Sky do their own commentary for games played in NZ, but take Fox for Australian games.
Cheers mate. A learning curve for me - as you know I used to be in studio not at home watching.
Fox do their own commentary off-tube for Warriors home games.
The Warriors Sky calls tend to be rather partisan.
They still host a pre and post game show around the game as Fox tend to jump to the next game pretty quick.
Yes that was established by what Mark said.
Iāve always wondered though Mark when calling games off the tube do you get the coverage from Sky/ host broadcaster or just use Foxtel when broadcasting games?
Also who provides all the sound is that the NRL or a third party?
It comes from the host broadcaster/their production company.
SCA have agreements with Nine and FOX to provide the feed. Whoever is host broadcaster sends it to the NOC, who then feed it to us (sometimes Iād have to call the NOC and get them onto it as we didnāt get the feed or it was the wrong feed). Best times were during warm ups and pre-news crosses when Sterlo and Joey etc wouldnāt mind sending out a āfucking hellā or a āFor fucks sake what the fuck are we saying?ā etc etcā¦ was very funny a lot of the time.
We didnāt have any agreements with SKY Sport, so when they were hosting the Knights we would not have a āclean feedā and JR and I would have to do some panel juggling to get the referee and video referee. Occasionally the SKY Sport commentators were heard for a split second before we could cut them off.
Occasionally weād even throw a local microphone out the commentary box window and even tape one to the FOX/Nine mics on the ground to get a bit more of the atmosphere.
The semi-final versus Canberra, the boys were asking me down the line to turn the crowd down as it was far too loud and starting to distort. There was only one problem - I wasnāt using the crowd DVN so couldnāt control the atmosphere. It was coming through without me riding the fader - thatās how loud the ground was that night. I firmly believe that will be the game submitted for an ACRA this year.
Hope that explains it
Definitely explained it well, Iāve always found that really interesting how it all works and how great your broadcasts always sounded.
thanks so much - it boils down to preparation.
JR and I worked so well together because we were both absolutely ANAL! Prep. Prep. Prep.
He also trusted me to take control and drive the broadcast while he focused on the intracacies in the game (substitutes, credits for advertisers, scores, general commentary).
We focused pre-game on information and a bit of fun, with the post-game giving analysis but not going overboard.
If news broke Iād get it to Jim who decided if it would run. When the coach spoke after the game, Iād quickly take notes and send it to JR or Jim. We could turn around an interesting quote within seconds.
The team trusted each other and it ran like a well-oiled machine.
I havenāt listened this year as Iām trying to go back to being a viewer and not someone involved.
One thing I will say - I would proudly put our coverage up against our colleagues at metro and would walk away happy every week. Iād listen to 2GB, ABC, 2MMM every week just to make sure we were staying in that sweet spot that we wanted to occupy - local, no bullshit, no gambling ads, making the listener feel like they were part of the call.
I think we did it well.
Wonder if that was the case when Nine had the delayed 2nd FNF game or Sunday and Newcastle was inloved, did you have the feed for those since SCA have agreements with Nine and FOX to provide the feed.
It was always to at least the standard of the metroās, you couldnāt tell the difference between to 2MMM, Iād even go to say I preferred the Newcastle call with some of the things you guys did and the team still do. The boys on air gel really well and Iād say the off air team equally as much.
I think us NRL fans who listen to the footy are very lucky with the quality we get here in Australia.
And it helps that our footy (AFL too) is a better spectacle than anything overseas. To my eyes anyway.
Definitely up there along with Gaelic football in terms of overall spectacle.
Yep, gota love ie old Gaelic football.
Back when SCA TV was in Canberra and it was the Canberra NOC that received those feeds and fed them on to you, if it was a Nine game I usually tried to make sure I had the feed patched to somewhere that Pres could use it as a backup in case we lost our main TV broadcast feeds. It wasnāt technically part of our normal procedure and we had other backup feeds anyway, but as the feed going to you was coming from a different location to our main TV feeds, it always made me more comfortable to know we had an extra backup for broadcasts with lots of viewers.
Trying to determine whether Fox were sending us the correct feed when they had a locked off shot of some section of the grass at a stadium was always interesting!
Oh yeah!!!
I remember one time the Fox feed was dodgy and dropping out often. Jim would throw to one of the other boys for some perspective of how the game was progressing while I brought up my Kayo subscription on my phone - left it with them for the remainder of the game and they definitely called off the mobile for at least half of the match. Listeners wouldnāt have been able to tell.