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New way of covering the game on Tv


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For many years I have been thinking about how poor Tv coverage is of RL and I have been thinking of ways to make the game a better spectacle for the arm chair viewer ,

maybe a few ideas that we generate on here may make an impact for the upcoming World Cup ?

firstly I’ve always felt there should be a review of current practices, what we are doing well and what we are potentially missing in a game; one disadvantage of our game is generally it’s so fast it needs miracle workers to get the best shots and moments! I must admit I’ve screamed at the tv a thousand times as we have seen astonishing pieces of skill followed by a fumble at the next play of the ball, of course the easy replay is the fumble and that’s what we get every time! No focus on the positive at all!.

when the NFL came to our TV screens the one thing that grasped my attention was the microphones capturing the intensity of the hits , I like when the bbc have used player Mic in the past.

im watching the cricket World Cup and seeing the use of graphics of the players positions on the pitch , it’s also used in NASCAR ; I feel it’s a useable tool in RL too as it can show things like overlaps , attack and defence line speed  and the speed of the ball 

things like player cams , overhead wire cameras and some decent music for breaks will all add to the coverage in and out of the stadium.

we have to move forward and quickly as a game and keep with the sporting entertainment been offered otherwise we will end up sliding further down the sporting spectrum.

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Different things get tried every now and again - remember PostCam? Those swivelling cameras mounted in the post pads that gave a different close-up view of tries/no-tries?

Then there's Robbie or John walking about on the pitch during warm-up, which has been escalated to doing it during the match in BBC Cup ties. No, I'm not a fan either, but it does show that new ideas are being tried out.

As for players being miked up, if you haven't experienced the one (available on YouTube) where Willie Mason was the chosen player, you're missing a few belly-laughs.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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5 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

Super League should take on the production of its games. We should by filming every game to broadcast quality, we should be the most open and innovative sport in this way. 

Broadcast quality these days means UHD, multiple camera angles and all the necessary support staff just as a base point. Can the game afford it?

It'd be great, but expensive.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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22 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

We only have 6 games a week, largely in a pretty small geographical area. Spread generally over 4 days. You would probably be looking at an outlay of maybe a couple of million, and even if we say its the same again in staffing costs (which seems high to me) then it would only be about £4m in year one and £2m in the years after, its not a massive amount in the scheme of things. 

I know you have to speculate to accumulate, but can the game in the UK afford even that? And, if they could, would Sky actually allow the extra footage to be broadcast? They don't seem interested in showing more than the contractual minimum o their own channels, and the contract would preclude the footage being hawked to other platforms.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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If Sky wanted to show more and it made for a better financial deal for the game, great (assuming the income beat the cost of broadcasting). They get Toronto and Catalans cheap, and show far less NRL than the competition's previous broadcaster. Those will all be individual deals, and the SL contract will be for a certain number of matches per season, which is why they show fewer matches the weekend after Magic, for instance.

The problem would arise if Sky said that they thought they already showed enough RL in their schedules, and the lawyers added that violating the exclusivity deal by offering match footage to other broadcasters comes at a cost. You'd hope that the game would sound out everyone involved before taking such a step, but you never know.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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listen to any of the NRL commentaries and they are way better than ours, the bloke that did wigan and leeds on friday is very poor all he does is say who has the ball and who has tackled him.

in the NRL the game is described as if on radio which is as it should be.

Through the fish-eyed lens of tear stained eyes
I can barely define the shape of this moment in time(roger waters)

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Sky seem to have really cut back on everything and spent it on having half a dozen 'experts' talking over each other.

The stats and graphics are almost non-existent now. We used to have all sorts of graphics on screen, some would be dated now, but we just get the bare minimum now.

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3 minutes ago, Dave T said:

Sky seem to have really cut back on everything and spent it on having half a dozen 'experts' talking over each other.

The stats and graphics are almost non-existent now. We used to have all sorts of graphics on screen, some would be dated now, but we just get the bare minimum now.

It is quite bizarre the apathy at times from Sky considering the large amount it pays for the sport.

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Just now, Damien said:

It is quite bizarre the apathy at times from Sky considering the large amount it pays for the sport.

