If White Sox broadcasts shrink, promos are a good first place to cut
Earlier this week in a post about MLB broadcast news, I linked to a Travis Sawchik article about the pressures the pitch clock imposes on television crews. I also inadvertently sidetracked the discussion by suggesting I’d like Boise just fine, so we didn’t touch upon one of the parts I’d considered mining in more detail.
Sawchik starts by representing the point of view of NBC Sports Chicago producer Chris Withers, who identified all the aspects of a White Sox broadcast that would have to be reconsidered when games are shedding 20-plus minutes of dead time (emphasis mine).
Attending a seminar in New York for broadcasters, they were shown some televised minor-league games from last season and examples of the pace changes. He saw firsthand how difficult it was going to be to squeeze in replays, graphics, promos, and ads with only 30 seconds between batters and 15-to-20 seconds between pitches. It’s his 18th season on the job, but he began to lose sleep some nights.
While Withers lost sleep, I pumped my first, particularly when it came to the promos. It feels like White Sox games have become larded with in-game advertising, oftentimes interrupting what had been interesting and informative exchanges between Jason Benetti and Steve Stone.
But I also wanted to confirm my feelings before complaining, so I watched a broadcast of an archived game to log the promos read during action.
The average time of a nine-inning game during the 2022 season was 3 hours, 3 minutes. Two White Sox games matched that exact time and duration. One was the White Sox’s 5-1 loss to the Cubs on May 28, and given that a crosstown game could be stuffed with extra ads due to the greater audience, I instead chose the White Sox’s 3-2 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays on June 4 for a more standard experience.
It was still short of typical, because once I heard that this particular broadcast featured the White Sox’s B-team of Len Kasper and Gordon Beckham, I figured I should probably add a minute to the margins to find one with Stone and Benetti, but after a few innings of watching the game, I stuck with it for this exercise, since it has more to offer about the way broadcasts could go in 2023.
First inning
TOP: No promos.
BOTTOM: The NBC Sports Chicago broadcast made time before first pitch for sponsored White Sox lineup and Rays defensive deployment graphics, and unsponsored graphics detailing what Drew Rasmussen has done and what he throws. In the bottom of the first, the Rays lineup is squeezed in before Dylan Cease’s first pitch, while Gordon Beckham brings the White Sox’s defensive lineup after Cease’s strikeout of Kevin Kiermaier, brought to you by UI Health.
Second inning
TOP: Guaranteed Rate precedes the inning as the sponsor of the 2022 White Sox, paired with a promotion for season tickets. The White Sox go three up, three down without further interruption.
BOTTOM: A White Sox Talk Podcast spot greets the viewer back from commercial. After Gavin Sheets catches a line drive for the first out of the inning, Cease is given +1500 odds in a PointsBet Cy Young Race graphic.
Third inning
TOP: A June 9 Summer T-Shirt Series promo sponsored by Whittingham Meats opens the third inning. No in-game interruptions follow.
BOTTOM: A WebEx/Cisco split screen ad introduces the half-inning. Following Cease’s strikeout of Manuel Margot, here’s where the White Sox broadcasters sing the Nationwide jingle, as insurance agent Jeff Vukovich sponsors the White Sox Insiders at NBCSportsChicago.com. A Danny Mendick 6-3 double play that’s not possible in 2023 for multiple reasons ends the inning after the minimum.
Fourth inning
TOP: After Andrew Vaughn reaches on a one-out single, it’s time for #SoxMath. A Yoán Moncada double play erases Vaughn’s single.
BOTTOM: Yoán Moncada earns the White Sox’s Allstate Mayhem Moment with a slick pick of Randy Arozarena’s hot shot to start the inning.
Fifth inning
TOP: A spot for the White Sox’s Family 4 Pack precedes the inning. After Luis Robert’s comebacker results in the first out of the inning, the #SoxMath answer is revealed (congrats, @TheWeatherman15). We’re then treated to a Chris Kamka list of the most hits by Rays in MLB history (Ray Durham with 1,975), all before Gavin Sheets steps in. Yasmani Grandal draws a two-out walk sponsored by Feldco.
BOTTOM: It’s Fireworks Night on June 10, we learn before Cease’s first pitch of his fifth inning. That’s the same day Jurassic World Dominion hits theaters, according to a banner across the bottom of the screen after Isaac Paredes fouls off a 2-1 fastball. After Cease walks Paredes, Kasper throws it to Chuck Garfien and Ozzie Guillen in the studio. Cease recovers to get Kevin Kiermaier to fly out to left, and Beckham previews NBC 5 Chicago’s Sports Sunday special.
Cease isn’t able to get out of the inning because White Sox pitchers were not allowed to retire Yandy Diaz. A weird hop handcuffs José Abreu and leads to the first run of the game, and Cease’s day is done. After the break, Lakeside Bank sponsors the Call to the Pen for Aaron Bummer.
Sixth inning
TOP: We’re greeted back from break with a shot of Tony La Russa, and the updated over/under line for PointsBet. After Leury García lines out to left, Len Kasper lets us know the updated price of MLB.TV ($114.99). The White Sox go down in order.
