courtesy of ABC Sports courtesy of Kansas City Royals, Chris Vleisides photographer In preparing for Monday Night Football, Howard Cosell The high -camera behind third base offered an excellent and Frank Gifford study the teams and players to bring view ofthe Royalsfieldduringthe World Seriesin out the game's finer points. Kansas City. The cameraman relaxes here during warmup.

ENG/RENG: Behind thescenes in sports coverage By Bill Rhodes, editorial director

The successful broadcasting of a major sporting event requires in-depthplanning, professional talent and an enormous amount of equipment. BE went behind thescenes to observe the extensive preparations made to broadcast the held in Kansas City, MO.

Behind all the glamour, hundreds The intensive pre -game planning 115 -member technical crew of technicians worked feverishly $55 million electronic gear had one goal: to produce outstand- 324,516 paid attendance setting up equipment to cover theing coverage, bothinvideo and games. Others organized the com-audio, without technical flaws. 390 million television viewers mentary provided by Joe Garagiola, Radio broadcasts to foreign Tony Kubek, and plus Equipment countries the game reporting by Merle Har- To implement its coverage of the mon and . seriesin Kansas City, NBC used seven fully equipped trailers.Situ- The World Series naturally gener- The crew atedjustoutside Royals Stadium, ates excitement. Traditionally,the Productionofthe NBC Sports'these trailers served as a command seriesissoldout,and the1980 coverage waspostforthe technical crew and series was no exception. Game under the direction of Don Ohlmey-their equipment-including service attendance for the six games played er, executive producer, Mike Weis-and maintenance. totaled 324,516, not counting hun- man,coordinatingproducer,and Approximately $55 million worth dreds of news media personnel. TheHarry Coyle, game director. BE satof electronic gear was used to cover NBC total estimated viewing audi- inononeofthelateplanning theseriesin Kansas Cityalone. ence exceeded 391million,more sessions directed by Weisman. TheIncluded were:10 stationary camer- than 1200 times as many peopleproduction crew and the commenta-as, two hand-held mobile cameras, watching on television as attendedtors shared thoughts on what couldfour slow-motion replay discs, three the games themselves. Add to thesehappen as the game progressed. videotape machines, two still -store figures millions that listened to theThis was a fascinating session to machines,two charactergenera- games on radio in Canada and moreattend.It was, in essence, NBC's tors,one videoeffectssystem,a than 15 other countries. game planforbringing the mostproduction switcher,ahost of significant facets of baseball to themonitors, and several miles of audio public. It was evident that the longand video cables. Two ofthe Terms used to cover nonprint media coverage of association of Garagiola with the current events are not yet clearly defined. EJ is cameras were equipped with micro- used togenerally class the complete fieldof game and its personalities waswave links. Electronic Journalism; ENG,Electronic News invaluable in helping the production Setting up these trailers and Gathering, to loosely connotate TV news gather- ing; and RENG to differentiate Radio Electronic crew concentrate on critical aspectspreparing the stadium with camer- News Gathering. of the game and to alert them toas, announce booths and press potential rhubarbs. booths began four days before the

20 Broadcast Engineeing January 1981