ESPN's efforts around the CFP Championship Game on Monday night may start with coverage of the big game between the Alabama Crimson Tide and Clemson Tigers, but it certainly doesn't end there. The network will deliver 14 additional programming channels during the game via ESPN and WatchESPN as part of its Megacast presentation.
Part of the ESPN Megacast Team that will help deliver 14 channels of CFP Championship content to viewers on Jan. 11; (from left) Christopher Damian, Patricia Lowry, Ed Placey, Patrick Donaher, Seth Madway, and Matthew Sandulli
The beauty of the Megacast is its ability to share various resources, like cameras that are being used by the main production but will also be part of three or four Megacast offerings, says Ed Placey, senior coordinating producer, college football, ESPN. For example, because of the Megacast, we will have cameras on both of the head coaches, and those are available to the main production.
In many ways, the Megacast production harks back to an earlier era at ESPN, an era when every production was an experiment and every effort was an attempt to convince viewers that something they had never experienced before was worth experiencing.
Back in the day, we were just trying to get people to notice us and that we were doing a good job, as the main networks then had been doing college football for a long time, explains Placey. So this brings back that sense of doing something that has never been done before and the opportunity to test things that could fail. But the fear of failure isn't the same concern it was then, and we can focus on the possibilities that could emerge.
For more from the 2016 CFP National Championship Game:
ESPN's Massive Efforts Eclipse Super Bowl Benchmarks
Pylon Cam Gets Full Deployment in Glendale
Van Wagner, Arizona Cardinals Unite To Rock University of Phoenix Stadium
SportsLabs Powers In-Stadium Mobile App
Fletcher Sports Supports ESPN With Robotics
Here's a look at all the possibilities that viewers will be able to experience tomorrow night. WatchESPN, for example, will offer the Film Room (in-depth analysis by Brian Griese and Chris Spielman); ESPN Voices (ESPN personalities in Los Angeles watching the game in a living-room-like atmosphere); a Homers Telecast (featuring two former Clemson and Alabama players serving as quasi-analysts); the Finebaum Film Room (Paul Finebaum and SEC Network analysts providing analysis from a location near the stadium as well as taking live calls and tweets from fans); a Command Center with live game action, replays, isolated coach cameras, enhanced stats, and more; and a Spanish-language call.
ESPN3, meanwhile, will offer the Sounds of the Game (a special audio mix without announcers, designed to give the viewer a feeling of being in the stadium); a Mock Replay Booth (whereby an ESPN team will re-create any on-going replays); Pylon Cam (a continuous stream of camera angles from the eight pylon cameras surrounding the field); Home Town Radio (broadcast feeds and a customized view of coaches and star players); DataCenter (on-screen graphics, win probability; curated social-media reaction); Spidercam (a continuous feed from the aerial camera); and the Taco Bell Student Section (cameras focusing on students, bands, mascots, and cheerleaders).
Patrick Donaher, ESPN coordinating producer for the Megacast, says that the fun part is that ESPN's team gets to show off some of the bells and whistles. The Pylon Cam Channel, for example, will let viewers see views from all 16 Pylon Cam angles in the end zone that the offensive team is driving toward.
There's been a great positive reaction to the Pylon Cam, but, within the broadcast, the viewer may only see it once in a while, says Donaher. Now they can choose to watch and then scoot around to other channels.
The channel featuring the separate Mock Replay Booth promises to be worthwhile for the large number of college-football fans who want to have greater insight into how the replay review process works.
It's an exact replica of what happens in the replay-review booth, and it will have exactly the same feeds that come in to the actual booth from the cameras at the stadium, says Donaher. It reinforces how precise and buttoned up the replay process is and lets people understand why the process takes the time it does.
In an age when most viewers will have the opportunity to watch multiple devices at the same time, to watch the main game on the HDTV and then tune into various Megacast offerings on a laptop, tablet, and cellphone, an offering as broad as this year's Megacast should resonate with viewers, especially younger ones who enjoy taking in multiple events at once.
Viewers are no longer dedicating themselves to the pure game experience, adds Donaher, so we are giving them everything they want.
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...
ESPN's efforts around the CFP Championship Game on Monday night may start with coverage of the big game between the Alabama Crimson Tide and Clemson Tigers, but it certainly doesn't end there. The network will deliver 14 additional programming channels during the game via ESPN and WatchESPN as part of its Megacast presentation.
