That the ADG sent nobody to Columbia? I didn’t sit far from the media section, went by there immediately after the final buzzer to see if Bob or Tom were there, and didn’t see anyone I recognized. In fact the media section was largely empty.
If so, it seems I was ahead of my time. I was covering road games off radio/TV for the Fort Smith paper in 1979, getting quotes from the postgame radio show. No Zoom then, but I managed. Now that seems to be SOP. Back then, it was just being cheap and pretending you were staffing the game instead of depending on AP.
Lots of major news outlets have stopped traveling with the teams they cover. Too expensive to justify. And I’ve known more than one sports columnist who “covered” games from their living room.
I have no evidence to support this position, only my gut, but I think the first sign of the apocalypse was the proliferation of Zoom.
I would love to hear what Matt and Scottie think about this. Personally, I hate watching Zoom pressers…you can almost never hear the questions.
And, as far as announcers calling games remotely, well, don’t get me started. It just seems lazy and extremely unprofessional. As I said in a different post, different times, and in this case different ain’t better.
At least it ain’t to me.
Bob has been at multiple road games this year, but did not make the trip to this one. We had a photographer at the game.
We are fortunate that our company allows us to travel when we feel it is necessary. I spent 20 nights on the road in June with the baseball team. I’ll be in Arlington for a few nights in a couple of weeks. We had multiple reporters and a photographer at every football game and have had reporters at multiple basketball games away this year.
To me, Zoom has changed coverage in good and bad ways. For example, basketball road games when I started this job, I got quotes for my story postgame only from radio. Bob, and sometimes Tom, would get exclusive stuff because they followed the team pre-covid. I think road game coverage is generally better now because Zoom has allowed us to hold postgame press conferences. Zoom also gives us a way to record podcasts pretty easily. Used to go in to the office for that. It’s a time saver.
One thing I don’t like about Zoom is that it’s so convenient that we don’t get a ton of in-person interaction with the people we’re covering. I loved having scrums with Eric and some players ahead of a game. You can get a lot of unique content just standing next to someone and having a conversation with them.
I hate it. Anytime I hear “Zoom”, I zoom away. There is no way you can do as good a job covering a game or event from your living room as when you are there with the team. You get a much better feel for everything. In my world, I want to see my clients/customers face to face. Get to know them and their wives and kids. You do much better selling yourself than selling a product. Just this coming week, I fly to HOU and drive to College Station, then drive to Layfayette, LA, back to HOU Tue Night and fly to RDU and call on a new client and fly back to DEN Wed night, Why do all of that when I could zoom them in my PJs? Simple. I want to know them better and for them to know me and trust me. I bet I get the business. Probably would not on a computer.
We use Zoom for office meetings that cover people from Boston to Tampa to Chicago to Wilmington to Nashville, and that’s just the ones that I know where they live. And we have multiple meetings per week. If they were going to get us all in one place, I don’t know where it would be. HQ is on one floor of a Boston highrise but there’s not enough space there for all of us. I don’t even think the CEO goes into the office in Boston.
But there’s another thing. This past week, I was assigned to cover five different sites in two different Northeastern states for four days for one of our studies (none yesterday, which is how I could go to the Coop, but back at it today). No patients were scheduled to come in last week, but there was always the possibility of unexpected side effects, and there were actually two side effects reported at my five sites. So I dealt with them remotely. If they’d flown me to the Northeast last week, which one of those five sites would I have visited? No idea. Probably not the two where I was eventually needed.
Funny. Some people won’t do business over Zoom because it isn’t personal. Others don’t want to do business in person because it is personal.
I will say this…the younger generations we deal with would much rather we give them a 15-minute Zoom call as opposed to a 15-minute in person visit. It’s usually much easier for both parties to find a common opening in their schedules for that.
I get Zoom for what you do, Jeff, but for sports…not so much.
I think Scottie touched on it. There is just so much more information that can be gleaned in a face to face setting.
I know there is no way I could sell cars over Zoom, nor would I want to try. I am with Jim on this. I have made my living over the years due to the relationships I have built with people in person.
And as far as the dudes (or ladies) broadcasting games remotely from their home offices, well, I see no excuse for that. It is both lazy and unprofessional, or at least it is to me. Part of describing a game should come from describing the atmosphere around it. Anything less is just phoning it in…literally.
Yep, but the beancounters see that you can still have a broadcast without airfare and hotels and everything else that goes on an expense account. I’m surprised that we don’t have more remote announcing, actually.
Here lately it feels like we should rename the board to “Get off my lawn” the way a lot of you gripe about anything that isn’t the same as it was X amount of time ago.
I know you are a teacher. Would you not agree that remote learning was an unmitigated disaster during covid? So many kids that are still behind and having to deal with the depression that still lingers due to isolation. Technology will never replace the human touch, at least not to me.
Now, get off my lawn.
