
NFL Playoffs 2024: Broadcasters To Bring Out Their A(udio) Games More mics, improved signal paths, tight teamwork make for a great-sounding postseason By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Friday, January 12, 2024 - 12:37 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
The outlook for the next two weeks calls for a mixture of football and more football. Starting with the upcoming Super Wild Card Weekend and continuing through the Divisional round next weekend and Championship Sunday on Jan. 28, the NFL season's intense run-up to the Super Bowl compels all four broadcasters to deploy their A games in a tight timeframe. The sound for these crucial games will be as critical as any other element of the productions.
The Production Teams The lineup for the games' sound reads like a who's who of television sports sound. At NBC Sports, which will air three Super Wild Card Weekend games, A1 Randy Pekich and submixer Matt Crocker will be aboard NEP ND1 in Houston, with A1 Ryan Outcalt and submixer Jeremy Katz in the native-IP Game Creek Video Prime truck for the Peacock streamcast (the postseason game to go out exclusively on a streaming channel) in Kansas City on Saturday. Sunday's game in Detroit will have A1 Wendel Stevens and submixer Dan Haggard aboard NEP SNF1.
For CBS Sports' Pittsburgh Steelers-Buffalo Bills game on Sunday, A1 Lee Pfannerstill and submixer Karen Pearce will be aboard Supershooter CBS, working with Technical Managers Pete Kallander and Sarah Hammond and Production Managers Krissi Florian and Katey Maguire.
Fox Sports' A1 Jamie McCombs and submixer Eddie Verstrate join RF Manager Mike Davis aboard Game Creek Encore for the Dallas-Green Bay Wild Card and subsequent Divisional and Championship games.
ESPN has its usual Monday-night primetime slot for the Eagles-Buccaneers game in Tampa, with A1 Scott Pray and submixer Jonathan Freed aboard NEP EN1. That same lineup, plus RF Manager Loren Sherman, will handle the Divisional game the following Saturday.
Some New Wrinkles It'll be mostly what we deploy for a typical Monday-night game, except it'll be on a Saturday, says Steve Carter, director, specialist operations, ESPN. He notes that a second sideline reporter, Laura Rutledge, is being added for coverage on both sidelines for the Wild Card and Divisional games. The real challenge will be logistical: if we have to go from Tampa to San Francisco for the next game, that's a 60-hour run in less than a week.
ESPN Senior Remote Operations Specialist Jack Coffey says the team hopes for exciting games and adds that their luck seems to be holding: We were on a call with the other networks on this, and it was pointed out how cold it's going to be in Kansas City while we're in Tampa. A 0-degree temperature, he notes, is forecast for the KC 7 p.m. kickoff.
(The Chiefs' opponents, the Miami Dolphins, are taking the weather forecast seriously: they have lost 10 straight when the temperature at kickoff is below 40F.)
Fox Sports deployed six manned parab microphones all season, two more than for most NFL telecasts. A1 McCombs says the additional sideline mics, plus the mics that come with the supplementary cameras deployed for postseason productions, bring in that much more sound from the field. Furthermore, he adds, the sonic quality has been upped, thanks to the migration to an all-digital Dante-based signal infrastructure.
That has also improved how we interface with the NFL's Enhanced Audio from the field, he explains, referring to the league-controlled player sound. Now [the league] can listen back to their mix from us, with no signal loss or degradation. It has improved the fidelity of the sound.
All-Star Sound The criticality of the NFL Postseason packs the intensity of an entire year's play into the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl. And while the NFL's big season capper gets much of the attention, the two postseason weeks are their own kind of all-star series. They also underscore the important dimension that audio provides for the sport on television.
Amazing audio for seminal events like the NFL Playoffs certainly has to do with the technology and number of microphones deployed, but most of it is sound management and teamwork, observes Michael Davies, EVP, field and technical management and operations, Fox Sports. The A1 and effects submixer in the truck, the six manned parabolic microphones, as well as the camera mics on and above the field, Kevin [Burkhardt] and Greg [Olsen] in the booth, and, of course, Fox Sports Lead NFL Director Rich Russo and [NFL and Super Bowl Producer] Rich Zyontz at the front bench all come together in making Fox audio as amazing as it is.
Most recent headlines
09/11/2025
Dalet today announced a transformative leap forward for media operations: Agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI) that unifies the Dalet ecosystem under one natura...
18/10/2025
New England Sports Network (NESN) has chosen Harmonic, working with Astound Business Solutions, as its enterprise technology partner to transform primary distri...
18/10/2025
NEW ORLEANS, La. In the run-up to the start of the NBA season, WVUE-TV and Gray Local Media have announced a deal with DirecTV that will greatly expand access t...
18/10/2025
Berklee Celebrates 40 Years of the Fall Together Concert Faculty composers Bob Pilkington and Greg Hopkins are among the featured artists for this year's ...
17/10/2025
NEP Group Receives New Equity Investment From 26North Partners LP, Co-InvestorsCarlyle remains the largest shareholder as the company prepares for the futureBy ...
17/10/2025
Apple Lands Five-Year Deal for F1 Distribution in the U.S.Besides airing on Apple TV, the sport will be amplified on other Apple servicesBy Ken Kerschbaumer, Ed...
17/10/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Marshall Electronics' Bernie Keach on the Future of PTZ Camera...
17/10/2025
L2 Productions' REMI Facility in Austin Can Produce Content From AnywhereMusic festivals, sports events are produced via flypacks and remote control roomsBy...
17/10/2025
By Lucy Spicer
One of the most exciting things about the Sundance Film Festival...
17/10/2025
(L-R) Christopher Meyer, Addison Timlin, Cooper Raiff, Lili Reinhart, Alyah Chan...
