During NFL Sundays, fans are on the edge of their seats waiting to hear what Joe Buck and Troy Aikman have to say during a game broadcast. In addition to the fans, the people in the Fox production truck are also listening so they can get to things as quickly as possible.
This past week, the lead NFL director at Fox Sports, Rich Russo, was on The WormCast: How Sports Media Happens podcast with host Jason Wormser. Russo, who has directed four Super Bowls on Fox and six Super Bowls for NFL International, discussed how listening in the truck for him and Richie Zyontz (lead producer) is key to a successful broadcast.
“For us in the truck, it’s really about listening,” Russo explained. “Just having conversations with Troy and talking to Troy about what he’s looking for during the game could maybe help me anticipate where he may be going. They are very good at playing off the monitor. The ability to listen is very important.”
One of the things that Russo gives Buck credit for is the way he is able to build a drama during any game and he knows what direction to take the broadcast at any given time:
“That verbiage has to be pretty quick, pretty succinct as to what they want, what they are looking for,” said Russo. “Even if I wasn’t working with the crew, if you turn on a game that Joe and Troy are doing, it’s a huge game. I think they do such an amazing job… Joe is so good at building the drama. He is so understanding of when to lay out, when the crowd is going crazy, or when to hear the cadence of the quarterback. That’s not easy to do. He really knows.”
That preparation for a game broadcast involves looking into certain things that may happen during the game following the prep work done by the broadcast and production crew. Russo will hear from Aikman what his key points of emphasis might be, and the director might make it a point to get to it quicker than when Aikman might have otherwise.
“I do go through certain situations on gameday with all the camera operators whether it’s stories, specific shots we are looking for,” Russo said.
“Maybe Troy, for example, wants to see the safeties earlier where maybe the safeties disguise some of their coverages, so I may say I’m going to get to the play-by-play camera a little earlier so we can, in fact, see those. Troy likes to telestrate prior to the snap, so I just want to warn our camera guys about that and to look out for that. There’s a lot of different variables that go into these discussions prior to the game.”
In terms of how game broadcasts could potentially be improved in the future, Russo said that while he loves audio, the networks are not allowed to use it all:
“I always love audio when we go back and you watch NFL Films when you hear these guys mic’d,” he said. “It’s all after-the-fact. It’s all in post. There have been times where we have mic’d players in Super Bowls. You can only use a certain amount of audio. I sometimes wish with that audio, we can do a little more in real time and I’m not so sure we can get to that. Some of that audio, I sometimes wish, we can incorporate into our games at times.”
During this podcast, Russo also goes into the details of what the prep for the Super Bowl is like when Fox has the broadcast, so it is another way to prepare for the big game coming up on Sunday.
