I'm gonna jump in with what I'm sure will be the unpopular opinion, but here goes:
The production crew for these games sit in a specialized tractor trailer at the venue where the game is being played.
99% of the time, it's a contracted production company. They maintain a fleet of production vehicles, equipment, cameras, etc and subcontract camera operators, production crew, directors, etc.
They handle all of the live content there at the venue and work in coordination with Master Control, which in the case of ABC, is in Stamford, CT at the ESPN network broadcast center. Master Control handles the commercials and any live studio feeds and then broadcasts this content to "head ends" which are your Xfinity, DirecTV, AT&T, Charter, etc subscription "cable" TV providers, who in turn, send that feed to paying customers.
Back to the production crew at the venue.
These subcontractors manage all live content at the venue. This includes courtside interviews, on-site studio (if there is one), post game interviews, etc. They also provide the graphics (AKA Chyron), ticker, bump music, stats (which are also sometimes handled by Master Control), and most importantly in this case, the video shots used when coming back from or going to commercial.
Weather and other environmentals permitting, some crews will have a team out and about the city where the game is being played, capturing video and stills for use in the broadcast later in the day. If, for some reason, they're unable to get that content lined up, the trucks have entire libraries of licensed bump music, sounds effects, video clips, graphics, etc on tap if they need them.
Theses libraries are usually hosted on one or two dedicated computers in the truck and are indexed so you can search for things like "New York at night" or "Times Square shot" or "Brooklyn Bridge shot" etc. They cover every major city in the US and there are thousands and thousands of files you can pick and choose from.
These production trucks are hectic hives of activity. Live TV is a beast to produce and even with the best crews (and these guys are pretty seasoned professionals), accidents happen. When I heard about this mishap, I laughed because I immediately knew what happened.
More than likely there was an issue with the file they'd queued up previously for use when they went to the sponsor spot and someone quickly grabbed an alt video to throw in its place or, it slipped past one of the guys in the truck when he queued it up for that spot.
Things like this happen all the time and unless you know what to look for, much of it goes unnoticed by the average viewer. I always tell people, having spent a huge part of my professional career in the broadcast industry, I'm "ruined" on TV. I can't just watch and enjoy a show like the average person because I'm finding all the little mistakes here and there. This is especially true with LIVE events. So many little errors and mishaps and mistakes here and there. It really is Murphy's Law when it comes to producing one of these events and they can be highly stressful. There are times when you have to make split second decisions and sometimes those decisions don't pan out so well. I directed tech ops for 5 Super Bowl broadcasts and after the last one, I swore I'd never do another again.
The unfortunate thing about this is, whoever threw that file in the mix is getting canned unless there's a really good excuse, but even then, at least one, maybe 2 heads are gonna roll for this. Mistakes are taken very seriously and there's always a post production report and meeting following every live event where hits and misses are discussed and documented and folks either get an "atta boy", a final warning, or shown the door.
I'm not a betting man, but I'd confidently put money on this scenario.
I'll also mention 2 of the most important things when it comes to a live broadcast event.
NO DEAD AIR. NONE. ZERO. EVER. EVER. It jacks with the Nielsen ratings system and is also just a bad look for your network. Something needs to be going out over the broadcast. There are multiple redundancies in place to deal with these situations. Every live event has multiple dedicated PLN circuits riding separate carriers (AT&T, Level3, etc) to Master Control. Additionally, you'll have a sat truck on site bouncing the live feed off a satellite to an antenna at Master Control should all of the redundant fiber optic carriers decide to take a dump all at once. Yes, that happens believe it or not.
In addition to communications redundancies, you have alternate content feeds queued up so if you lose your main broadcast, something is being broadcast. These alt feeds trickle down to bump music and things like the sponsor spot in question. If you see dead air, you automatically know multiple systems have experienced a catastrophic failure and there are easily 100 people both on site and at Master Control running around like their hair is on fire.
