Ask Me Anything: I work at the Worldwide Leader

[BallFour]

One of the universal things in all sports is that whoever is broadcasting your game (aside from your home team announcers) is godawful, biased, and has an absolute trash production. Doesn't matter if it's baseball, football, hockey, or the Masters tournament. It's the reason why sites like Awful Announcing do such good business.

 

I've been a member of this site for a little over 10 years now. I've also been an employee at ESPN for nearly 12 years. My job involves making sure that the integrity of the broadcast is secure (for example, making sure you're seeing the game you're supposed to see, not black on the air or a completely different show - yes that's happened before). My job duties are two-fold: the aforementioned quality control, and also as a liaison between my department and the folks at the stadium. My job is to count them back from our commercial breaks so they know when to start talking again, and to adjust things on the fly. If their satellite feed suddenly goes down, it's on me to find an alternative.

 

All of this to say, I know that there a lot of questions about the business, about the broadcasts, and about the biases. There are certain things that I cannot share due to information security policies, but I wanted to give an opportunity to answer any questions you may have... because yes, Joe Buck is legitimately a good guy.

[Yankee4Life]

The first question I would like to know is what questions or areas should we avoid asking you because of those information security policies?

[Jim825]

Did Chris Berman come up with a nickname for you? 

[Yankee4Life]

4 hours ago, Jim825 said:

Did Chris Berman come up with a nickname for you? 

 

Hahaha!!! You are funny Jim. 😄

[BallFour]

7 hours ago, Yankee4Life said:

The first question I would like to know is what questions or areas should we avoid asking you because of those information security policies?

 

I can't answer anything regarding potential mergers or deals or anything that isn't public knowledge. Anything regarding media rights and negotiations and things like that. Those things are way below my paygrade anyway.

 

6 hours ago, Jim825 said:

Did Chris Berman come up with a nickname for you? 

 

Saw him out walking toward the parking lot once and he said, "Hey Chief." I'll take it. Saw him again a few weeks ago and didn't say anything, but he's doing alright for a 70 year old. Age catches up to us all, but he's still Boomer.

[Kccitystar]

12 years is a long time brother! I'll throw something in your wheelhouse you can probably answer: 
 

As a fan of MLB like the rest of us, you've probably been fully aware of the pacing of MLB games changing dramatically on the field, with the pitch clock, disengagement limits, and other rule changes within your time at "The Worldwide Leader".  At the same time, stadiums are filling more of the ‘dead ball’ gaps with noise and entertainment to keep fans engaged. So, from a broadcast standpoint, how have those two forces changed how you and your team approach pacing a TV broadcast? Are you finding less flexibility for commercial breaks, storytelling, or graphic packages compared to before?

How does this compare to other sports if you cover those as well?

[BallFour]

Awesome questions!

 

• So when it comes to between innings entertainment, we don't really cover any of that, as you know. But the pitch clock (and yes, the ghost runner in extras) have been absolute gifts for the broadcasts. In 2025, ESPN has the *domestic* (USA) rights to Sunday Night Baseball and the Wild Card Series, along with the Home Run Derby. The Derby always goes over time, so that's just expected. But now instead of 5 hour regular season games, we're regularly seeing 3-3.5 hour games. Keeps fans more engaged, they don't have to leave the stadium as late or stay up as late watching the game.

 

• We also have international rights to show games to the Australia/New Zealand and Caribbean island markets. So we'll routinely have games from YES, SNY, Bally Sports, what have you... just airing on our networks. We'll have our own ESPN logo on there too, but the scoreboard will be the YES scoreboard or whatever. So during baseball season, it's absolutely huge that we can complete our window on time. ESPN has also evolved and knows that people have their favorite players as well as teams, so the Mic'd Up segment is something that was pushed hard. Wasn't really a fan of it, but if it drives engagement, why not?

 

• As for commercial breaks, which is where my job centers, baseball does indeed now cut into the time to tell stories. Each game has a certain amount of promos. Those are the commercials you see advertising the NHL on ESPN or the WNBA Finals on ABC or Chad Powers on Hulu. Those can be dropped at no charge, because it's just us taking away from one product to give back to the current live product. So we'll typically lose all that promo time right off the bat to allow more time to tell stories and things like that.

 

• Fun fact - we don't control the clock in MLB. That differs from every other sport we cover. In football we have a "red hat" and in basketball we have something similar where someone goes out onto the field/court and will physically stand there so that the refs won't start the game early. MLB doesn't have that, so if umpires decide "eff it, we're going to start now" and ESPN is still in break? We either dump out of break or miss the first pitch of the half inning.

 

• Another way MLB differs is in an obvious way. Baseball always has very set zones of where we look for commercial breaks. Every 3 outs, and on pitching changes (though it's optional to stay during pitching changes after we get our 2 pitching change breaks in). With football, it's after a score, a turnover, an injury, or a review. In basketball, it's in certain break zones on the clock (I can get into those more in depth for those interested). Same thing in hockey.

 

And this is just for MLB. We also broadcast a few Banana Ball games throughout the year, and that's a whole different (Party) Animal. Hopefully this answers your questions!

 

[Yankee4Life]

What an informative thread!

[Yankee4Life]

Have you met any famous athletes?

[BallFour]

1 hour ago, Yankee4Life said:

Have you met any famous athletes?

Several! Not sure if you're counting our current on-air folks, but I've met Ozzie Guillen, Eduardo Perez, Doug Glanville, Herm Edwards, Tedy Bruschi, PK Subban, Mark Messier, and Kevin Weekes. I also got to meet CM Punk when he was visiting Bristol to plug one of the WWE shows. The fun thing is that everyone is just there for a reason and doing their job. It's cool to see them, but we're instructed not to bother the talent or be unprofessional. So it's mostly just small talk in the hallways.

[marty65]

This is so great to read and it really is cool to get an inside “look” at how broadcasts happen. Thanks heaps mate 

oh remember “BOB JAAANE T- MAAAAAARTS”. 😀

do you get to hear all of our ads etc when you’re broadcasting to Australia 

 

[BallFour]

2 hours ago, marty65 said:

This is so great to read and it really is cool to get an inside “look” at how broadcasts happen. Thanks heaps mate 

oh remember “BOB JAAANE T- MAAAAAARTS”. 😀

do you get to hear all of our ads etc when you’re broadcasting to Australia 

 

 

I do get to broadcast all your ads. SO MANY SPORTS BETTING ADS. And the ones with Shaq are especially goofy. But we actually have a mandate where you can only air sports betting ads in natural breaks in the action. So that means no betting ads in pitching change breaks or in the middle of a football game. Also, a ton of Macca's and Hungry Jack's.

[marty65]

It’s funny, we were watching the Aussie Rules Grand Final last week and my wife commented that in one ad break there was a junk food ad, a beer ad and a sports betting ad. 
I said “yeah cause when blokes are watching the footy (football, we abbreviate everything lol) we like a beer a feed and a bet”