The concept of a camp media excursion is simple: go, interview, enlighten your audience.
It doesn’t look that way in a pandemic.
So, SiriusXM NFL radio is adapting. Instead of sitting next to Tom Brady in Tampa or Jon Gruden in Las Vegas, everything is done remotely. For more than a dozen hosts, a handful of manufacturers and a lot of technicians in charge of making sure the programming is broadcast, the purpose is to delve into the 32 groups without setting foot on the franchise floor.
And while that’s not exactly what NFL clubs are doing to prepare for a season of uncertainty, it’s a major task.
Then why do it?
“I see it as a challenge, it sets you on fire,” says Nick Pavlatos, senior director of programming at SiriusXM. “I don’t forget that when we had the lockout in 2011, I had a week or two to plan an educational camp tour. We were talking about doing only part of it. I said, “No, our listeners are waiting for the 32.”
“I never thought we weren’t going to do it this year.”
It’s also more than a challenge, says Steve Cohen, Senior Vice President of Sports Programming at SiriusXM.
“Whether we’re going to do camp shows, there’s still a lot of things we can communicate with the player and coaches, and ask the right questions,” Cohen says, “and get the team data and convey that wisdom. Base. So it’s very vital to know firsthand what’s going on with teams, there’s so much to cover, and this year even more, our scale in the field is invalu to make this season preparation.
SiriusXM usually runs all over the map to places as rural as Latrobe, Pennsylvania and as cosmopolitan as Houston. Former NFL executive Pat Kirwan, who has organized camp tours since they started in 2005, fondly recalls (more or less) the days of airplanes, trains, and cars. More rewarding was the loot of being in those camps.
There is no replacement for face-to-face communications.
“The team is very confident in the good fortune of a camping tour,” says Kirwan, who works with former NFL quarterback Jim Miller on the station’s flagship program, “Movin’ The Chains.”
“Over time, I have been able to earn the coaches’ acceptance that when I see them and tell them something about what I have an opinion about, they know that it will not be shared with other groups and will not be reduced to the point of giving. internal information. They accept as true with Jim and me. Even Coach Belichick makes sure we have the most productive pole in town to watch the workouts. He’ll sit with us, and if we keep asking questions about football, he’ll answer them.
This is worth interest.
The same thing happened with former field marshal Bill Belichick for 20 minutes on the Buccaneers’ excursion program. No, Kirwan and Miller weren’t sitting next to six-time Super Bowl winner. In fact, no one from SiriusXM was in the Bucs camp, but thanks to the paintings of Doug Mortman’s technical staff, vice president of programming operations, all the mandatory devices were there. As well as all the other stops in the camp.
In some respects, that is the biggest obstacle to overcome.
“We send them a high-quality microphone to connect it to the computer, and it will sound much better,” Pavlatos says. “We also provide a microscopeta, a long microphone that can be further away and still capture audio. It is for reasons of physical fitness; we don’t want visitors to share a microphone that’s near them. They don’t want to connect near the microphone now.
“We also send 10 to 15 individual headphones for players to stay or pull when they’re done. These are considerations that we have an idea about because these groups are doing everything they can to help us. Therefore, we must make it as simple as imaginable for them”.
To get things done with Brady, Miller is his former replacement in New England, and Kirwan has done many systems with Brady, adding once in an eight-hour car show.
“With Brady, I raised the factor not so much with X and The Bones, but a more general question because we know Tom is relentless on this issue,” Miller says. “Now it’s much more about getting to know your teammates. And in limited training. Tom knows it probably won’t be fair all the time. He had already released 4 selections, an option 6, in training, and that annoys M.
“Practices are 20% complete and you recover them.”
One day, camp visits will return for all broadcasters and writers. Maybe completely in the same way, but in user and in depth.
Although they believe that the existing format has worked well and that data has circulated between listeners, Kirwan and Miller are eager to be in Latrobe or Las Vegas.
“A lot of coaches like it when Jimmy and I arrived, and they left us in the box literally in the middle of the exercises,” Kirwan says. “They need us there and they even ask us what we think about what we’re doing.”
Yes, even Belichick.
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