Thursday, May 28, 2009
MLB and National TV
MLB and Fox seem to be a little upset about their ratings and seem to be genuinely surprised when people claim it’s about the quality of their production. I think that MLB has done a lot of things right in making their product more accessible to the mainstream audience, but their broadcast leaves a lot to be desired. Ratings are down, and they don’t seem to really want to fix it. Here is a few things that I think will improve the quality of their broadcast and may even help their ratings.
1. Have an edict saying No more close-ups, I have no idea when this became trendy, and in other sports it’s not an issue, but for some reason baseball broadcasts seem to have an unusual number of close-ups. In football you don’t get a close-up of the quarterback as he is hiking the ball, nor in hockey or basketball, but somewhere along the way the television directors came to a conclusion that the game is slow and close-ups is how you fix the problem. Baseball has the largest field in all of the major sports yet it’s the one that is being told to narrow the camera field.
2. Hire directors that actually like the sport. As I said about close-ups it seems that the powers in charge just don’t like the sport. Football has a reputation for putting on a great production, and I genuinely think that the people in charge care, the guys for baseball just seem to be going through the motions.
3. Baseball production has stagnated because it’s a pretty easy sport to film, but where innovation can really take place is not during the pitch, but the setup for the pitch. How many of you reading this has seen television crews accent the defensive alignment before the pitch? Again in football the camera angle is panned out enough that you see most of the defense and offensive alignment, baseball instead does a close up of the guy walking to the batter’s box. Instead how about having a camera angle that shows the defensive lineup, train the commentator to mention the type of defense being used (in, double play, guarding the lines, normal etc.) and even comment on how it different from normal using the telestrator and even going into some depth about the strategy behind the decision.
4. Madden is famous for using the telestrator but baseball seems to ignore its ability to help break down the game. In between plays show replays of how the defense reacted to a play, use the telestrator to show where they made a mistake or even the old Madden way, to show what is going to happen. Baseball has a reputation as being a sport that nothing is happening outside of the batter and the pitcher, which the rest of the defense is sitting in the outfield waiting, that the infielders are doing nothing etc. Which is of course not the truth, but considering that most people have been conditioned through broadcasts that the pitcher and the batter are the only ones working, it is something that is seriously wrong with TV broadcasts.
5. Don’t be afraid of trying to be innovated. Bring in people to talk about advance stats (I would vet them first to see if they are truly capable of talking at a level that the average fan would appreciate) Get your announcers to sign on, on a few of the advanced stats. Run trivia contest to text into during the broadcast(giving out a random prize like tickets to a movie, or whatever is reasonable) get camera angles that can show the true location of a pitch to digitize into a three dimensional showing of the actual pitch (they have this technology already they just don’t use it often)
6. Regionalize your broadcast more, until the major networks realize that nobody west of Cincinnati cares at all about a Red Sox vs Yankees matchup(in fact they are quite sick of it to be honest) There is no reason that California should be getting one of those matchups. The rules for regionalizing should be local team first, primary rival second, any team in the same division third, any other regional alliances due to minor league affiliate or history, same league as most local team, then you might consider the bigger market teams. But if they are broadcasting in San Diego, they are going to want to see SD, LAD, SFG, LAA, Col, Ari, Oak---before anything resembling a Yankee-Red Sox game. And it wouldn’t shock me to see them on average preferring to see any NL game before a game featuring Yankee-Red Sox.
7. Market your talent, Basketball is famous for doing this, and it does a good job for making a casual fan want to watch a non-local team. And don’t stick to the usual, be aggressive, the casual fan should have known all about the Rays last year and their young cast. Roy Halladay should be a household name, along with about a dozen others outside of Jeter, Manny and Arod. Every team should have at least one player that the casual fan would identify that team with.
8. Heck spice up your pregame shows, similar to football. Have the experts pick who is going to win the game and keep track, just like you do in football. Have rotating guest to explain new stuff or talk about impending record or streak or whatever. Hype the players still in the minors, if it’s a hyped prospects first game, put a countdown until the game time is supposed to start saying “15 minutes until Wieters first game”.
This is just some points I would argue that needs to be done, I mostly just want to see more concentration on the defensive aspect of the game, and of course less close-ups of some random celebrity. Baseball is a sophisticated game, and yet the broadcasts have attempted to turn it into some mindless game of checkers instead of the chess game that it really is. I understand that they want to make it more accessible to the average fan, but the game is hugely popular and doesn’t need to be dumbed down as much as they have. I don’t know what a nickel defense is, but they have no problems mentioning it during an NFL broadcast, it doesn’t take away from my enjoyment of the game even if I don’t understand everything going on, but for some reason they feel that baseball needs to be treated as if everyone that is watching it would have problems keeping up with a Barney episode.
