According to Awful Announcing, there is a growing belief that if there is a Major League Baseball season, it won’t just be fans that are missing from the stadiums. Andrew Bucholtz cites reports from multiple sources that say local broadcast teams are unlikely to travel and will call games by watching a live feed in a studio.
Bucholtz’s story cites tweets from 670 the Score’s Bruce Levine and Tony Paul of The Detroit Free Press. Both specify that the remote setup would likely be used for both TV and radio crews.
“Remote broadcasts have expanded significantly in recent years in many sports, but they’ve criticized for both sending a message that certain sports are less important and for missing the atmosphere of stadiums,” Bucholtz writes. “However, with these games likely to be played with no fans, there won’t be much stadium atmosphere to speak of, and this move would likely be billed as being made from a safety perspective rather than a cost-cutting perspective (although you can bet that teams and RSNs are eager to cut costs as much as possible as well given the financial challenges they’re facing at this moment).”
John Fillipelli of the YES Network said last month that their broadcasters are preparing to call all games from a studio.
While this seems like a no-brainer, it isn’t a done deal. NBC’s Jessica Kleinschmidt responded to Levine’s tweet to make it clear not every broadcaster is hearing the same thing.
Of course, the biggest factor here is what happens in negotiations between MLB players and team owners. Earlier this week, the Players Association offered a proposal for a 114 game season. Owners rejected it and are yet to offer a new proposal of their own.
