NBA 2020 Tipoff: Turner Sports Opts for At-Home' Production Until MLK Day Coverage during the four-week stretch will be generated from Techwood in Atlanta By Kristian Hernandez, Associate Editor
Tuesday, December 22, 2020 - 12:50 pm
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Nearly 2 months after the conclusion of the NBA bubble, another 72-game effort starts tonight with an NBA on TNT double feature: the Golden State Warriors against the Kevin Durant-led Brooklyn Nets and a Los Angeles-themed clash between the Clippers and Lakers. As the first broadcaster for the season, Turner Sports will set the tone with the first of nine consecutive remote productions until a tripleheader on Jan. 18.
Right now, we are not going to be onsite at all before Martin Luther King Jr. Day, says Chris Brown, VP, operations and technology, Turner Sports. Our hope is that we will be able to minimize our onsite footprint onsite even after Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The goal for us is to continue to put safety first and at the forefront of all the decisions that we make.
Nine-Game Gauntlet: From Multiple Control Rooms at a Packed Techwood The decision may be a sign of the current times, but relying on fully remote productions for nine straight games, including five in the first week of the season, shows the confidence that Turner has in its system. The facility at Techwood will be buzzing with a crew slated to have a minimum of 35-50 staffers for any given game, but, in an era when COVID-19 is still a threat, multiple control rooms will be in use to enforce social distancing. Since these control rooms weren't originally designed with additional space, Brown and the operations team will have to get creative with layout.
The Inside the NBA team will be socially distanced at the 28-ft.-long desk in Techwood.
We've asked our team to come up with very unconventional methods of placements for people, he explains. The COVID guidelines are very strict with respect to how many people are allowed in control rooms, and they're not necessarily able to support this type of an environment. In a non-COVID world, we would staff some with four or five people, but now we can put only one or two people in there.
To pull off this feat, the team is relying on other groups at Techwood to transform the traditional spaces into a full-fledged setup that would normally be housed in an onsite production truck. This includes production of a two-hour edition of NBA Tip-Off before the pair of games and Inside the NBA after the contest. The A team of Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley, Shaquille O'Neal, and Kenny Smith will be back at their 28-ft.-long desk.
Although the crew will operate from Techwood, the announce team will be remotely calling the game from offsite locations. Similar to what other networks have done throughout the pandemic, on-air talent will use a mix of cloud-based technologies and video-conferencing applications to call the action. Marv Albert and Chris Weber will call the first matchup; Kevin Harlan and Reggie Miller will be behind the mic for the nightcap.
We'll have our announcers from their homes or from local studios to call our games, says Brown. We're working closely with NEP to bring these announcers, the feeds that they need to see, and their cameras back into our studio.
This guy is impressive! 3rd game in 3 days on 3 networks, and the first broadcast from the basement! Haha my family always revolves around sports and TV, but having him upstairs for dinner then go downstairs for tip off was a new one! @Kevinharlan pic.twitter.com/dYdUqMGJcL
Olivia Harlan Dekker (@OliviaDekker) December 16, 2020
Besides trusting in the plan, the team wants to exercise caution and use patience before making any decisions. After the first slate of games, Turner will have answers and solutions for the latter half of the 66-game regular season.
We're going to use Martin Luther King Jr. Day as an opportunity for us to step back and reassess where we're at, Brown points out. We'll be able to evaluate what our next steps will be but also take a look back at how successful we have or haven't been with our productions.
Extra Flavor: Five Isolated Cameras To Improve Enhanced World Feed' Onsite productions were the name of the game inside the NBA bubble in Orlando, but, with teams now playing in their home arenas, Turner Sports will resort to an enhanced world feed that fans became used to during the 2020 MLB regular season. In this production model, Turner will work alongside the local regional sports network to piece together an engaging broadcast. The RSN will provide neutral and more-generic shots of the floor, but, in each venue under Turner's watch, the broadcaster will be placing and controlling five isolated cameras to improve the game.
Turner is looking to build off its success in the NBA bubble.
Two cameras will service our digital products and serve as back-channel records for our linear show as well as three additional cameras that our production team will get to control, says Brown. The main game camera will cover the game from a neutral standpoint. That will allow us to cut around our cameras safely and keep the world feed as a backup in case we get into a [tough] spot. Since we'll be able to bring all of these camera feeds back to Techwood, our production team will be able to tell the stories they want to tell with the replays that they want to show.
Although tonight's doubleheader will be the first regular-season games where this method will be used, the team was able to experiment with two separate RSNs - NBC Sports Philadelphia for Celtics-76ers and NBC Sports California for Warriors-Kings - during two preseason games on Dec 15. These trial runs gave Brown and his staff a chance to get familiar with the workflow a
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NBA 2020 Tipoff: Turner Sports Opts for At-Home' Production Until MLK Day Coverage during the four-week stretch will be generated from Techwood in Atlanta By Kristian Hernandez, Associate Editor 