I'm not convinced it is necessarily apathy. I have thought about this recently. They now do more build up than ever, 45 minutes for the 2 main games a week, they do the excellent stuff at the screen, I wonder whether they decided the graphics stuff was dated and went back to more simple stuff. The NRL and FA Premier League don't do it for example. They have also added far more 'experts'.

But tbh, I used to quite like it. After a try we have a couple of minutes of dead time. Replays, stats and graphics can fill that and makes it looked more polished.

I think they have just decided not to waste the time and effort on it and gone in a direction that just seems much flatter to me. But that is a personal opinion, I'm sure many hated the graphics and stuff.

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5 hours ago, iangidds said:

For many years I have been thinking about how poor Tv coverage is of RL and I have been thinking of ways to make the game a better spectacle for the arm chair viewer ,

one disadvantage of our game is generally it’s so fast it needs miracle workers to get the best shots and moments! I must admit I’ve screamed at the tv a thousand times as we have seen astonishing pieces of skill followed by a fumble at the next play of the ball, of course the easy replay is the fumble and that’s what we get every time! No focus on the positive at all!.

Agree, my neighbour is a 'sport fan', he watches any sports on tv but says he struggles with TGG because of its speed.  He says that when something happens, the commentators and crowd howl/cheer/celebrate something, but unless the game is stopped and replays shown, he doesn't quite know what happened and would like to see it again, but because the game moves on so quickly, thats it.  No replays, no explanation.

5 hours ago, iangidds said:

when the NFL came to our TV screens the one thing that grasped my attention was the microphones capturing the intensity of the hits , I like when the bbc have used player Mic in the past.

That would be great.

5 hours ago, iangidds said:

 

 

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4 hours ago, Futtocks said:

Then there's Robbie or John walking about on the pitch during warm-up, which has been escalated to doing it during the match in BBC Cup ties. No, I'm not a fan either, but it does show that new ideas are being tried out.

 

I cannot tell you how much I dislike this, whoever thought it would be good tv wants his manhood stapled to the back door.

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1 minute ago, Jasper said:

I cannot tell you how much I dislike this, whoever thought it would be good tv wants his manhood stapled to the back door.

Same here. It just looks so unprofessional and few other major sports would allow it.

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4 hours ago, scotchy1 said:

Super League should take on the production of its games. We should by filming every game to broadcast quality, we should be the most open and innovative sport in this way. 

We really struggle on the presentation of the game, its secondary content, if a game isn't on sky we struggle to even get highlights or big plays out and often when we do, it looks a bit rubbish. 

One thing that annoys me is that we really over-simplify the game, whether on Sky or the BBC for some reason we act like people aren't familiar with the very basics or that these aren't pretty much obvious. Tony Rea used to do some great work which was quite high level but instead of discussions of defensive adjustments, tactics, they hows and whys teams are doing things to try and gain advantage we get really basic comments on how many mistakes are made, how dropped balls aren't helpful. Its no insight that a break has been made, but if we could hear about how that break was created what teams did to create it. 

Twice in a day I'm agreeing with you , much like I suggested the lower tiers should have done on the introduction of Licencing but starting with highlights 

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1 hour ago, Damien said:

Same here. It just looks so unprofessional and few other major sports would allow it.

Funnily enough I really like it. I have seen it done in cricket but not a high paced sport like ours. I think it needs a bit of polish, but I think things like this, player mics etc can be real differentiator between ours and other sports.

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3 hours ago, Dave T said:

I'm not convinced it is necessarily apathy. I have thought about this recently. They now do more build up than ever, 45 minutes for the 2 main games a week, they do the excellent stuff at the screen, I wonder whether they decided the graphics stuff was dated and went back to more simple stuff. The NRL and FA Premier League don't do it for example. They have also added far more 'experts'.

But tbh, I used to quite like it. After a try we have a couple of minutes of dead time. Replays, stats and graphics can fill that and makes it looked more polished.

I think they have just decided not to waste the time and effort on it and gone in a direction that just seems much flatter to me. But that is a personal opinion, I'm sure many hated the graphics and stuff.

The graphics hit a high point of intrusive pointlessness a few years ago, and I'm glad they've pulled back on that.

