Fake Crowd Noise at Sports Events Divides Fans
For instance, Joe Buck, the Fox Sports play-by-play announcer, said last month on SiriusXM Radio that it was “pretty much a done deal” that the N.F.L. would use artificial fan noise for its live game broadcasts this year if games were played in empty stadiums.
When it returns this week, England’s Premier League will offer viewers simulated crowd noise with help from the Electronic Arts’s “FIFA” soccer video game series. (While audiences in the Premier League and Bundesliga’s home countries have the option to switch between audio feeds on parallel channels, television viewers in the United States watching on NBC and Fox networks will get the augmented audio as the default for these leagues.)
Spain’s La Liga returned last week, also with virtual stadium sounds borrowed from “FIFA.” Similarly, The Athletic reported earlier this month that the N.B.A. had discussed the possibility of using audio from the “N.B.A. 2K” video games to enliven its own broadcasts.
Reactions to having the quietude of real life smothered by manufactured noise have ranged from dystopian anxiety to resignation to relief.
Twenty years ago, CBS drew criticism when the network used taped nature sounds to brighten up a broadcast of the PGA Championships; avian experts noticed some non-indigenous bird calls chirping out of their speakers. But today’s circumstances seem to have created a more welcoming environment for experimentation.
“We’re kind of in a try-anything mode,” said Bob Costas, the longtime sports announcer. “You just don’t want it to sound like the laugh track on a bad ‘60s sitcom.”
But old-school canned laughter may be the most fitting reference point for what is happening now.
Alessandro Reitano, vice president of sports production at Sky Germany, said the goal of the Bundesliga’s “enhanced audio” initiative was to “forget a little bit that you’re seeing an empty stadium” — an effort that has also involved the increased use of up-close camera angles — and to elevate the atmosphere beyond the feeling of “kids playing in the park.”
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/16/sports/coronavirus-stadium-fans-crowd-noise.html