
On the Gridiron: Baltimore Ravens Adjust In-Stadium Operations To Feed More Content to Digital, Social Platforms COVID protocols have team getting comfortable with workflows it likely would not have used before By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital
Monday, September 28, 2020 - 4:16 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
Many professional sports have opted for a return to play inside a sanitized bubble. Not the NFL. Without skipping a beat, the league is soldiering on with regular-season games in all 32 stadiums across the country. Similar to our At the Ballpark series, On the Gridiron examines the new routines, habits, and production philosophies of in-venue personnel on any given Thursday, Sunday, or Monday.
Monday night's mouth-watering Week 3 matchup between the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs and the unbeaten Baltimore Ravens was the date that everyone circled on the calendar when the NFL announced its 2020 schedule in May.
Although the play on the field promises to be spectacular, there's no sugar-coating it: the atmosphere in M&T Bank Stadium tonight should be electric. It should be a playoff atmosphere in September on primetime national television. Instead, with no fans in the stands due to COVID-19 protocols, the media group within the Baltimore Ravens will be working in overdrive to deliver an in-stadium experience that brings an energy to the field on this huge night.
It's weird when you're used to producing for 70,000 fans and you're used to feeding off that energy and doing different things in our broadcast to enhance that energy, Jay O'Brien, VP, broadcasting and game day production, Baltimore Ravens, said to SVG following the team's Week 1 home victory over the Cleveland Browns. Getting into a game day and not being able to feel the crowd and make decisions of our broadcast based on the crowd was a bit odd.
MORE ON THE GRIDIRON INTERVIEWS
After Busy Offseason, Denver Broncos Welcome Limited Fans Back to Empower Field at Mile High in Week 3
San Francisco 49ers Production Team Shifts Gears To Engage the Players
Jacksonville Jaguars Reflect on In-Stadium Fans During Week 1, Connecting With Duval' Community
Without Raucous Crowds, New Orleans Saints Adapt to a Quiet Mercedes-Benz Superdome
A Game Day Unlike Any Other
The Ravens had to hit the ground running in that Week 1 home date against Cleveland, and it put O'Brien and his team in a position to create a completely different videoboard show for a stadium restricted from hosting fans.
Despite the wildly unique atmosphere, O'Brien says, he tried his hardest to keep the energy up with his team and maintain a sense of normalcy.
The Baltimore Ravens have redesigned the control room at M&T Bank Stadium to meet social-distancing guidelines. That includes installing plexiglass barriers between operator work spaces.
We tried to keep our show for pre-game and in-game as close to normal as possible, he explains. We want to be ready if and when fans return to the stadium. We didn't want to lose the energy either: the excitement in the control room and the momentum that usually build as a season goes on.
To that end, the Ravens have kept its pregame hype at a fever pitch, maintaining player intros and dramatic countdown-to-kickoff music and video content. That includes plenty of highlight-reel edits and team prompts to fill the bowl with some desperately needed fire.
The crew was able to deploy additional robotics in key positions, such as the player entrance tunnel, and to find ways to acquire compelling content even at a time when positions for crewed cameras are limited.
In the control room, the entire staff wore masks, and each of the positions was redesigned to include plexiglass barriers to separate crew members.
In addition, the control room was repurposed in portions to produce a live, 45-minute pregame show from inside the stadium for consumption on the club's various digital and social platforms. That was something the team had never done from the stadium, challenging the crew to produce, essentially, a side-by-side show in pregame for the in-stadium videoboards and digital.
During the game, content was largely focused on replays after every snap and providing multiple angles for every play. O'Brien acknowledges that the biggest changes in content came during commercial breaks, where, traditionally , the content is fan-focused in the form of direct messaging to various elements of the Fan Cam.
The lack of a need to create some of that fan-centric content has led to a slight trimming of the control-room staff. Such positions as an editor for an around-the-league highlight package, selected stats producers, replay operators, and video shaders have been lost for the time being. In addition, the in-venue video team no longer has the four handheld-camera operators typically deployed on the field in a normal season.
