Coronavirus pandemic should give sports broadcasting a much-needed shakeup

The Ringer

"Sports TV isn’t as innovative as it should be," says Bryan Curtis. "There are two reasons for this. One, sports is one of network TV’s few remaining cash cows. Why screw it up? Just as important, network executives don’t get the time off afforded to the showrunners of a cable drama....The coronavirus grounded sports producers for two months, offering them a rare chance to think. A bunch of them have put on their Roone Arledge mad-scientist togs to try to reshape the medium. They have to. Live games are crucial to TV networks trying to return to something like normalcy. And even crews that are showered with money and personnel will now work at a disadvantage: They almost certainly won’t have the fans that sweeten the broadcast, both in audio and visual terms." As Fred Gaudelli, executive producer of NBC's Sunday Night Football, put it: "This provides the canvas to really rethink everything you’ve ever done."

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