BOTTOM: White Sox Pregame Live is the pre-inning promo. When Bummer gets a 2-0 swinging strike from Vidal Brujan, a UChicago Medicine spot rolls out across the bottom-left corner of the screen. I never liked the slogan (“Sickness is relentless. So are we.”). Bummer strikes out Brett Phillips for the second out, after which Tony La Russa makes another Lakeside Bank Call to the Pen for Kyle Crick, who I forgot played for the Sox when it was time for Ted’s season-ending Sporcle.
Seventh inning
TOP: The 1970s-inspired Hawaiian shirts are coming on June 11, we learn before Moncada steps into the box. Rasmussen then retires the White Sox in order, leaving little time for anything besides a brief José Abreu heat map (unsponsored).
BOTTOM: Crick mows down the Rays in a promoless half-inning, which opened with a shot of Beckham’s toddler son in the stands.
Eighth inning
TOP: Family Sundays are sponsored by Coca Cola, and then we’re getting the info on Brooks Raley, Tampa Bay’s first reliever of the day. Elgin Hyundai then sponsors the replay of Adam Engel’s leadoff bloop double, because they’re home of the double warranty. Engel comes around to score on Mendick’s inside-out blooper to right, which chases Raley from the game and leads to another Lakeside Bank Call to the Pen. Jalen Beeks answers that call, Jake Burger pinch-hits for Reese McGuire and takes him deep for a go-ahead two-run shot, which prompts the Ford Home Run Replay.
BOTTOM: No promos to start because of defensive substitutions and a new reliever in Kendall Graveman. After Diaz singles (of course), Kasper once again sends it to Garfien and Guillen for an update on Post Game Live, presented by Subaru. Graveman eventually loads the bases on a second single and a walk, and that’s when Beckham informs viewers about Xfinity Mobile’s unbeatable internet.
Ninth inning
TOP: After José Abreu’s leadoff groundout, we get two replays as part of the Momentum Changer sponsored by First Midwest Bank — Burger’s go-ahead homer, and Mendick’s charging 6-3 putout that killed the bases-loaded threat and spared Graveman a blown save.
BOTTOM: Hoping that Liam Hendriks’ entrance means one can start thinking ahead, the bottom of the ninth opens with the upcoming schedule brought to you by Volkswagen. Hendriks makes good by getting a first-pitch popout and two strikeouts for a nine-pitch save that only left room for a brief Post Game Live banner. He got the game to Chuck and Ozzie as fast as he could.
Takeaways
Theoretically, this is the kind of game that the rules intend to speed up. The White Sox and Rays combined for only five runs, 11 hits and three mid-inning pitching changes, and even though Cease walked seven over 4⅔ innings congested the first half of this game, Rasmussen balanced it out by needing only 81 pitches to get through seven innings. It shouldn’t have been a three-hour game, and God willing, it won’t be in 2023.
I remembered the promos being far more suffocating, but this is probably a case where the pairing of Kasper and Beckham isn’t representative of the standard viewing experience. Benetti and Stone will riff on what they just read, like the clunkiness of the Marquette Bank copy, the handsomeness/ugliness of a giveaway, the urgency of a weather app, the unfamiliarity with QR codes. Here, Kasper and Beckham only carried on after their singing of the Nationwide jingle, with Beckham thanking Kasper for starting it in a lower register. I suspect Benetti would’ve needled Beckham for saying “all-star” instead of “Allstate” on the Mayhem replay, but Kasper left him alone.
Kasper and Beckham don’t have the on-air familiarity of Benetti and Stone, but I also wonder if Kasper’s current experience on the radio side informs his approach. He has to handle his share of promos when he’s calling a game with Darrin Jackson on ESPN 1000 because obviously the station can’t sell visual ads. But that means everything has to be read aloud, so every extra second he’s devoting to a paint store, labor union or municipality is time that they can’t talk about what’s happening on the field, or simply let the game breathe.
Fittingly, the problem may not really lie with the number of promos, but the pace of them. I personally don’t need to hear about Guaranteed Rate and Xfinity and various car dealerships, especially since most don’t apply to me as an out-of-market viewer, but I understand they help pay the bills. Benetti and Stone often spiraled out of them with an absurd tangent or two, and while it was often amusing and helped fill a lot of extra air time, there are suddenly diminishing returns for selling past the close.
Removing the improvised codas and epilogues from promotional reads isn’t going to account for all the necessary editing, and there will probably be some trial and error with balancing what generates extra revenue with the replays fans need to see, and even stuff like the Kamka trivia, which isn’t necessary but adds local color to the broadcast. (Potentially unpopular opinion: This would be a good time to try cutting #SoxMath.)
Then again, the White Sox just played their first three-hour game of the spring on Saturday against the Dodgers, so perhaps the basketball game-like pace Benetti referred to in the Sawchik article will eventually cede ground to the last-minute-of-a-basketball-game-like pace to which Major League Baseball and its fans had grown accustomed.
