Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1505029
Fall 2023 – LOCAL695.COM 21 in and laid over for ten days. Now that they have the pitch clock, it's much nicer because we have a better idea of how long we'll be working. I'm told that on average across the league, the pitch clock has cut thirty minutes from the game. The A2's will set up the microphones and run the cables and set up the booth. When I get to the baseball game I'm doing tomorrow, I will plug in whatever cables I need to, and recall my setup at my console. On the first day of the season, I build my console from scratch. One of the biggest difficulties about working in sports now is all of the commercial signage. All the processing is slow, so we have to delay the audio to match the video. An example is when we switch from camera four (pitcher/batter from centerfield), to camera two, the delays have to change. The guys at Sunday Night Baseball told me they have eight different delays depending on which camera is online. It's a nightmare. If the system malfunctions, the bat crack sounds like a machine gun. Q: Do those delays stay consistent, or does it vary by game? It stays fairly consistent within each stadium. It does vary by stadium. For example, the pitch cast at Dodgers Stadium is six frames, and at Anaheim Stadium it's seven frames. Q: Are there issues or challenges that arise in the sports area that don't pop up in other areas of Local 695 work? We have 20,000-30,000 screaming fans that we have to consider. We often choose consistency over quality. If you hear the bat crack or the ball swish through the net or the announcers, we've done our jobs. We mount Sony ECM-77's on a pad under the rim of the basket. We also have directional microphones, usually Sennheiser 416's. Those point at the keys. We have seven stationary mics in basketball. Q: Typically, how many mics or audio feeds are you managing at any given time? It's generally about twenty mics for each sporting event. Golf has more, at about 6-7 mics per hole. For NBA Finals, we have extra effects mics. The amount of mics can vary a lot depending on the sport and venue. Tennis is probably my favorite sport to mix because the crowd is quiet. When COVID started, they pumped in fake noise to make up for the lack of crowds, which I thought was ridiculous. It didn't make sense to me; I thought it was great that we could hear everything. Then we were on a conference call with Major League Baseball, and they pointed out that with no crowd noise, you can now hear the catcher shift, which before the batter and pitcher wouldn't be able to hear. So there's a lot to consider about the sound. For baseball, we're now in stereo and we have about fifteen effects mics on the field for a regional game. I have three talent mics and I manage those and the fifteen effects mics the whole game. I have a 64-input board that is always being used. Q: How has sports broadcast work changed over the course of your career? The analog-to-digital shift was huge. Also, audio has become more important over the years. When I started forty years ago, we only had one Bat Crack mic and one crowd mic in baseball, and now we have twenty mics on the field. If you watch USFL or XFL, you will see everyone is wearing a microphone now. I haven't worked on those, but it seems like a lot is happening at once. Sound being more important has definitely improved the end product. Sports remote work isn't always as glamorous as it seems