On the positive side, O'Brien's group does have a number of staffers in Tier 2 of the league's protocol, granting them socially distant access to the team to capture content. Senior Videographer Eddie Coughlan and Cinematographer Nick Modisett are among the exclusive few and have been logging countless hours pulling in content for the media group to share with fans.
Stadium Practices Offer Huge Rehearsal Opportunity
According to O'Brien, a huge factor in the Ravens media team's Week 1 success was a series of stadium practices that allowed the crew to get familiar for their new normal surroundings.
Prior to the start of the team's Week 1 home matchup with the Cleveland Browns, the Ravens produced a 45-minute pregame show that streaming to the club's various digital and social platforms.
Not only did it allow them to get their reps in and rehearse with new video elements on the boards,
North America Stories
02/07/2025
Hege Wik and Odin appear in FOLKTALES by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institut...
02/07/2025
(Stephen Lovekin/Shutterstock for Sundance Film Festival)
By Patty Consolazio
This one's for any person who's ever felt put down, left out, marginaliz...
02/07/2025
NEW YORK Paramount Global has agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit by President Donald Trump, ending a long-running legal saga that could clear the way...
02/07/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has approved the transfer of licenses for five TV stations from Sinclair to Rincon Broadcasting, which announce...
02/07/2025
As the media industry faces an uncertain business climate and rapidly changing consumer habits, TV Tech's most popular stories from the first six months of ...
02/07/2025
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. New data shows that U.S. homes now own an average of two smart TVs, with Samsung and LG dominating the market but Roku and FireTV continue to g...
02/07/2025
LOS ANGELES Funds managed by Oaktree Capital Management have acquired FilmRise, an independent digital streaming content distributor, and merged it with Shout! ...
02/07/2025
WASHINGTON The Advanced Television Systems Committee named Luiz Fausto vice president of standards development, succeeding ATSC vice president Jerry Whitaker, w...
02/07/2025
Boston Conservatory and the Sphinx Organization Join Forces to Make Classical Ed...
02/07/2025
Progressive realism: Aurora on taking up the broadcast reins for World RX alongs...
02/07/2025
Great speed: New host broadcaster Aurora on getting the World RX 2025 season pro...
02/07/2025
Seat of its pants: Aurora boxes clever and looks ahead for the FIA as new host b...
02/07/2025
UEFA Women's Euro 2025: EBU, BBC Sport and Sunset Vine talk coverage plans, ...
02/07/2025
UEFA Women's Euro 2025: Women's Super League launches new content series...
02/07/2025
UEFA Women's Euro 2025: Ignite puts fans and players front and centre with t...
02/07/2025
Storytelling in the Live Game Broadcast: ESPN Director Jimmy Platt Breaks Down t...
02/07/2025
CONCACAF's Miguel Angel Garcia on the Gold Cup's Enhanced 2025 Productio...
02/07/2025
Black Forest Labs, one of the world's leading AI research labs, just changed the game for image generation.
The lab's FLUX.1 image models have earned g...
01/07/2025
L3Harris Technologies has delivered its second Bombardier Global 6500 missionize...
01/07/2025
MELBOURNE, Fla., July 1, 2025 - L3Harris Technologies (NYSE: LHX) will release its second quarter 2025 financial results before the market opens on Thursday, Ju...
01/07/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has rejected license challenges to three full-power Baltimore TV stations, renewing the licenses for Chesapeake...
01/07/2025
Dalet has released a new update to its Dalet Flex media workflow platform, introducing powerful new capabilities to its flagship platform....
01/07/2025
NEWARK, N.J. With the FIFA Club World Cup final rapidly approaching and the start of the 2026 FIFA World Cup now less than a year away, interest in soccer in th...
01/07/2025
COW Job Listing: Laser Engraved Logo
Brie Clayton July 1, 2025
0 Comments
Laser engraved logo
July 1, 2025Steffie Beltt's Mi Amor Music Video Cr...
