The NBA’s Silent Game
This past Sunday, the NBA and NBA TV tried a little experiment with the broadcast of the game between the Houston Rockets and the Orlando Magic. In what was billed as a “Silent Game”, NBA TV aired the game without announcers.
As soon as I heard that the NBA was going to try this out, I had to tune in and see how they would pull it off. Would it be a silly gimmick or groundbreaking television?It sounded like a great idea to me. NBA TV knew that they were taking a risk but they also knew their demographic. The only people watching NBA TV are basketball junkies. In most cases, you must have paid for the NBA's League Pass to have access to this channel anyway.
Clearly, a game without announcers would be unwatchable for the casual basketball fan. NBC would be foolish to dump their talking heads for their broadcasts because too much of their audience would get distracted, bored or confused. Well, they might not be foolish to dump their talking heads because I think most of them are pretty much just wasting air when they talk, but they should have somebody up there keeping the viewing in touch with the action.
After watching the NBA's Silent Game, it is clear to me that the biggest trick to broadcasting a game sans-announcer is figuring out how to keep the viewing aware of everything that is happening on the court. The camera simply can not tell the whole story that a fan sees when they are at the game.
The first challenge they handled perfectly. They included the PA announcer's feed in the audio. I think they had this going all of the time, but I'm not 100% sure of this. The PA announcer is critical to the fan in the arena to help them know what call was made on the floor as it is hard to see what the ref signals and a lot of important details from the ref are only shared with the scorekeepers table and the players and coaches. It was easy to include the announcers feed and thus in increased the feeling of being "at the game."
The second challenge was keeping up with who is actually in the game. The PA announcer helps with this, but they don't typically do a very complete job of updating the fans of everyone going in and out. This is especially true of the opposing team's changes on the court.
NBA TV didn't do anything extra to help the viewer out here. A fan at the game can always glance away from the action to look at the statistics board and see who is in the game and what their points and foul situation looks like at the moment. There was no such device for the viewer.
NBA TV does keep a running ticker at the bottom of the screen giving you scores across the league and stats about the guy who just scored or did something of note on the court. So, if a player does something like score a basket you will see his name and point total on the ticker. But, that's not a very complete or efficient method of keeping up with the players either.
The third challenge appeared to be updating viewers who just joined the game or had to step away from the game and missed part of the action. With announcers, you can usually catch up on the main plot line of a game if you flipped away to see who got fired by The Donald or whatever inane show might cause you to leave a basketball broadcast.
NBA TV chooses to handle this by flipping back to the two stiffs in the studio every time there was a break in the action. During the first half, I found these guys really annoying because they spent most of their time explaining what a Silent Game was and why it was cool. During the second half, they did not annoy me as much but I may have just tuned them out by then.
The most important thing NBA TV did was to go all out to bring the sound of the game to the broadcast. They added extra mikes near the court to pickup the sound of the action and included mikes on the rims etc. to amplify the clang of a shot attempt.
I loved this effect. It did a great job of adding the feel of being at an NBA game. You could here the shoes squeak on the floor and more importantly you would catch snippets of the chatter on the court.
This is something you don't get to experience unless you go to a game and sit somewhere close to courtside. It was great to hear the players talking to each other on offense and defense. In one sequence that really jumped out at me I heard a coach yelling "dive, dive" as the Rockets swung the ball around the perimeter. Immediately, Howard cut to the basket from his position at the top of the key. His "dive" jumpstarted a stagnant possession and suddenly players were flowing in the wake of his cut through the lane and the Rocket's offense went to work.
Would the casual viewer enjoy this? Heck no. But I loved it.
Where can the NBA take this experiment next? I would love to see HD broadcasts of games start to offer multiple audio options or broadcasts. If channel 5.1 is showing the main feed with Bill Walton yapping about how great he was and how much he misses the Grateful Dead, then channel 5.2 should provide the same video but with the "Silent Game" audio feed.
Even better, 5.3 should include an alternate commentary by talking heads hired to appeal to another market segment. My wife and I have discussed this several times regarding the Super Bowl. They should provide an alternate audio feed where a cast of characters from BRAVO TV talks about the game instead of Al Michaels or whoever. How many marriages could this save? How many new fans might catch the fever of watching the games?
Maybe HD signals are not the solution to this problem, but it seems like the nature of HD signals could provide a lot of room for this kind of innovation.
Heck, I might finally pony up for HD if they did that.
Posted by on 02/28 at 11:53 AM