Spend the money and they will come
SAN FRANCISCO
Major League Baseball is determined to cash in on the potential of free-spending fans lured by a better TV experience.
"The Commissioner's Initiative in the 21st Century Pilot Club Program" was spawned by a report from the NFO Research Group in the spring of 2003. The report concluded that there was a lot of opportunity for big gains through more engaging broadcasts.
This March, representatives from Fox Sports Network (FSN)/Rainbow Media, Comcast and NESN assembled in Phoenix for the game plan. Experimental coverage from June 15 to Aug. 15 was decreed for six teams: the San Francisco Giants, Seattle Mariners, Chicago White Sox, St. Louis Cardinals, Boston Red Sox and Philadelphia Phillies. Technology and new opportunities for commentary from players and coaches followed soon after.
On the tech menu was "StroMotion," a graphics enhancement application made by Switzerland-based Dartfish (Sportvision is the exclusive distributor for broadcast in the U.S. through 2004). The app highlights the trail of incremental movements of a feat or error by superimposing replays. FSN Northwest was the first to debut the technology for MLB games.
In addition to the MLB-initiated experiment, FSN Chicago added one of its own from July 15 through July 30, using the Secondary Audio Programming (SAP) channel for a younger, edgier option geared to guys in their 20s.
"We selected 10 games and we got the local cable companies [Comcast being the biggest] and DirecTV to open up the SAP channels," said FSN Chicago's Vice President of Programming and Production Don Graham, the brain behind this brainchild. He said the SAP channel "hadn't been used in years."
The experiment was more procedural than anything else--there was nothing special about the equipment used. Instead of using stereo, FSN Chicago used a mono broadcast of the alternative commentators' play-by-play mixed with natural sound, sound effects from the "Fox Box" (Fox's Saturday morning program block) and Fox music. The Rainbow Network hub on Long Island, where the satellite uplink is, encoded the feed into the SAP channel.
New Specialty Cams Aim to DazzleFox Diamond-Cams, provided by Broadcast Sports Inc., were installed at Houston's Minute Maid Park in June for upward-looking, field-level views of home plate and the pitcher's mound.
Each Diamond-Cam has a Camera Control Unit (CCU) that contains a Charged Coupled Device (CCD) sensor and a lens, which altogether is about two inches long and one-quarter inch wide. Two were buried in the ground facing home plate and the batter. A third, positioned on the centerline of the pitching mound, looked upward at the pitcher.
ESPN debuted its remote-controlled FlyCam in April at a Giants vs. Padres game and its Home Run Cam at July's Home Run Derby, part of the All Star Game festivities in Houston. Both cams traveled down the base paths from home plate on a wire 20-30 feet above the stands. They can zoom, pan and tilt.
This Side Up Productions provided the FlyCam Tracking Camera System; Cablecam International makes the Home Run Cam.
-- Robin Berger
Separately, ESPN and Fox trotted out the latest in specialty cameras (see sidebar).
And regional Fox networks got serious about HD.
COMCAST PARTNERSHIP
FSN Bay Area broadcast its first game in high definition on July 30, when the Giants hosted the St. Louis Cardinals. The Oakland Athletics' first HD game was July 31, and its first home debut was on Aug. 13 against the Kansas City Royals. Comcast is the exclusive provider of the 37 games scheduled for HD this season, billing its customers an additional $5 for viewing privileges.
"We have a partnership with Comcast," said Ted Griggs, vice president of programming and operations for FSN Bay Area. "They came to us and said 'we'd like you to do a certain number of HD games--50--for the year.'" The rest of the slate consists of HD transmissions for the NBA's Golden State Warriors and NHL's San Jose Sharks.
"A good size infrastructure upgrade was required," said one source. Another source pegged the broadcaster's investment at half a million dollars just to get the master control room ready. And, with HD trucks at a premium now, booking is an expensive and tricky scheduling challenge. According to National Mobile Television President Jerry Gepner, there are currently only 28 HD trucks in the U.S.
Meanwhile, FSN is doing tests in Florida and Ohio for more MLB fare.
The existing 1080i transmission path for the Giants and A's originates with mobile trucks at home and at some away games. NMT provides about 90 percent of them, and Denver-based Mountain Mobile Television's dual broadcast trucks provide five to seven percent.
HTN transports the stream from the stadium to Rainbow Network's master control on Long Island, which feeds it via Intelsat's satellite network to Comcast headends back in the bay area at 45 Mbps or better.
About 25 people support the HD production, including company employees, long-term contract personnel and others. At least three people man the HD tech ops, network and control room, according to a source.
"All of our graphics are in HD, and all of our animation," said Griggs. "And now we shoot a lot of our feature material in HD [like player headshots] and [are] archiving every one of our games in high definition so that our teases are all in HD."
UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL
Longer lenses onboard the HD trucks particularly impressed Griggs. Canon's 100:1 lenses have been out for about a year, but they are clearly new to regional sports.
"They're unique to high-end trucks," said NMT's Gepner. "100:1 lenses run about $175,000 apiece--so we charge more."
Another important edition is EVS Broadcast's networked equipment. NMT's HD7 truck, for instance, lists an XT LSM, three Replay Only six-channel XTs, and an XT four-channel Spot Box with Lance controller. Unlisted but available is the EVS Xfile archive station that enables a removable file to be produced during the event, which saves a lot of time otherwise spent in the "melt" process of selecting and copying clips onto a highlight reel.
"The Xfile is a series of hard drives that sits on the EVS network, so it has access to all of the recording and replay channels," said Gepner. "The spectacular thing is that it uses removable hard drives, so customers can walk away from the truck with their highlight reel--at the end of the event, you literally pop the hard drive out and walk away.
"EVS machines all talk to one another over a digital network--think of it as one giant server," Gepner added. "It gives producers instant access to multiple channels of replay--and you can transfer video clips between machines while they're recording and playing back."
"People are blown away," said Griggs.
These new technologies may get even more of a workout with the announcement last month that Major League Baseball is developing an all-cable MLB channel. The 24-hour baseball channel, which will initially complement video content streamed on MLB's Web site is expected to launch by next year.