17/10/2025
M sica e arte se uniram em uma noite especial na semana passada na ZIV Gallery, ...
17/10/2025
Music and art came together for one special night last week at ZIV Gallery, an i...
17/10/2025
Spotify and FC Barcelona are extending our partnership through 2030, continuing a collaboration that's redefining how fans, players, and artists connect. Th...
17/10/2025
MURRIETA, Calif. The Sports Fishing Championship (SFC) has deployed DigitalGlue's creative.space storage platform to streamline video production by centrali...
17/10/2025
BELLEVUE, Wash. Football continued to cement its reputation as a bulwark of TV advertising in Q3 2025 with new data from iSpot that showed both the NFL and coll...
17/10/2025
The Sports Fishing Championship (SFC), the premier competitive saltwater fishing series, has transformed its production workflow by adopting creative.space, the...
17/10/2025
QuickLink, a leading provider of award-winning multi-camera video productions and remote contribution solutions, announces the release of StudioPro Version 4, ...
17/10/2025
Although the annual Grammy Awards celebration is best known for recognizing achievements in the recording industry, the show often proves a visual spectacle as ...
17/10/2025
OpenDrives, Inc., a leading provider of software-defined data storage and data services, has promoted Alex Dunfey to Chief Technology Officer (CTO) from his for...
17/10/2025
The University of Arizona (UofA) has significantly upgraded its broadcast communication infrastructure with the integration of Riedel Communications' advanc...
17/10/2025
Harmonic (NASDAQ: HLIT) today announced that New England Sports Network (NESN), owned by Fenway Sports Group and Delaware North, has selected Harmonic as its en...
17/10/2025
Austin PBS has recently upgraded its facility-wide communications infrastructure, deploying Clear-Com 's Eclipse HX, FreeSpeak II beltpacks, and V-Series ...
17/10/2025
ZEISS announces an open call for the closed BETA testing phase of CinCraft Virtual Lens Technology, the innovative digital tool that brings authentic lens chara...
17/10/2025
Situated in the town of Kokkola, Centria University of Applied Sciences offers higher education across five core fields: engineering, business, social and healt...
17/10/2025
Public information channel in Georgia, USA, to implement a powerful, simple, and cost-effective playout automation platform.
Pebble, the leading automation, co...
17/10/2025
HBO Max is reporting that it has launched in 15 new markets, including Bangladesh, Cambodia, Macau, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Ukraine, boosting the streaming serv...
17/10/2025
Netflix said it will make a major push into video podcasts, inking a wide-ranging deal with Spotify through which it will offer 16 podcasts in the U.S. starting...
17/10/2025
Lexington, Ky. As part of a push to highlight its advanced advertising capabilities, Viamedia has launched a new AI-powered ad tech platform and officially rebr...
17/10/2025
NEW YORK QuickLink has announced the release of StudioPro Version 4, which the company is calling the most significant upgrade yet to its flagship video product...
17/10/2025
NEW YORK and CUPERTINO, Calif. Apple and NBCUniversal said they will sell Apple TV and Peacock streaming bundles to U.S. subscribers starting Oct. 20....
17/10/2025
Q&A with Boston Conservatory Choral Conductor Stephen Spinelli How his research into the lost manuscripts of composer Florence Price led to a Grammy-winning c...
17/10/2025
Back to All News
Netflix ISP Speed Index for September 2025
Product
17 October 2025
Global
Link copied to clipboard
This month, 1% of Internet Service Pro...
17/10/2025
NVIDIA's on the ground at Open Source AI Week. Stay tuned for a celebration ...
17/10/2025
AI has ignited a new industrial revolution.
NVIDIA and TSMC are working togethe...
17/10/2025
Gexcon is a trusted safety and risk management partner for complex, high hazard environments. ICG has been a dedicated marketing partner to Gexcon since 2018, b...
17/10/2025
Here is your host, Patrick Kielty!
After an incredible breakthrough year, Kingf...
16/10/2025
SVG Sit-Down: FUJIFILM Execs on GFX ETERNA 55 Camera, Importance of Shallow-Dept...
16/10/2025
Squash's Most Ambitious Broadcast Production To Be Deployed at Comcast Busin...
16/10/2025
Main Street Sports Group Inks Deal With Omaha Productions, Launches Original-Con...
16/10/2025
A Historic Precursor? FIFA, HBS, DAZN Offer an Inside Look at Production of FIFA...
16/10/2025
Prime Video Offers Sneak Peak at New NBA on Prime StudioThe massive 13,000-sq-ft, two-story studio features a LED regulation half court and hoopBy Jason Dachman...
16/10/2025
SVG Remote Production Forum Draws Record Crowd for Visit to PGA TOUR Studios, De...
16/10/2025
BitFire's Ben Grafchik on How Growing Cloud Workflows Are Impacting the Live...
16/10/2025
AI technology is advancing quickly, bringing both new creative possibilities and...
16/10/2025
In 2017, Imani Ellis launched CultureCon, a conference that's become a must-attend event for more than 10,000 diverse creatives and Black professionals to c...
16/10/2025
It might still be a little early to break out the tinsel and mistletoe, but Spotify's already queuing up some holiday magic. This year's Spotify Singles...
16/10/2025
Earlier this year, our in-house publishing imprint, Spotify Audiobooks, put out ...
16/10/2025
VAMPIRE has been integrated onto GM Defenses Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV), providing a mobile solution to effectively and affordably counter small drone threat...
16/10/2025
The AgilePod mounted on the host aircraft....
16/10/2025
60% say infotainment systems are a critical purchasing or leasing consideration,...