AD REVENUE PAYS THE BILLS. You don't jack with the commercials. Ever. The commercials must run. Every time a commercial airs, an "as-run" script runs to make a log of it and that kicks off a query to a QA server that analyzes the performance of the commercial that aired. It checks for any glitches, gaps, etc. and ensures the commercial metadata (length, bitrate, etc.) matches what went out over the air. That report is then sent to the ad agency that paid for that spot and if there were any issues with the spot (commercial), the broadcaster doesn't get paid. If one of your Master Control operators comes back from commercial a second too early, the company loses that ad revenue and the operator gets a ding. Too many dings and you get canned. To prevent things like this happening, every Master Control operator has a live audio feed to the production truck on site. Those feeds are also redundant with both fiber optic circuits and POTS (plain old telephone service) lines. When they get ready to come back or go to commercial, both the truck and Master Control do a 10 count and count back to each other to ensure the feed is switched from Master Control back to the live venue at exactly the correct moment. It's crazy what goes on behind the scenes of something so common as a sporting event.
I'm gonna jump in with what I'm sure will be the unpopular opinion, but here goes:
The production crew for these games sit in a specialized tractor trailer at the venue where the game is being played.
99% of the time, it's a contracted production company. They maintain a fleet of production vehicles, equipment, cameras, etc and subcontract camera operators, production crew, directors, etc.
They handle all of the live content there at the venue and work in coordination with Master Control, which in the case of ABC, is in Stamford, CT at the ESPN network broadcast center. Master Control handles the commercials and any live studio feeds and then broadcasts this content to "head ends" which are your Xfinity, DirecTV, AT&T, Charter, etc subscription "cable" TV providers, who in turn, send that feed to paying customers.
Back to the production crew at the venue.
These subcontractors manage all live content at the venue. This includes courtside interviews, on-site studio (if there is one), post game interviews, etc. They also provide the graphics (AKA Chyron), ticker, bump music, stats (which are also sometimes handled by Master Control), and most importantly in this case, the video shots used when coming back from or going to commercial.
Weather and other environmentals permitting, some crews will have a team out and about the city where the game is being played, capturing video and stills for use in the broadcast later in the day. If, for some reason, they're unable to get that content lined up, the trucks have entire libraries of licensed bump music, sounds effects, video clips, graphics, etc on tap if they need them.
Theses libraries are usually hosted on one or two dedicated computers in the truck and are indexed so you can search for things like "New York at night" or "Times Square shot" or "Brooklyn Bridge shot" etc. They cover every major city in the US and there are thousands and thousands of files you can pick and choose from.
These production trucks are hectic hives of activity. Live TV is a beast to produce and even with the best crews (and these guys are pretty seasoned professionals), accidents happen. When I heard about this mishap, I laughed because I immediately knew what happened.
More than likely there was an issue with the file they'd queued up previously for use when they went to the sponsor spot and someone quickly grabbed an alt video to throw in its place or, it slipped past one of the guys in the truck when he queued it up for that spot.
Things like this happen all the time and unless you know what to look for, much of it goes unnoticed by the average viewer. I always tell people, having spent a huge part of my professional career in the broadcast industry, I'm "ruined" on TV. I can't just watch and enjoy a show like the average person because I'm finding all the little mistakes here and there. This is especially true with LIVE events. So many little errors and mishaps and mistakes here and there. It really is Murphy's Law when it comes to producing one of these events and they can be highly stressful. There are times when you have to make split second decisions and sometimes those decisions don't pan out so well. I directed tech ops for 5 Super Bowl broadcasts and after the last one, I swore I'd never do another again.
The unfortunate thing about this is, whoever threw that file in the mix is getting canned unless there's a really good excuse, but even then, at least one, maybe 2 heads are gonna roll for this. Mistakes are taken very seriously and there's always a post production report and meeting following every live event where hits and misses are discussed and documented and folks either get an "atta boy", a final warning, or shown the door.
I'm not a betting man, but I'd confidently put money on this scenario.
Interesting … nicely explained, thanks 👍
I'll also mention 2 of the most important things when it comes to a live broadcast event.
In addition to communications redundancies, you have alternate content feeds queued up so if you lose your main broadcast, something is being broadcast. These alt feeds trickle down to bump music and things like the sponsor spot in question. If you see dead air, you automatically know multiple systems have experienced a catastrophic failure and there are easily 100 people both on site and at Master Control running around like their hair is on fire.