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Remember the golden era of television, when local TV stations produced and aired local sporting events for local audiences? Those days returned to Rochester, NY when WHEC aired the first stop of the U.S. women’s soccer team Fan Celebration Tour.
Before we review the challenges that accompanied this complex production and its short turnaround time, some background information is warranted:
The U.S. Women’s National Team, fresh off their gold-medal-winning performance in Athens during the 2004 Summer Olympic Games, created a 10-city tour that included stops in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York. Spread across 10 cities in nine states and in three different time zones, the tour gave the U.S. players a chance to thank the fans, who have been tremendous supporters of the team over the years. At the same time, it gave fans across the nation the opportunity to cheer on the current world champions.
Tickets to the debut exhibition sold out in a matter of hours, frustrating many fans who wanted to see the game. Furthermore, the game featured hometown hero Abby Wambach in her first return visit to Rochester since scoring the game-winning goal versus Brazil in the gold medal round of the Summer Olympics.
Rochester is the 75th largest TV market, covering just over 400,000 households. WHEC is the market’s NBC affiliate, and ranks number one in the market on a sign-on to sign-off basis (Nielsen, May 2004).
While local promoters were negotiating with U.S. Soccer back in August for the event to come to town, WHEC did not enjoy a similar time cushion. Broadcast rights were finalized with Major League Soccer on September 16 for a match taking place on September 25. Decisions had to be made quickly, yet options were limited. Here’s a listing of the biggest challenges faced, and how they were resolved:
Challenge #1:
Securing A Mobile Production Truck
To say that there’s a bit of demand for production trucks for a Saturday night in September is an understatement. College football, college soccer, Major League Baseball, the NFL...they’re all active in the fall. Mobile Video Productions (formerly known as WIC Mobile) out of Toronto, Canada, came through with its Alpha 1 unit, fresh off a sitcom production assignment for the CBC. The station assembled a crew of 38 people in all (including on-air talent) to execute the live event.
Challenge #2:
Covering Costs/Commercial Format
We were confident in our ability to sell the commercial airtime in the broadcast. However, soccer differs from football, baseball, and the like—there are no TV time-outs.
A decision had to be made. Were we to: 1-run commercials during the game, covering the action and possibly end up missing a goal, 2-secure a TiVo-like device (an Elvis EVS disk recorder) to pause the game action, and insert commercials, or 3-air the game in its entirety without interruption, and run commercials during pre-game/halftime /post-game coverage?
The decision was guided by the unavailability of an Elvis unit during our first days of planning. While we could have secured one at the last minute, our desire to execute a clean broadcast won out. There was little upside to using an EVS: While sponsors may have preferred that their spots air during the middle of the game, we didn’t want viewers to resent the presence of commercial messages.
Challenge #3:
Producing Soccer TV In A Baseball Stadium
Rochester is a soccer-crazed market. Its A-League men’s team is currently constructing a soccer-only stadium that will seat close to 20,000. Until that is completed in 2005, games are held at Frontier Field, home of the AAA Rochester Red Wings baseball team.
Televising soccer in a stadium designed for baseball presents new challenges. Putting the press box up behind home plate leaves the announcers 300-plus feet from the opposite goal in soccer. Built-in baseball camera positions limit the soccer director’s range, so three scissor lifts were rented and placed in what is normally the outfield area to create overhead camera sites for the broadcast.
That created a new obstacle: The best available position for our three-person announcer team faced those two primary game cameras. Talent had to keep this in mind when describing the action; otherwise their “right” was actually “left” to the viewers at home.
Challenge #4:
Microwave Vs. Satellite
Less a challenge than a provision, we still needed to address our backup plan: What happens if something goes wrong with our microwave feed of the entire production back to the station?
WHEC already owns a satellite truck, so it was parked next to MVP’s mobile unit. It not only served as an editing station for segments recorded during the hours leading up to the telecast, but was prepped to deliver a clean feed of the broadcast back to the station in case of technical problems with our live truck’s microwave feed.
On Another Note
We were able to provide realtime closed captioning of the entire broadcast. The market’s high concentration of deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers makes captioning an integral part of the production discussion, rather than an afterthought.
In hindsight, everyone would have liked to have had more time to prepare. But, this is television—so we handle it. The unique story here is that every department at a local TV station came together on short notice to create a successful (and profitable) sports broadcast!
The proliferation of niche all-sports national cable networks has all but eliminated the creation of such content by local stations, but that didn’t stop Rochester’s WHEC from seizing a golden opportunity of its own. The story line unfolded as if we’d written it ourselves—a sellout crowd of 14,870 witnessed an exciting match, with Team USA winning in stoppage time over Iceland by a score of 4-3.
