The spotter is one of the unsung workers in any television sports production. Standing outside of camera view, the spotter helps the play-by-play announcer identify on-field players by pointing to their name and number on a big storyboard.
A remote spotter helps Steve Levy call a “Monday Night Football” game.espn images
During the pandemic, the spotter’s role has changed in accordance with social distancing guidelines. As more aspects of TV sports productions go remote, spotters have figured out how to do their job from a completely different location than the booth crew.
“We’ve had to be creative,” said Stephanie Druley, ESPN’s executive vice president of event and studio production. “A broadcast booth usually has a lot of people jammed into a small space. We had to figure out where to put the spotter.”
ESPN decided to train a camera on a storyboard that is set up in an ESPN studio and has the spotter point to names with his finger. The video is streamed to a monitor that is in front of a play-by-play announcer. Ben Bouma is a spotter for Steve Levy on “Monday Night Football.” Mike Black does it for Chris Fowler on college games.
“That was the solution we came up with to figure out how spotters can be in the booth when they have to keep their distance,” Druley said.
Druley said the idea of a remote spotter almost certainly will not last beyond the pandemic.
“We’ll go back to having those spotters next to our announcers,” she said. “But I’m really proud of how creative we’ve been in this.”
