MLB Postseason: Turner Sports Sets Up Onsite Presence for Wild Card, Will Debut Base Cam in Later Rounds A new national studio show will air at ALDS and ALCS By Kristian Hernandez, Associate Editor Tuesday, September 29, 2020 - 11:43 am
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Over the past week, Turner Sports has made a massive splash in the Major League Baseball waters. Following its recent seven-year multimedia-rights extension through 2028, the broadcaster is making its onsite return to the compound at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, FL, for the AL Wild Card series between the Tampa Bay Rays and Toronto Blue Jays. In addition, a studio show and Base Cam will be introduced during the American League Division Series (ALDS) and American League Championship Series (ALCS).
It has taken a good bit of coordination with Major League Baseball, says Chris Brown, VP, operations and technology, Turner Sports. We're looking forward to capturing every shot and every angle and producing the postseason in a way that baseball fans are used to.
At the Ballpark: Production Crews Return to a Familiar Setting The past two months have been new territory for Turner Sports production and operations teams. Over the course of the 2020 regular season, many networks have relied on RSNs to send footage to their respective production facilities. During this peculiar season, MLB on TBS relied on remote workflows in maintaining consistency on its productions, but now, through diligent work by the league, a majority of staffers will be onsite in Tampa Bay for the duration of the opening series.
Major League Baseball decided to host the Wild Card in the higher seed's hometown. In some respects, it's easy to do because waiting to figure out [where we're going] is something we face every year, Brown points out. In a world where you'd like to try to implement COVID-19 testing and things like that, it creates some logistical challenges.
To adhere to health and safety protocols, the compound will consist of multiple mobile production units to ensure necessary social distancing. For each five-game set of the ALDS, each locale will have its own dedicated trucks. In San Diego, NEP TS2 and Supershooter 8 (the company's IP-based unit launched in late 2019) will handle the production; in Los Angeles, NEP ND7 A, B, C, and D will be onsite. The ALDS compound in San Diego will remain until the conclusion of the ALCS since the penultimate series also is taking place in Petco Park.
Although this isn't the first time games have been produced in a traditional way since the resumption of sports (the team recently left the NBA bubble in Orlando after the conclusion of the Western Conference Finals on Saturday, Sept. 26), this will be the first instance when the broadcaster's MLB staffers will be onsite to produce a game since Game 4 of the 2019 NLCS.
It's going to be a massive shift, Brown says, because we're going from a [remote production] where signals were being sent back to Atlanta for us to cut a show to actually being back onsite again. We're all pretty excited to be back on the ground and produce coverage in the way that we would like.
In the Base Path: Base Cam Offers Viewers a Baserunner's POV As the main headliner of Turner's MLB postseason, Base Cam will offer a unique vantage point near the end of the postseason coverage. Inserted at the 45-degree angle of any given base, two cameras (an incoming view and an outgoing view) will enable fans to see up and down the baselines and between the base paths during different parts of the game, including double plays, tagging up after a flyball, and close plays that involve a judgment call by the umpire.
Philosophically, we're about creating as much access to the players, the game, and the field as possible, says Turner Sports EVP/Chief Content Officer Craig Barry. Over the course of the last couple of years, we were trying to be really thoughtful about technology or enhancements that would bring editorial value to the broadcast.
Before signing off on the end product, Barry and company conducted ample testing and experimenting, which included use in minor-league contests and offline use during a handful of major-league games.
We went through this [testing] process with MLB to see if the camera was stable and making sure that the picture quality was good, he adds. We'll start slow and then ramp it up for the ALCS.
For this gradual approach, each ALDS will include a Base Cam setup in two of the three possible bases. For the ALCS, with the team more comfortable from a production perspective and with more available equipment, all three bases will have access to this technology.
You try to think about all the variations that the camera will work for, says Barry, but the truth is, some other variation could bubble up as we start to use this camera. We may also capture a great play at shortstop or a diving play right near the base, so it continues to be an experiment and an innovation that we think will both add value and bring the fan closer to the field.
Additional Firepower: Super Slo-Mos, Potential Onfield RF Handheld By shifting back to how sports were conducted prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Turner has full rein over the technologies deployed inside each stadium.
After deploying a standard tech arsenal during the AL Wild Card round, Turner will expand its camera fleet for ALDS and ALCS games. The Base Cam will have a prominent position, but the team will use five cameras with super-slow-motion capabilities. In addition, the production will feature the graphics and other onscreen information that MLB on TBS has become known for, including Pitchcast and Statcast integrations.
New MLB on TBS studio show will debut during the American League Division Series.
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