Dead time after tries? That's when the NRL have adverts. Do we want this? Sky probably do.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Sky R.L. Coverage - Four things that could be changed to improve my enjoyment:

1.) Sound Quality - Commentators voices seem to be submerged in crowd noise. Much better on BBC coverage by comparison.

2.) Don't spend 45 mins talking before the game, Start the match a bit earlier and then talk about what actually happened afterwards

3.)  Make it more of a "Show"; would like to see what the Mascots are doing, Cheerleaders, Pyrotechnics etc

4.) Show more Championship matches.

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7 hours ago, scotchy1 said:

We only have 6 games a week, largely in a pretty small geographical area. Spread generally over 4 days. You would probably be looking at an outlay of maybe a couple of million, and even if we say its the same again in staffing costs (which seems high to me) then it would only be about £4m in year one and £2m in the years after, its not a massive amount in the scheme of things. 

Plus it would give us more games to sell, we would have all Les Catalans (and possibly Toronto) games that could be packaged and sold to the overseas companies etc. which you would expect would bring money in, then we have the possibility of selling those extra games either to sky or via a streaming platform

Unless you're privy to broadcasting budgets and production costs, the figures you've quoted are simply guesses. The problem is, though, even if those figures are relatively accurate, I doubt Super League has that money to spare and there's no incentive from Sky Sports to pay it because they have nothing to gain.

But you're absolutely bob on with your comments in the post above regarding the oversimplification (as is Jasper re. the “sports fan” struggling to follow proceedings because of the speed at which it all happens). No matter what we watch, we always engage more with what we're watching when we have a better understanding of what's going on. It's hard to maintain enthusiasm and interest in something when it's just an abstract thing. John Wells is very good at the post-match analysis but things need to be explained as they happen. If the commentators focused less on how to play the sport and more on how the sport is being played we might find people who wouldn't otherwise be interested in rugby league develop a curiosity towards it, resulting in a wider appreciation of the sport.

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1 hour ago, Hemel Stag said:

Sky R.L. Coverage - Four things that could be changed to improve my enjoyment:

1.) Sound Quality - Commentators voices seem to be submerged in crowd noise. Much better on BBC coverage by comparison.

2.) Don't spend 45 mins talking before the game, Start the match a bit earlier and then talk about what actually happened afterwards

3.)  Make it more of a "Show"; would like to see what the Mascots are doing, Cheerleaders, Pyrotechnics etc

4.) Show more Championship matches.

I agree with this. Particularly points 2 and 4.

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6 minutes ago, Bolton Leyther said:

But player mics are, and always will be, s h i t.

Yes, and I am not interested in having crunching tackles amplified. I don't want RL developing into USA style NFL ! Tacklers need to use enough strength to halt their opponents and no more. I love to see an artful light and running game with lots of deft kicking. 

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18 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

The costs of the hardware are pretty accurate (though obviously rounded up), the costs of actual production is a guess but that's simply because it would need to be decided how that would be done but im confident you could do it for those figures. 

Its not a massive amount, even at SL level, about 10% of the current tv deal, but there is incentive for Sky to pay for it, because that's what they currently do. Sky meet the costs of production, if SL were to do that then Sky would make a saving there. Largely it would be cost neutral to them and they would have the option, if they wished of buying more content. 

What evidence do you have that your quoted cost of the hardware is accurate?

The only way it would be cost neutral to Sky Sports would be if the increase in the outlay for the production of a match was offset by an increase in either new subscriptions or viewing figures. I think that's unlikely.

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12 hours ago, Hemel Stag said:

Sky R.L. Coverage - Four things that could be changed to improve my enjoyment:

1.) Sound Quality - Commentators voices seem to be submerged in crowd noise. Much better on BBC coverage by comparison.

2.) Don't spend 45 mins talking before the game, Start the match a bit earlier and then talk about what actually happened afterwards

3.)  Make it more of a "Show"; would like to see what the Mascots are doing, Cheerleaders, Pyrotechnics etc

4.) Show more Championship matches.

I hadn't really thought about it but you're right about the sound quality. There's something really weird about how the noises of the game, including the commentary, come across. Even with the noise it never feels like there's an atmosphere - and that creates the worst impression possible.

Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. (Terry Pratchett)

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