I saw something during the Oct. 4 Dolphins-Jets game in London that I have never seen before: CBS used virtual technology to color in the end zones and put the NFL logo at midfield during the live telecast.
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CBS “colored” Wembley’s end zones.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
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I called CBS and the NFL to ask about it, and they said they had never used this in-house technology before in a live regular-season telecast.
The NFL decided not to paint the logos on the Wembley Stadium field as it has in the past, so the league and network opted to paint the stencil outlines of the team names in the end zones. CBS then shaded both end zones virtually, putting the Dolphins and Jets colors in the end zone logos.
For the most part, the move worked — other than a few replays where the virtual images disappeared. My bet is that most viewers were unaware that the teams’ logos were superimposed in the end zones, leading to a successful, if low-key, innovation.
The NFL wanted to reduce the amount of paint applied to the field given the heavy usage this fall at Wembley with three NFL games and the Rugby World Cup. The NFL has two more games scheduled in London this season — an Oct. 25 Jaguars-Bills game that will be produced by CBS and streamed by Yahoo, and a Nov. 1 Chiefs-Lions game that will be produced by Fox. As of now, the NFL plans to use virtual graphics in the end zones again for both of those games.
