The first remote went well. Overall we came together as a team and created content and a show. I was on the sideline reporter for the show and my role was to interview the color analyst for BSSN (Ball State Sports Network), and the football beat reporter from the daily news. I prepared question and I was ready to go on air for my role in the shot. The crew or rather the twelve immersion students arrived hours before the show to setup camera’s, graphic’s and audio. There are so many things that go into a live broadcast. So many things that have to be planned out and because it was our first broadcast we forgot quite a few things that we need, to make our show look over the top.
I said earlier we did a good job, for the first show. It was not great but we got through it and each member of Sports Link learned how to improve it for the next show. After reviewing the show and each package that aired I felt that as a group our next show a studio show that will air tonight at 6pm would be tenfold better.
I was disappointed. The packages improved dramatically, and everyone even wrote the in and outs of their packages into the rundown but the show was still filled with mistakes, most of the mistakes were a result of poor planning. The biggest problem I see with Sports Link is that we are spreading ourselves to thin, and each show is a completely new crew.
I understand that it is good to have a knowledge of each position in the remote truck or in the studio. But we signed up for positions we were interested in. In order for the quality to improve we have to limit the amount of rotation of position so that we can truly master the switcher if you are the TD or learn exactly how to call out commends from a run down if you are the director. I like the opportunity but if we really want to create a quality product we must master certain positions.
I feel that we need to reevaluate the direction we are going before it is two late. Sports link is one month in and honestly I have gotten a ton out of the experience but I feel it could be more successful if we change our approach.
We need to create presidents and standards for graphics, and next time Sports Link comes around it needs to have one student who is a graphic design student and each week they create graphics for the show and for each remote, this will benefit them and it will allfiat the stress of stretching producers to thin, or limiting their vision because they are not a graphics design expert.
Standards need to be created for sot’s how much pad in front, how much pad in back and the pad should not have audio on it so the director can take it down late and the video will not freeze. With packages we need a standered front graphic with time, names of producers, slug and date. The time should not include the pad but rather the actual length of the package.
Finally, the biggest and most shocking change that I would like to purpose, when I envisioned sports link I assumed each reporter would be assigned a beat, like a newspaper, or NewsLink Indiana. This way each of us could be come experts on a particular team, and find the truly amazing stories that we have not even begun to scratch the surface of. If each “news option” was assigned a beat we could write blogs about the sport, make highlights for the sport, because we would attend all of the teams games.
This would make us very knowledgeable about the team and perfect candidates to broadcast the game as a play by play announcer or color announcer. We can have different host every week of the studio show. But remotes if you want high quality should be called by someone who is embed with the team.
It seems strange to me that we have a soccer announcer for radio in sports link and he is only broadcasting one of the soccer games.
I understand learning everything, but this profession is so competitive, it makes more sense to have a general understanding of everything but honesty. Most athletes that make it to the pro’s only played one sport in college. The reason for this is simple the harness their skills so that they can compete at the next level.
If we really want to create a quality product we should work on improving our skills, and learning about one or two things rather than 12 positions on a broadcast.
Overall the experience has been great, but I feel we should evaluate our progress before we get stuck ramble shambling mediocre shows, for the rest of the time we have in sports immersion. I know as a group we want a good product, so lets get to know our teams, and create packages on one team, it’s not who has football or who has golf. This is a learning experience, and every athlete has a story, every person for that matter has a story you just have to figure it out.
