Bold new take on Monday Night Football on Sky Sports
One day, evolutionary biologists will get tired of fossils and turn their attention to important things: football broadcasts. A moment from 2013 will be a great leap as Jamie Carragher jumps to his feet and walks off the Monday Night Football table.
Carragher made his MNF debut and enthusiastically demonstrated the complexity of Robin van Persie's markings. It changed what was possible for football pundits, ushering in a new era of more vigorous analysis. For too long, experts have been hiding behind their desks, as far as we know, matching their jackets and ties with swimming trunks.
This move to physicality has affected Sky Sports' revamped studio for Monday Night Football, which will be used for the first time for Manchester United against «Volkov». Anyone who has been to a TV studio will tell you the same thing, they are surprisingly small. During my visit, the MNF set seemed spacious, so it will probably look huge on screen. The camera adds 10 giant iPads.
Host David Jones, Carragher, Gary Neville and Karen Carney will be surrounded on all sides by LED screens. Some magical visuals will add a stadium-like roof to the top of the frame, promising more color, increased understanding, and enveloping the viewer in the staging.
It was the program in which Ron Atkinson lost his rag with Messrs. Keys and Gray saying, «You can play with your stupid machines all you want.» The machines may have lost this battle, but they won the war in the end. The central part is now occupied by a huge screen built into the floor. This can be used to display formations and allows experts to move players as well as physically place themselves in the pieces and events they are discussing.
«We were driven by what Carragher and Neville wanted»
Five days before the first show, the production staff is armed with a tape measure, checking the distances around the tactical dance floor. I carefully step on her because walking across the screen still feels like dangerous magic. I have nothing to worry about, says Ben Wickham, Sky's director of creative design, it's made for everything from high heels to a car. «We're not going to dance this week,» he says. «But it has a fun vibe to it, and that's how it should feel.»
The familiar giant touch screen Sky Virtual View has a stunning new app that lets you view replays from any player's point of view. Wickham shows how Newcastle underperform Martin Audergaard from Nick Pope's point of view, and the picture changes according to Pope's head movements. At the decisive moment, the goalkeeper was not in sight, and now this can be said with certainty, and not on the basis of guesswork.
This raises only a logical question: Why? At what point do technological advances cease to bring pleasure to the viewer? Wickham makes a compelling case that Sky's new technology, flexibility and scalability will bring to life the avalanche of data generated by every Premier League game. Carney, Carragher and Neville were involved in everything. «They grew into this studio and we wanted to be driven by what they wanted.»
Carragher and Neville will be at the center more exciting set
Gary Hughes, director of football at Sky, believes that now all the shackles have been removed. “We have the best experts in the game, and we want to give them the opportunity to work in probably the best studio in the country and possibly in Europe.
“This gives them the opportunity to showcase their talents as experts and improve themselves as they would like to improve as players. They sat there with touch screens, stuck at the table for the last 10 years. Now they have the ability to move, be more dynamic and create more fun and entertainment.”
Basically, it will still look like Monday Night Football. The branding remains, a moody blue color palette, as does the theme song, «Absurd» by Fluke, unchanged since 1997. Hughes seems slightly taken aback when I suggest that some viewers probably won't even notice the studio change. “I would be surprised if people didn't tune in on Monday and notice that this was a new set because of the size, scale and new elements in it.”
“TNT Sports? It doesn't bother me.
One big change from Carragher's debut 10 years ago is in the clothing. It was astonishing on the last day of last season, traditionally Sunday's best event, there was no tie among the members of the Sky group at Goodison Park. «Comfortable smart» is a phrase that Wickham finds, although there are no official guidelines for experts on what to wear. “These people are on screen because we want them to be themselves. I think the way they dress is an important part of their personality. Therefore, according to certain rules, we want them to appear on their own.”
We meet a few days before the first Premier League game on TNT Sport, the successor to BT. Will Hughes and Wickham watch with interest? «I'll be in the Soccer Saturday studio,» Hughes says. «This will definitely be my priority on Saturday morning.»
«We love competition,» says Wickham. “We have the best rights, the best studios, the best experts and the best talent. I will watch them, I would be interested to see what they do. But I'm absolutely not worried about it in any way.»
You can bet that all of Sky's rivals will be watching on Monday night.
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