1. Have an edict saying No more close-ups, I have no idea when this became trendy, and in other sports it’s not an issue, but for some reason baseball broadcasts seem to have an unusual number of close-ups. In football you don’t get a close-up of the quarterback as he is hiking the ball, nor in hockey or basketball, but somewhere along the way the television directors came to a conclusion that the game is slow and close-ups is how you fix the problem. Baseball has the largest field in all of the major sports yet it’s the one that is being told to narrow the camera field.
2. Hire directors that actually like the sport. As I said about close-ups it seems that the powers in charge just don’t like the sport. Football has a reputation for putting on a great production, and I genuinely think that the people in charge care, the guys for baseball just seem to be going through the motions.
3. Baseball production has stagnated because it’s a pretty easy sport to film, but where innovation can really take place is not during the pitch, but the setup for the pitch. How many of you reading this has seen television crews accent the defensive alignment before the pitch? Again in football the camera angle is panned out enough that you see most of the defense and offensive alignment, baseball instead does a close up of the guy walking to the batter’s box. Instead how about having a camera angle that shows the defensive lineup, train the commentator to mention the type of defense being used (in, double play, guarding the lines, normal etc.) and even comment on how it different from normal using the telestrator and even going into some depth about the strategy behind the decision.
4. Madden is famous for using the telestrator but baseball seems to ignore its ability to help break down the game. In between plays show replays of how the defense reacted to a play, use the telestrator to show where they made a mistake or even the old Madden way, to show what is going to happen. Baseball has a reputation as being a sport that nothing is happening outside of the batter and the pitcher, which the rest of the defense is sitting in the outfield waiting, that the infielders are doing nothing etc. Which is of course not the truth, but considering that most people have been conditioned through broadcasts that the pitcher and the batter are the only ones working, it is something that is seriously wrong with TV broadcasts.
5. Don’t be afraid of trying to be innovated. Bring in people to talk about advance stats (I would vet them first to see if they are truly capable of talking at a level that the average fan would appreciate) Get your announcers to sign on, on a few of the advanced stats. Run trivia contest to text into during the broadcast(giving out a random prize like tickets to a movie, or whatever is reasonable) get camera angles that can show the true location of a pitch to digitize into a three dimensional showing of the actual pitch (they have this technology already they just don’t use it often)
6. Regionalize your broadcast more, until the major networks realize that nobody west of Cincinnati cares at all about a Red Sox vs Yankees matchup(in fact they are quite sick of it to be honest) There is no reason that California should be getting one of those matchups. The rules for regionalizing should be local team first, primary rival second, any team in the same division third, any other regional alliances due to minor league affiliate or history, same league as most local team, then you might consider the bigger market teams. But if they are broadcasting in San Diego, they are going to want to see SD, LAD, SFG, LAA, Col, Ari, Oak---before anything resembling a Yankee-Red Sox game. And it wouldn’t shock me to see them on average preferring to see any NL game before a game featuring Yankee-Red Sox.
7. Market your talent, Basketball is famous for doing this, and it does a good job for making a casual fan want to watch a non-local team. And don’t stick to the usual, be aggressive, the casual fan should have known all about the Rays last year and their young cast. Roy Halladay should be a household name, along with about a dozen others outside of Jeter, Manny and Arod. Every team should have at least one player that the casual fan would identify that team with.
8. Heck spice up your pregame shows, similar to football. Have the experts pick who is going to win the game and keep track, just like you do in football. Have rotating guest to explain new stuff or talk about impending record or streak or whatever. Hype the players still in the minors, if it’s a hyped prospects first game, put a countdown until the game time is supposed to start saying “15 minutes until Wieters first game”.
This is just some points I would argue that needs to be done, I mostly just want to see more concentration on the defensive aspect of the game, and of course less close-ups of some random celebrity. Baseball is a sophisticated game, and yet the broadcasts have attempted to turn it into some mindless game of checkers instead of the chess game that it really is. I understand that they want to make it more accessible to the average fan, but the game is hugely popular and doesn’t need to be dumbed down as much as they have. I don’t know what a nickel defense is, but they have no problems mentioning it during an NFL broadcast, it doesn’t take away from my enjoyment of the game even if I don’t understand everything going on, but for some reason they feel that baseball needs to be treated as if everyone that is watching it would have problems keeping up with a Barney episode.
