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Running a board during a sports game

T

tlyle

As a board operator during sports games (baseball, football, and now basketball), what have you done to pass the time? Have you missed any breaks/spots because you got busy doing something else? I am sure some of you have gotten real bored running a board during a sports game.

Also, what are some of the mishaps that have occurred during a game.
 
Worked at a Christian AM radio station in metro Atlanata carrying the Clemson Tiger Football games. The feed from Clemson was suppose to send a pre-tone signal before alcohol commercials ran where I was suppose to pot down the beer commercial after the tone and run a local spot. On two football broadcasts, no tone was sent. I had to really to listen and quickly pot down and run the local spot. I missed a few of the ques. I could not wait or do something else.

These days a lot of it is automated.
 
Likewise, I worked at a Christian AM with similar restrictions, but there was no tone before any of the spots.
We also had to play other spots over the alcohol ads..this was for Alabama Crimson Tide football.

The station was in a single-wide ancient trailer..with the control room in the back. I remember a few
really FAST trips down the hallway to hit the nreak after going to pick up the mail..answer the door and such.

It was a small operation and generally there was only one person at the station at any given time, even during the weekdays.
 
Can someone answer this question for me? Are there such things as clean feeds of syndicated show's in the US? It seems to me that there isn't. Quite a few time I have heard some stuff that originates out of one station, and when they go to a break, if the board op isn't on the ball you get a promo for the station where the feed is from going, to air in a different market.
 
Plenty of trips from the john to the control room.

I've also rewired plenty of equipment like CD players while working the board.

As far as "Clean feeds", it varies by provider. Learfield, which provides radio coverage for most of the Big Ten schools, fills local breaks with bonus spots to the network advertisers and a few ads local to the college town.
 
No major screw ups but I've really come to hate organ music.
 
clean feeds...Westwood one sends PSAs to fill local breaks, but alot of the baseball I've delt with (Yankees, Red Sox) go silent and ESPN Radio usually feeds promos. The 2 racing networks (MRN and PRN) both go silent during local breaks

as a board op...anytime I heard the word "timeout" or something close to a handoff to a break (mostly during local games, because you never knew what the exact outque was going to be) would send me running from the production studio to on air
 
tlyle said:
As a board operator during sports games (baseball, football, and now basketball), what have you done to pass the time? Have you missed any breaks/spots because you got busy doing something else? I am sure some of you have gotten real bored running a board during a sports game.
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Bored? You might say so...not much of a sports fan.

Boston Bruins hockey (back in the 80s when they were on the Campbell Sports Network) were a pain. The breaks alternated between local & network with the same outcue for both. They just sent a board-feed of their flagship, so if you lost track of which break was yours there was no real easy way to get back on track (ie-no network "fill" PSAs or dead air). It was often difficult to hear a break coming...the PBP announcers would seemingly go into the break outcue in mid-sentence.

Boston Red Sox were much easier...aside from pitching changes (which were all local except for the first one), the local breaks were at the top of the inning & the network ones at the bottom. They also fed dead air during local breaks. I'd sometimes get lazy & just leave the network pot up on the board until one time one of the announcers, not realizing his mic was live said "awww f'k it". Started potting down the network during local breaks after that. :-\

Also, what are some of the mishaps that have occurred during a game.
Click to expand...

These days with most if not all sporting events automatable mishaps are generally the network board-op not sending the proper tone/closure. Westwood 1 has a nasty habit of forgetting to send the "end of game" tone, causing stations to air "CBS Network channel 42" all night until someone from the station notices. The last station I worked at that carried sports had the engineer wire up a silence sense that would trigger an "end of game" after so many minutes of dead air.
 
I used to board-op games fed from a smaller D-I college network over ISDN. Occasionally they would screw up the break order but there were only a couple stations so the network board op would usually call and let me know which break was coming up. I was doing that on weekends while getting my bachelor's degree, so I would bring lots of homework to work on while the game was on.
 
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