01/07/2025
LeGrow.Studio Builds Broadcast Hub for ePro League
Brie Clayton July 1, 2025
0 Comments
TEM Constellation HD and BlackmagicURSA Broadcast G2 drive liv...
01/07/2025
Beeble launches SwitchLight 2.0, bringing AI-powered relighting to any footage
Brie Clayton July 1, 2025
0 Comments
New AI model delivers full-scene p...
01/07/2025
Steffie Beltt's Mi Amor Music Video Created with Blackmagic Design
Brie Clayton July 1, 2025
0 Comments
Blackmagic PYXIS 6K digital film camera...
01/07/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission's Enforcement and Media Bureaus have entered into a consent decree with Sinclair to resolve a variety of in...
01/07/2025
DENVER Low-power television (LPTV) station owners looking to navigate the complexities of selling their assets in todays dynamic media environment are invited t...
01/07/2025
NASA announced today that live programming from its NASA+ channel will be available on Netflix starting sometime this summer....
01/07/2025
WASHINGTON Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr has appointed Katie McAuliffe to serve as policy advisor in his office....
01/07/2025
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. Alphabet's GFiber, the broadband provider formerly known as Google Fiber, has announced that it recently worked with Nokia to demonstr...
01/07/2025
NEW YORK, N.Y. DoubleVerify (DV) has announced the launch of DV Authentic Attention for Social. The product will first launch with Snap, the owner of Snapchat....
01/07/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has rejected license challenges to three full-power Baltimore TV stations and agreed to renew the license for C...
01/07/2025
Compact new converter lets users capture live NDI and streaming sources into software over a USB interface
Video interface and IP workflow innovator Magewell ...
01/07/2025
Disguise, the award-winning tech company driving visuals for Broadway and West End hits including Redwood, Stranger Things: The First Shadow and Disney's Fr...
01/07/2025
Historic appointment ushers in unified leadership for WRAL-TV, New Media, and Digital Solutions
RALEIGH, N.C. - 6-27-25 - Capitol Broadcasting Company is prou...
01/07/2025
Back to All News
Feel the Beat: Glass Heart' Main Trailer and Title Song RevealedPlay Video
Play Video
Entertainment
01 July 2025
GlobalJapan
Link co...
01/07/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Spyrosoft's Jonathan Witty on Futher Business Exp...
01/07/2025
The NIL Effect: How the Shifting Business of College Athletics Impacts On-Campus...
01/07/2025
Cherry on the cake: Inside the technical production of the Tour de France 2025 w...
01/07/2025
NESN's Josh Jun on Keeping Alternative Broadcasts Fresh for Boston Red Sox, ...
01/07/2025
TNT Sports Races Back Into NASCAR With Fresh Look, Familiar Edge Production approach emphasizes creative freedom, bold storytelling, casual-fan-friendly tone B...
01/07/2025
Back to All News
Watch: A Line Crossed: Netflix Drops Explosive Trailer for New...
01/07/2025
Tyngsboro, Mass. - June 30, 2025 - The 2025 ACM Annual Conference at Boston University was an energizing and inspiring gathering of community media professional...
01/07/2025
In many parts of the world, including major technology hubs in the U.S., there's a yearslong wait for AI factories to come online, pending the buildout of n...
30/06/2025
The Artemis II Space Launch System core stage is integrated with the solid rocket boosters inside High Bay 3 of the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASAs Kennedy S...
30/06/2025
RALEIGH, N.C. Capitol Broadcasting Co. has named Heather Gray vice president and general manager of WRAL-TV and WRAZ-TV here....
30/06/2025
The Virginia Association of Broadcasters has recognized Bill Sewell, Director of Engineering at WTKR & WGNT in Norfolk, Va. as the recipient of the 2025 J.J. Fr...
30/06/2025
The Society of Broadcast Engineers said its annual member drive resulted in the recruitment of 49 individual members....