NBC experimenting with more use of SkyCam during broadcasts
Are you a fan of the SkyCam angle for football telecasts? Let’s hope so, because you’re about to see more of it — at least on NBC.
NBC announced on Thursday that it will be utilizing the SkyCam as its primary angle for the Week 11 “Thursday Night Football” game between the Tennessee Titans and Pittsburgh Steelers. As part of the announcement, the announcing team of Mike Tirico and Cris Collinsworth repeated the news during Thursday’s Seattle Seahawks-Arizona Cardinals game, during which the SkyCam view was utilized.
The genesis for the change was what happened during “Sunday Night Football” between the Patriots and Falcons game two weeks ago. Due to the foggy conditions, NBC had to utilize the SkyCam view in order for viewers to have a clearer picture of the game.
“A lot of people reacted very positively to that,” analyst Cris Collinsworth said while calling the Seahawks-Cardinals game. “They liked the idea; sort of like the ‘Madden’ game. You’re kind of behind it and you see all of the routes develop. You see a great view of the running game. So we’ll give you a little taste of it tonight, and then next week we’ll give you a bigger taste of it.”
“We are excited to present a game with the majority of live-action coverage coming from SkyCam,” NBC said in a statement Thursday. “After pivoting out of necessity to SkyCam in the New England fog, we’ve been aggressively planning and testing with the intent of utilizing the system for a full game. Younger generations of NFL fans have grown accustomed to watching football from this angle through their love of video games. This telecast will have a look and feel akin to that experience.”
NBC believes that many fans are used to watching the game from that angle because of their experience playing the “Madden” video games.
I didn’t mind the SkyCam view but felt it wasn’t as good for a main view as the standard camera view. The SkyCam view was so low that the angle cut off the wide receivers, making it difficult to see everything that was happening. The other downside was it became tougher to see distance and depth. As an alternate view on replays, it’s great because you can see what the quarterback sees and also have a better understanding of line play, which is tougher to see from the sidelines.