Sports broadcasts are often criticized for things that are conscious decisions, from camera angles to scoring bugs and graphics. What’s more unusual is when a show just seems off and no one can quite figure out why. This happened multiple times with “fuzzy-looking” ESPN Pac-12 football broadcasts last season, including the Nov. 13 Washington State-Oregon broadcast seen above. This is how Jon Wilner from news from mercury showed this side by side with a Pac-12 Networks show last year:
Here are the P12 Network and ESPN images side by side pic.twitter.com/lGxlZ1HFyg
— Jon Wilner (@wilnerhotline) November 14, 2021
ESPN eventually upgraded the truck’s old equipment that many have cited as the source of the problem. But even that didn’t completely fix the problems. John Canzano, who delved into this issue last year, now writes that ESPN has apparently identified the real root problem, and that it was different brands of technology that didn’t work well together:
The problem, according to an engineer who worked to fix it, was compatibility between the Sony-made cameras used to capture the action in the field and the non-Sony camera control unit (CCU) in the CSP-owned truck. .
The camera function (framing and focus) during a football match is controlled by the cameraman. Color balance, shutter speed, tint and other technical aspects are controlled remotely by an operator in the truck stationed at the CCU. This team member is responsible for working with between six and 12 cameras and is responsible for making the shots from all these different cameras consistent.
“Notice the picture differences on your screen at the start of the game this season,” a veteran CCU operator explained to me. “You’ll usually see variations in grass color and tint between different cameras in the first few minutes of the game, or when the sun goes down and the stadium lighting changes. But after the first set or so, a good CCU operator corrects the gaps between all the cameras and the viewer never notices it again.
Canzano goes on to write that ESPN has publicly confirmed that it will be using a new supplier this year, and production sources have told him that this year’s trucks will all have Sony CCUs.
Bill Hofheimer, senior director of communications for ESPN, told me Wednesday morning, “We looked at this in the offseason and will use a new provider this fall.”
… A second source who works in remote trucks on the game production side for ESPN told me that the trucks that will be used this season are now all wired with CCUs from Sony.
“Everything this year is more standard across the board, tech-wise,” the source said.
As Canzano notes, this is a particularly important season for ESPN to produce high-quality Pac-12 broadcasts. In the wake of the Big Ten going with Fox, CBS and NBC and moving away from ESPN, ESPN is widely seen as the club frontrunner for the bulk (or potentially even all) of Pac-12 media rights in the next contract (which will start with the 2024-25 season, but negotiations are already underway). While broadcast quality isn’t usually a major factor in rights deals these days (most networks produce similar high-quality shows, and the amount of money they offer is usually more different and represents a bigger chunk of a deal), another year of Pac-12 fans roasting shoddy footage during conference games aired on ESPN sure wouldn’t be great for the world leader’s hopes of landing a deal. Pac-12.
As with many things, however, the proof will be in the pudding. If the more standardized truck setups that pair well with the cameras being used pay off and eliminate the blurring issue, that’s fine. But ESPN thought they already fixed that once with the end-of-season upgrade to newer gear. Hopefully this particular solution works a bit better.
[JohnCanzano.com; top screencap from Jon Wilner last November]