By now everyone has seen the infamous video of ESPN sideline reporter Suzy Kolber vainly trying to catch a postgame interview with a disinterested Tom Brady after the Patriots defeated the Bills on Monday Night Football. What you may not know is what contributed behind the scenes to make that awkward situation happen.
In my years at GUTV, I had the opportunity to work as a sideline reporter on a few occasions (even despite my lack of blond hair or attractive features). I've also worked in the production trucks for sports telecasts with ESPN and KHQ (Spokane). And I can tell you, postgame interviews in a sports broadcast require the coordination of everybody - the reporter, the producer, the director, the athlete, and the play-by-play announcer. It's a tough situation, because if any one of those people screw up, the interview is ruined.
Let's take a look at the Kolber/Brady interview, and break it down Hubie Brown-style:
0:00 - All right, our analysis begins before the video even starts. In a live sports broadcast, the decision on who will be interviewed after the game is made by the producer with several minutes to go. The producer picks the player of the game, and informs sideline reporter, so he/she (in this case, she) can prepare her questions. The director is told of this decision, that way he knows who to search for with the dozens of cameras in the stadium. This decision is forwarded to the play-by-play announcer, who then will know how to segue into the interview. Ok, roll it.
0:02 - OK pause it! See, here we see Suzy Kolber approaching Tom Brady, obviously not having arranged the interview with him yet. Normally, in this situation, the director will have a camera spying Suzy and Tom the whole time, that way, once it's clear that Tom's ready to answer her questions, the director can cut to the 2-shot. The director jumped the gun, and showed Suzy following an oblivious Brady to a national audience. Roll it.
0:04 - Stop! Now someone else is leaving Kolber out to dry, and it's either the producer or the play-by-play man Mike Tirico. As we see that Kolber still doesn't have the interview yet, Tirico tosses it over to her anyway, saying "Suzy Kolber, live with Tom Brady! Take it away Suze!" What should normally happen here, is that, once the director confirms that Suzy is ready with Tom, the producer tells Tirico to toss it down. Either the producer told Tirico too early, or Tirico himself ran out of things to say and immediately sent it down.
0:10 - Now here's the next misstep. On live TV, we've turned on Suzy's microphone, where a national audience can hear her yelling "Tom! Tom!" and being ignored. This goes on for several excruciating seconds. This is on the director and producer. When they saw that Suzy still didn't have the interview, they could have bailed, cut her mic, and sent it back to Tirico. But instead, they stuck around to see what would happen next. So did the rest of us.
0:14 - After pretending to not hear Suzy, Tom finally attempts to brush her off by saying "I'm going in. I'm going in," and jogging toward the locker room. The next decision for Kolber is a catch-22 that will be broadcast live to millions of people. If she realizes that Tom won't talk and gives up, she'll be viewed as a weak sideline reporter, and her dissing will be seen across the country. But if she tried to play catch up and still get an interview, she'll be viewed as pestering Tom Brady. In the end, Suzy chooses option B. Again, we've been watching on national TV for a good 20 seconds and the situation is only getting more awkward. The director, rather than saying "go to camera 3," instead gets some popcorn and continues watching the train wreck.
0:21 - Tom keeps his stride and heads toward the locker room, saying that it's so loud that he can't hear the question. I don't want to put too much fault on Tom Brady at the beginning of this thing, because as it turns out he had already said earlier that day that he didn't want to be interviewed after the game. Plus, he had no way of knowing that this was all going out live. However, as she continued to ask the question, it dawned on him that this was live TV. Still instead of stopping for 5 seconds to spout a meaningless cliche, he still attempted to head toward the locker room, hoping that Suzy would give up. This part of the awkward situation falls on Tom Brady's shoulders.
0:32 - What a block of the cameraman! You don't draw it up any better that that! The cameraman is blocked! All he can do is give us a wide shot! Suzy's on her own! Can she pull it off???
0:35 - He said something! Something we've heard every athlete say a thousand times before!
So Suzy Kolber, ESPN, and the production staff, was it all worth it? 38 seconds of awkward, bad TV, in order to get nothing out of it (except comedy, of course).
Sideline reporting is a surprisingly tough, but often meaningless job, and every once in a while you get a situation like this. But in these situations it takes everyone working together to screw it up. The director, producer, and play-by-play man are all involved, but it's only the people on camera who take the flak. In this case, it was very much the production crew's fault as much as it was Suzy and Tom's.
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