I love the San Francisco Giants. I just love baseball in general, but I’m a big Giants fan. I’m the kind of fan who watches some/most/all of the TV coverage for pretty much all 162 games. I’m the kind of fan who watches the pre-game and post-game coverage. It’s great pre/post coverage especially when the A-Team of Greg Poppa, Bill Laskey and Vida Blue is assembled. That trio has great chemistry.
I love Willie Mays as much as the next 50+ year old, but I loathe CSN Bay Area’s “Say Hey Tuesdays” when they do the pre/post game coverage for Giants Tuesday night home games from a live shoot at 24 Willie Mays Plaza and encourage people to yell and scream behind the telecast. Yep, they even give fans signs to hold up (see picture above).
For the home viewer, it’s horrible, awful, terrible, bad TV. It’s unwatchable. On “Say Hey Tuesdays” I bail out on the pre/post coverage.
I know CSN Bay Area didn’t invent the live remote telecast. Morning news shows do it. ESPN does it. Lots of local cable sports channels like CSN Bay Area do it. But I don’t watch morning news/talk shows and the when national outlets like ESPN do it, it’s always for stuff I really didn’t care about watching anyway.
But the question is, for whom are these telecasts intended?
It can’t be to demonstrate what a great scene ballpark is. The regular game telecast, you know, the thing lots of people actually watch, does a fantastic job in that respect.
Is it an attempt to lure in the casual fan? Perhaps, and annoying as it is, I might buy that for a mid-to-late September game in a pennant race. But in June? In June, you don’t need the local Nielsen data to know that casual fans aren’t watching the pre/post game coverage.
To the eye, it looks like they are more concerned with making 50-200 people at the ballpark happy (don’t get me wrong, I think those folks yelling and screaming and holding up the signs are having a good time!) than the people who want to watch the pre/post game analysis.
More likely it’s just that there is a “live shoots” checkbox that the folks behind the production, unfortunately for me, feel obligated to check off.
I was actually rather fond of when Speed Channel used to do this for their Trackside, NASCAR RaceDay and NASCAR Victory Lane broadcasts (the last Trackside was beamed out on the last day of Speed, and FS1 has mostly moved RaceDay and VL into the studio they use for Race Hub and NASCAR Live). I actually thought that was a great way to show the fanbase enjoying the events in a way that I don’t actually think the actual event broadcasts (or at least, in the motorsports realm) are capable or even willing to do.
not a NASCAR fan so can’t comment on the relative distraction from coverage those telecasts presented, so not sure whether my tolerance is just lower than yours.
The local baseball telecasts give a lot of coverage to fans in the stands and inside the park enjoying themselves. As someone who used to attend 30 games/yr at AT&T Park, I think they nail down the fan experience pretty well.