The Sport Thread

[madmusician]

I guess it's a cost thing - while it's fairly trivial to get a second graphics channel to generate the same score graphics in a different style - but you might want an extra graphics op to keep an eye on it. Then someone's then got to pay for another vision circuit out of the ground. It's not going to be a massive amount of money compared to using the world feed (a couple of grand per game maybe) but it adds up, and we all know how tight money is at the beeb.

Presumably, it’s not just the graphics, also. As I mentioned above, the edit for the test highlights (as Sunset and Vine used to do for all the Cricket on Five programmes too) relies upon the use of Sky ISOs, dedicated cameras recording for the BBC highlights, along side a clean world feed. That’s why the ‘narrative’ is so strong in these highlights packages - as the perfect shots can be sought and edited in to ‘tell the story’ of the day, and not just chop the world feed around.

…and just editing down the (dirty) world feed is exactly what they are doing for the white ball highlights. I totally understand why it has been seen as a reasonable cost saving by the BBC, but it’s still a bit of a downgrade on what we used to get. Not just because of the graphics, but because the whole narrative of the edit is lost a bit, and it also looks like it’s ‘second hand’ coverage, as if the BBC are just recording the Sky programme and showing us the best bits! (Although that perception has dimmed a bit now that they are using BBC commentary, not Sky commentary)

Incidentally, I’m pretty sure that the earlier Cricket on Five programmes (made by S&V) put the graphics on at a later stage of the edit, given the way that the score box would animate on and off, rather than them being present throughout. (I.e. the pictures would be cut and then the relevant graphics would be added into each ball/each shot) This did change in 2018, when we saw a slight refresh of some of the production techniques on Cricket on Five, and we gained an always-on score bar (just like we now see on live coverage) that was constantly updated and was clearly on screen at all times, rather than being generated within the edit. And the BBC/Whisper have continued with that model for their highlights.

Feel free to correct any of this if it seems wrong, by the way, I’m not a TV professional, just somebody who takes a bit too much interest in sports tv production!