Empty Stadiums, Cheering Crowds

Empty Stadiums, Cheering Crowds

By Charles E. Kraus

I was sitting in an ABC-TV studio.  Jim McKay was behind the Wide Wide World of Sports desk sampling the day's events.  One of these was a middle-weight boxing championship coming out of Italy, or Spain.  It was a long time ago.  Howard Cosell had flown in, toupee and all, to provide local color.  Something was wrong with the feed, at least that was the director's first impression.  The match was taking place in a packed stadium, but there didn't seem to be any crowd reaction.

"No, no," it was explained.  Audience's watched silently.  Or maybe they weren't miked. Either way, there was nothing to hear.

That was not going to work for American viewers so a sound effects person arrived with his sweetener.  This was a device generally used to enhance audience reaction -- you know, to goose up laugher if the comedian hadn't actually earned the chuckles, spice applause for a singer who hadn't generated a rousing response.  What did this technician have to juice up a boxing match?  

Soon, crowd sounds improved reality and the boxing match took on a whole new level of excitement.   (There was one other problem.   Evidently pictures were being generated by feeds from the US and Europe.  America's shots had the clock super imposed, counting down the minutes.  Europe also super imposed a clock.  Not a count down, but rather a count up.  Made for an interesting afternoon).

This summer, refreshment stands and fans excluded, stadiums plan to open.  The loudest sounds you'll be hearing when watching these events won't be cheers or boos.  If you listen carefully, you'll pick out a few grunts and some colorful language.  That's assuming the shotgun microphones follow athletes on their appointed rounds.

There is talk of adding recordings of crowd reaction from previous games.  In the Cosell days networks were willing to settle for generic audio, a general sense of people attending a sporting event.  Adding meaningful, reactive sound in real time is much more difficult.  What you hear has to match what you see.

Back when, I was involved with a number of CBS variety programs.  Sitcoms used laugh tracks.  Variety shows employed sweeteners on an as needed basis.  Certain programs created audio reaction out of whole cloth.  The Sonny and Cher Show only pretended to have audiences.  The program was actually recorded bit bit.  Sometimes a small segment would be shot endlessly, "Take 14, roll tape."  Finally, somehow, everyone got their lines right.  The keeper would be added to other keepers unit an entire show was assembled. Then the sweetener guy would rush in and replicate appropriate audience responses.  

How do I think sound should be added today's sports events?  During this pandemic situation?  Simple.  Air the event live.  Stadiums empty.  Zoom the show to a few hundred open mike homes.  Families, couples, guys who've been sitting in the same chair since March.  Blend their audio reactions and add this mix to the broadcast.  It will be authentic.  Not canned.  Not sweetened.   There may be a few extraneous sounds.  But ... did you ever go to a sports event, a real live event, that didn't have a few extraneous sounds?