Officials' Whistles Go Digital The development coincides with concerns about health and safety in sports By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Thursday, July 16, 2020 - 9:46 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
The connection between sports officials and the timing systems necessary to games' outcomes has been getting more technical. For the past two decades, the NBA and the leading collegiate basketball leagues have been deploying a Precision Time Systems system that uses the sound of the referee's whistle to activate the stop-clock function on game-time clocks. With the last 10 seconds of games counted to the tenth of a second, the immediacy of the connection between the whistle and the clock being stopped is critical.
That connection could become even more precise as some sports embrace the digital whistle. Its market acceptance is being propelled by the fact that it does not need to be blown, thus not aerosolizing the referee's saliva, a common way that viruses can be spread in sports.
A number of companies manufacture battery-powered digital whistles, which are essentially piezo-electric buzzer-type speakers activated by the push of a button. But Fox 40, a Hamilton, ON, company that has by far the largest market share of all types of officiating whistles in the North American market, is taking the whistle into the digital realm. Founded by Ron Foxcroft, a former NCAA referee, Fox 40 is built on the success of the its pea-less whistle, introduced in 1987 and now used by the NBA, NCAA, the NFL, and the CFL as well as at several Olympics.
Precision Timing Systems President Mike Costabile is a former NBA referee.
Fox 40's digital whistle is palm-sized and has three distinct tones, each of which can be aimed in a specific direction. Perhaps its biggest selling point, though, is that it doesn't need to be placed to the lips and blown, offering a hygienic solution during a virulent global pandemic. It's a social distancer for sports that bring athletes and officials in close proximity, well within the 6-ft. minimum distancing widely mandated now. The company has logged an estimated 50,000 orders for these, mostly sports-related, since May 1, according to the New York Times. It also nicely addresses the fact that officials may be wearing masks and be unable to quickly blow a whistle.
Perfect Timing
The arrival of the digital whistle could mesh neatly with the electronic game-clock systems that sports rely on, how they're evolving, and the arrival of the pandemic. Precision Timing Systems' Remote Whistle Timing System, introduced in 1997, is designed to reduce the average 0.7-second reaction time between a referee's seeing the need to stop a play and actually blowing a whistle. Positioned by a lanyard, a microphone near the ref's mouth connects to a microprocessor in the official's beltpack. The sound of the whistle activates the processor, which sends an RF signal to a base station connected to the game clock, in a matter of milliseconds. As a backup, the official timekeeper also has buttons to stop and start the clock and is required to continue to push the button to stop the clock when they hear the whistle. But, says Precision Timing Systems President Mike Costabile, a former NBA referee himself, The whistle is the winner every time.
He notes that the system is tuned to use Fox 40's acoustical whistles, whose frequency response can vary slightly but average about 3.8 kHz. Before each game, the system is fine-tuned: the official blows the whistle twice, and the system's electronics sample the sound and register it for that particular game in that particular acoustical environment. That, Costabile says, avoids potential hacks by someone in the stands blowing a whistle.
How hard you blow a whistle and the space that you blow it in can affect the exact frequencies it produces, he explains. It can vary in the same referee if he has a head cold one day and not the next. We specifically calibrate the whistle and the referee for each game in each venue.
The same protocol is used for digital whistles, Costabile notes. Further, the new PTS-900 digital system includes a time stamp that can be used for any challenges a team or coach may bring, along with enhanced calibration and a touchscreen for the beltpack and two USB ports for downloading game files for review. The wireless operation is frequency-agile over 250 RF channels.
Yes, They're That Loud
What might be now called analog whistles have health concerns that predate the COVID-19 virus. As SVG reported in 2013, shrill whistles can reach as high as 116 dB; a safe daily noise dose, as determined by OSHA, can be exceeded in a matter of seconds. And they can occasionally vex A1 mixers, who know that whistles are an important part of the audio landscape but can sometimes evade the compressors deployed to keep their stridency under control.
Sometimes, the ref is very close to a parab that's up quite high in the mix, A1 Phil Adler said at the time about whistles in the mix. If I didn't have a limiter, it would sound nasty and trigger another limiter somewhere else down the line. Unfortunately for my submixer, he doesn't have one on his headphones, so he usually comes away with a splitting headache at the end of each game. I'm amazed he's got any high-end left in his hearing.
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Officials' Whistles Go Digital The development coincides with concerns about health and safety in sports By Dan Daley, Audio Editor 
