Yesterday when I saw this diary on the recommended list with over 550 comments at that time, I was shocked and dismayed at the level of accusations assuming a subsidiary of the parent company Disney would do such a thing.
Why...... Because a very close friend was there in NOLA working the game, a friend that I have known for 11 years and through him have learned about the sports television industry. I immediately called him yesterday and caught him on a layover stop on his flight home. I am going to include his responses to the above diary and because ESPN and the sports industry strict attempt to remain neutral in politics be aware he is NOT an ESPN employee but a freelancer (as are most who work in the mobile TV industry).
Elsewhere on this site is a diary with more than 600 responses slagging ESPN for manipulating the applause audio when George 41 made the coin toss at the Monday Night Football Game in New Orleans. The gist of the diary was that ESPN is a conservative mouthpiece (after all they are part of the media empire owned by right wing giant Disney) and that ESPN manipulates their shows to achieve a right wing spin. Given the current nature of media consolidation and the dirty tricks espoused by the Republicans in this country, I understand why someone would see conspiracies everywhere, but these charges against ESPN simply aren't true.
I am a free-lance television engineer with more than 25 years of experience in the industry. I am independent, progressive, and an activist for left wing causes. I also work on Monday Night Football in a technical management capability. I am aware of all portions of the MNF transmission chain from the microphone to the consumer's surround sound system. If someone wanted to manipulate our audio, they would have to come to us in the technical department to set up the equipment to do it. That didn't happen. In fact, we were way too busy just trying to get from the pre-game U-2/Green Day music segment, which had a different director and a different equipment configuration, to the game configuration, to even think of enhancing the applause for HW, even if we had wanted to. (And by the way, how does an opening segment featuring "leftist" bands U-2 and Green Day fit into your "conservative bias" scenario?)
Over the years I have worked for all the national television companies (including an interesting experience with Fox News at the 1996 Republican Convention), and certainly there is plenty of manipulation of the television image to get you to buy things or ideas. Since the radio days, entertainment shows have enhanced applause and laughter audio to make their shows seem funnier or more entertaining than they actually are. Modern television news has clearly been co-opted by right wing politics. Even PBS stations play back a recorded track of phones ringing during pledge breaks to inspire you to join the crowd and call in too.
But television sports is a different animal. The media does not run sporting events. The media pays the sports leagues to allow them to cover the events. The National Football League runs Monday Night Football, not ESPN, or ABC before them.
Sports leagues are obsessive about maintaining the appearance of non-bias. They may be the only mainstream organizations in America that still are. The sports leagues believe that if there is even a hint of bias or manipulation it will ruin their product, and they will go to apparently absurd lengths to maintain their squeaky clean image. Witness Pete Rose, inarguably one of the best and most popular players in baseball history, with a long and productive career, being banned from the sport "forever," simply for gambling on it. Think of the extreme extents the NCAA goes to, to try to prevent any hint of drug use among athletes.
The National Football League is not going to allow even the faintest whiff of impropriety during their most important weekly game, especially just to support a retired politician.
ESPN did not manipulate the crowd audio for HW.
I was working elsewhere in the compound at the time, and didn't hear the telecast audio, but the noise inside the Superdome was non-stop and tremendous for virtually the entire game. I've never heard anything quite like it, the sound of a community's heart just pouring out after coming back from nearly complete destruction. It gives me goose bumps and brings tears to my eyes even now as I think back on it. What you may have heard as overdubbed polite applause may have been the unusual pause in the continual noise that came when HW made the coin toss. All night our audio guys had a tough time keeping the crowd noise down so the announcers could be heard.
All of that said, we DID technically manipulate the show in an unusual way on Monday. Many live television events are run with a five or seven second delay so that anything nasty such as the seven deadly words or Janet Jackson's breast can be bleeped out before American society can be forever corrupted by exposure to them.
However, ALL sports leagues, including the National Football League, are fanatical about games being aired strictly in real time. They don't want any hint of impropriety that someone might be able to use the delay to manipulate a game's outcome somehow. In the past, ESPN has never used delays. What the viewer saw on ESPN was always strictly live as it happened, warts and all. But thanks to the new $500,000 per incident fines being levied by the FCC, ESPN has had to build a delay system. While the game was strictly real time, the pre-game festivities had to be delayed (in case we saw Bono's breast???). It was quite tricky to go from non-delay to delay, then back again seamlessly.
And now a word about ESPN's politics. I don't know what they are. In fact, I think the network doesn't HAVE any politics. Yes, they hired Rush Limbaugh, but only because of how popular he was. Notice that when he got too controversial, he was fired. Notice too, that Bill Walton is a stalwart on ESPN's NBA coverage and he can't help making left wing political statements in his commentaries. I think ESPN takes the pragmatic approach that they want all the viewers they can get, and that by taking any political position at all, they will alienate some viewers, so they don't take a position, except to be as entertaining as possible. Theoretically sports crosses all political lines. You don't have to be left or right to celebrate the New Orleans Saints finally coming home after being on the road for two years.
In the current political/corporate climate, it's easy to find boogie men under every bed, but let's spend our energy fighting the real evil and not chasing imaginary ghosts, like the mystery people supposedly enhancing the audio at ESPN. It makes us look like paranoid fools. Our time is much better spent fighting the evil politicians that allowed the levees to break and who still, more than a year afterwards, haven't managed to clean up even the left-over garbage and debris from the storm, much less rebuild the poor neighborhoods in New Orleans.
(Emphasis is mine)
As a final note, I was on the phone with my friend as they were striking the show, I heard his download of Rick Lee Jones "Had Enough" playing from his computer for everyone to hear.......