Remote broadcasting of live events has become a bit of a new normal amidst the Covid-19 pandemic.
That’s led to a few obvious issues for commentators and broadcasters, along with a sense of, well, remoteness to proceedings. NBC’s coverage of next week’s Open Championship will be no different, with the network sending a much smaller group of on-site personnel. The biggest change fans will notice, though: NBC will be using the world feed, rather than producing their own coverage.
Joel Beall detailed the decision at Golf Digest:
“There’s still a quarantine in the U.K., so from the R&A’s perspective it would greatly help them for us to reduce our footprint, very similar to what the players are having to go through,” said Tommy Roy, NBC’s longtime lead producer for its golf coverage.
NBC has done just that. The network usually sends a crew of 250 people on site for its tournament coverage. At this year’s Open, a mere 24 will be on the grounds at Royal St. George’s.
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Of course, there are differences inherent to remote broadcasting. In the Open’s case, that involves using the R&A’s global feed.
So, how big of an adjustment will that be for one of the most important events on the golf calendar? It might be very noticeable to American golf fans accustomed to how NBC and CBS tend to handle things. Here’s producer Tommy Roy from that Golf Digest piece:
“The feed is the primary one for the U.K., and then they are producing for a lot of their international clients,” Roy said. “Whereas the feed I would normally produce is customized for an American audience … installing the storylines, the leaders, checking in on the stars of the PGA Tour. Then there’s the travel log, because going to that part of the world is unique, it’s cool, golfers go there to visit the historic nature. So we integrate our telecasts with that in mind.
“So when you are given this feed, you can’t do that as easily.”
This isn’t meant with any kind of disrespect to Tommy Roy and everyone at NBC, but…that doesn’t sound like a bad thing?
When ESPN had coverage it was a fantastic watch. But one of the options they offered via streaming (then on ESPN3) was the Sky Sports broadcast feed. As an American golf fan and viewer, I found it to be such a relaxing watch; almost entirely ad-free, and shot-after-shot-after-shot of coverage from all over the course, from many different players. It was the closest thing to actually treating golf as a sport being played, with all the possible narrative twists and turns that bring fans to sports in the first place.
Meanwhile the attempts to appeal to the mysteriously defined “casual viewer” often seem to just alienate golf fans rather than do anything to bring in anyone else.
American networks too often try to force the action into predetermined narratives, focusing in on certain players and being inflexible in their ability to adjust to provide the audience with the unexpected. The world feed could be a refreshing change of pace, even if it might make for some awkward moments as NBC attempts to work around it in the ways that are both understandable (it really isn’t easy to call an event from overseas, much less coordinate with various reporters on the ground) and unfortunate (there will be commercials, and plenty of them.)
Just, please, put a constant leaderboard on the screen.
[Golf Digest]
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