" (N.Y. DAILY NEWS, 9/20).
