How do I reply to these well thought out, well composed educated posts..........
Broadcasting LIVE action sports is a tricky business. A LOT goes into showing you guys the action. Now covering soccer, golf or baseball is COMPLETELY different. Those sports are very slow and you have time to set shots and other content up. Basketball is probably one of the fastest to work along with Volleyball or LaCrosse or arena football, but who watches those?
That said, I believe Sly mentioned above that there are over 200 trips up and down the court on average during a game and you guys are bitching about a handful of mistakes. Albeit they were key plays, shit happens. If it makes you feel better (I'm sure it won't) but of my basically 12 cameras I had access to last night, only ONE was focussed on Davis during that steal. Every other camera was focussed on what we call a HERO shot of whoever had just made a key play or whoever the MIKES are speaking of.
You see mistakes when we cover the Ducks football games quite a bit actually. There speed and type of play fakes out our camera guys all the time.
Now this Yuyza person on here. Bro I gave you my man's Twitter handle out of respect to you to maybe vent some frustrations or maybe pass along some ideas. But you coming on here putting my people on blast about an industry you know nothing about is a tad ridiculous. Jeff Curtin is our Director of Broadcasting along with being our director of the actual broadcast. This dude knows his shit. For you to call us the "Worst in the business", really?
I don't see threads on here after the 5-10 times a game over the past 12 years I've found that one frame of the ball going off the other teams finger, or a toe on the line that gave the other team a 2 instead of a 3. Or when everybody on twitter is all screaming because they don't know why Dame is limping and I fly back an hour of game action and analyze 12 different camera angles to find where he hurt his arm WHILE THE GOD DAMN GAME IS STILL BEING PLAYED! So then everybody can tweet about it when they see our replays as if they have that INSIDE info. I can actually think of 3 games that our replays from those angles have actually won us a game. And we have been acknowledged about this from the President and head coach.
At the league meetings in New York, every year Blazers Broadcasting is singled out as leading the league in not only interesting ways to get sponsored elements on air (See: Wear in the World, where now about 5 or 6 other teams have straight up ripped that idea off and use now themselves) but also creating graphic packages that nobody can touch. Everywhere we go around the NBA other teams media and or broadcasts teams give us props. BB is pretty damn respected in the broadcast community.
As a reminder we have also won an Emmy for our "Worst" broadcast in the league. We beat out quite a few quality broadcasts for this honor. Mariners/Seahawks/Timbers/Pac12 and others. That may not ring true or not hold much credibility with some on here, but in my industry, that literally is the gold standard.
I never thought about this before I got into this industry, but what a lot of people don't realize or know is that the only reason to broadcast games in the first place is to get our sponsors..... Wells Fargo..... for example message on the air. WITHOUT the sponsors money, we wouldn't be on the air. So the fact that we can get all that promotional info out, please them, AND get a ball game on the air is amazing if you ask me.
Now you can take this "rant" how you want, obviously because you are critiquing ME and MY team, but I think if you look at the 75 games or so we've played and multiply that by the 200 trips a game, I believe we are covering the game quite nicely. I'm biased because I'm part of this, but I think it would be interesting to set a camera up and analyze EVERY move YOU make at work. Breaking down how you pump the gas or wash the windshield. Or how well and fast you change the hotdogs on that thing that rolls them around. Grandma used to tell me when you are pointing a finger at somebody, look down and there are 3 pointing right back at you.
Now I think the proper way to handle your critiques and frustrations of all your expert eyes of Broadcast Television would be to have a sticky thread at the top where you guys can voice your opinion in a polite professional matter. You clowns coming on here blasting everybody and everything about Blazer Broadcasting isn't helping. My man Jeff reads this forum on the regular, and I can promise you if you critiques hold merit he'll see 'em. Whatever you think of me, read what I posted and really think about it.
And one last thing...... I've said this before......do me a favor and mix in some other teams broadcasts and I think you'll see ours in a different light.
tl:dr (says the author of some of the longest posts in forum history)
J/K, I read it and appreciated it, but was going to post this even before I did:
Worst in the business? No way, not even close Typical fan overreaction. I haven't seen the work of every broadcast team in the league, but I've seen enough to know that Blazers Broadcasting is one of the better ones. Perfect? No, but who is? I will say, that I enjoy being able to watch the games and, in general, am very happy with the quality of my viewing experience. So, props to THE HCP and the rest of the Blazer Broadcasting team.
As HCP mentions, basketball is a very fast moving sport. And like most cases, professionals who do it every day make it look much easier than it is (insert obligatory racist landscape maintenance joke here). So, when those professionals fuck up, people notice. Other than a couple overly negative overreactions, nobody is complaining about the quality of the replays, highlight packages, pregame/postgame or general production values. It's one very specific complaint, that should be correctable: the camera angles and shots during live action.
I'm not sure who makes those decisions in real time and don't really care. I just know this, when the action is live, I want to see the action. I don't want to see the players reactions, until there is a dead ball. The rule should be simple: during live action show the action. Save the artsy-farsty, creative stuff for time outs and other breaks in the action. You're right, basketball is a very fast moving sport. So, that means being MORE conservative, NOT more creative on the camera angles during play.
Myself, and several others here have expressed disappointment in not seeing the Crowder 3-pointer as it happen. Missing that key play definitely detracted from my viewing experience. It was a lead changing shot with 1:08 left in a very intense game. I really did not need to see a close up of Aminu's facial expression while the ball was still in play. A very poor decision by whoever makes those decisions. Again, keep it simple. Until the ref blows the whistle to stop play, keep the live camera focused on the action. When discussing the previous night's Blazers game with my co-workers, never once have I heard anyone say, yeah, it was a great win, but I really wish the camera angles would have been more creative.
So, again, thanks to you and your team for your hard work and the quality of the product you produce for my entertainment, but in the future please tell those who make these decisions, that this fan would prefer simple over fancy when it comes to live action. I'd rather see a boring camera angle of an exciting play, than a creative shot that leads to missing one millisecond of live action. As you said, basketball is a fast moving sport. You never know in advance when that critical millisecond will occur. So, show them all and use your creative talents during dead ball situations. There are plenty of those to fill during every NBA game.
BNM
