ESPN doesn't have money to send their broadcasters to Euro 2008?

If you watch Formula One Racing on Speed (or Fox), it seems as if they do the same thing.

I believe television feeds of each individual F1 race is recorded and controlled by regional broadcasters at each race. So, nearly every race has different TV production companies.

The announcers are often confused about "live" and "replay" video feeds, though they seem to have some access to radio (or other) communications of officials and teams.

Is this the same for ESPN's futball coverage?

The power failures were in Vienna, Austria, where the television centre for the tournament is, not in Basle, Switzerland, where the game was actually played.

The Fan Fest in Vienna was evacuated because of the lightning strikes and those unlucky fans never got to see any of the goals after it was 1-1 unless they found a bar.

Here in England, the BBC switched to the Radio 5 broadcast when the pictures went out.

And as for ESPN, I feel sorry for football fans in America...

I thought it was obvious from the beginning that the commentators weren't there. But you're right, King, it wouldn't have killed anyone to admit that this was the case.

Where they went amiss IMHO was in not thinking to have arranged for an alternate feed just in case - for instance, the BBC switched to the Radio Five Live feed so that viewers who weren't near a radio could still hear what was going on. Or so the Guardian writer live-blogging the game wrote; someone wrote into him from Singapore saying that coverage there switched to several local commentators talking to someone at the game via mobile phone.

They could've at least done something similar to what Reagan was said to have done as a radio sports broadcaster. The story goes that he would be announcing games which he was following by teletype. When the teletype was delayed or failing, he would simply make up action on the air where nothing important really happened, and once the feed began again, he'd catch the listeners up.

Making up sections where nothing important really happens should be easy in soccer/football.

that was supposed to be "ol' Ronnie Reagan" in that last post title.

I don't think ESPN should be ashamed of doing the same thing. I can't imagine Euro ratings and ad revenue would justify sending people to Europe. I'm not surprised ESPN's crew isn't at the match, I'm surpised they are providing so much coverage of the tournament at all.

To answer another poster's semi-question: Yes, Speed's F1 broadcasts are done from a studio in the US. With Peter Windsor being at the track, I don't think they miss much by watching it on TV in conjunction with timing/scoring screens as opposed to being at the track watching it on TV in conjunction with timing/scoring screens.

The German broadcast apparently went on by tapping into the local Swiss one, which was unaffected. I understand that these things are complicated and it was way more important to the Germans than ESPN, but the game is still going on. Instead of pointing the camera at the fans in the fan zone, couldn't they have pointed it at the TV the #$$@#%^@!# fans were watching!!!!

However, what's done is done. But if they don't rebroadcast the game (ESPN often does a replay in the middle of the night) in its entirety, with the missing portions put back in, then the four-letter truly doesn't give a crap about their fans.

3-2

3 goals in the last 5 minutes

Wow

What a SHAME that ESPN did not cover it honestly.

If ESPN cannot afford to send a crew to Europe to cover Euro2008, they shouldn't bother broadcasting it.

The cost of Flights to Europe is on a vastly different scale than the advertising revenue involved.

I think it's fairly common for soccer announcers to do the color commentary from the video feed. That way one set of announcers can do a game from England in the morning and one from Brazil in the afternoon. But really, given that this was Euro2008, the second most important tournament, I would have thought that ESPN could have sent somebody to actually be at the game.

maybe not on the game but before the tournament started it was known that they were not transmitting from austria.

Whatever the content of your article, could you at least do the honor of getting the spelling of the final winning goal scorer? It is not Lamm, it is Lahm, which was clearly emblazoned on his jersey, ever after the ESPN reception resumed.

Sheesh.

I can't remember the last time I saw a soccer game where the announcers were actually in the stadium, other than domestic MLS games and World Cup qualifiers.

I think it's standard practice, sounds like even the BBC was doing it that way. Maybe they don't have a choice. As far as the radio guys, I bet they weren't viewing the actual action. They're usually in a cubicle somewhere in or around the stadium watching the game on a monitor. Is there really room for two dozen sets of announcers, cameras etc? I doubt it.

Pretty much all of the other games from all over the world are done by guys in studios somewhere. Watch Fox Soccer Channel or GolTV I'm pretty sure I've heard the same guy calling 2 games back-to-back from different hemispheres.

You may notice that when games have been on, for example, ABC and Univision at the same time that they had the exact same video feed, same on-screen graphics, etc. This seems to be common practice in the rest of the world. Get a feed with video and ambient audio, and have local announcers do their thing.

I don't think ESPN or any of the others try to hide it; when the guy who broadcast the game joins their set 5 minutes later, it's pretty obvious he didn't just fly from Switzerland to Connecticut in 5 minutes. I always thought of it as common knowledge. Same with the F1 broadcasts, they openly admit when the picture freezes that they don't know what's going on, and that they are checking the Formula 1 website for timing and scoring information.