ESPN has studied coverage of crowdless events, such as this Serie A match in Italy, to see how they play out on television. Networks see this as an opportunity to try new camera angles and add more microphones.getty images
Soon after The Players Championship’s first round ended on March 12, NBC Sports executives huddled to develop a production plan for the rest of the tournament. Earlier that day, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan had said the tournament would continue without fans, and NBC executives needed to adjust their coverage to account for that.
The prospect of empty galleries is a lot less jarring for golf telecasts then empty arenas and stadiums that house stick-and-ball sports. Golf telecasts embrace silence; even the announcers speak in whispers. But the lack of fans would have been too quiet, NBC executives decided.
“You still need to have energy to keep the telecast interesting,” said Tommy Roy, NBC Sports Group’s lead producer.
NBC and Golf Channel decided to use music whenever it went to replay or to use full-screen graphics. The networks would use flashbacks more frequently, setting up a plan to show highlights tied into whatever storyline they wanted to promote.
“That would have been a way to get some crowd roars as we went to break,” Roy said.
NBC’s production plans never were put into action. Monahan ended up canceling the entire tournament later on that same night.
But as leagues contemplate returning this summer without fans, it has led all other networks to plan for changes that they will make to their productions.
At ESPN, the production team has been studying previous telecasts of fanless games, like the 2015 White Sox-Orioles game in Camden Yards, a 2008 SEC men’s basketball tournament game in Atlanta and an XFL rehearsal game earlier this year in Austin, Texas, to get ideas for the best way to produce games with no crowds.
“The weird thing is that when there’s a score, there’s no reaction,” said Stephanie Druley, ESPN’s executive vice president of event and studio production.
“I don’t think you’ll have silence,” she said. “Even at the XFL game, there was a lot of yelling from the sidelines. There’s sound on the field. There’s still sound. It’s going to be odd. We all want something so badly, I think we’ll get used to it pretty quick.”
ESPN believes that having crowdless arenas will give it the opportunity to experiment with various camera angles. Take the NBA, for example. Conceivably, ESPN would have the run of an arena since camera operators would not have to worry about blocking the views of fans.
That means, potentially, ESPN would bring its center-court camera closer to the court. “It makes no sense to sit up top,” Druley said.
ESPN also would consider placing cameras in the front row.
“If nobody’s sitting there, why wouldn’t you have a camera there from that angle?” Druley said. “People pay a lot of money to sit there and see that from that vantage point. We really don’t have the opportunity to show that often. If we have the opportunity, we’re going to try.”
Druley said she was even more excited about testing where to put microphones — and when to use them — than camera positions.
“The leagues will be open to more potential mics in different places to pick up sound,” she said. “There might be some opportunity there for some real experimentation with miking. In live play, you’re going to pick up a lot. We have spent some time talking about putting things on a delay for language reasons.”
The main question being asked about using additional microphones include whether they should be live (albeit with a delay of up to 10 seconds to monitor bad language). “We haven’t gotten that far yet,” Druley said.
Druley also is interested in whether arenas will pump in music or simulated crowd noise.
“That decision is not going to be up to us,” Druley said. “That decision is going to be up to the leagues. We’ll certainly be a part of that conversation. If there is a decision to put a crowd noise loop in the stadium because the players are used to it, that’s fine. We will be transparent with our audience.”
One of the crowdless games ESPN has studied was a European soccer match, where the stadium pumped in crowd noises, like drumming and chants. Druley said that, as a viewer, she did not like that experience.
“But it didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would,” she said. “To use canned noise, like the laugh tracks they used to have on sitcoms? That, to me, feels very odd.”
