Big Ten Network, Swimmers, Coaches React to First Televised Dual Meet

We’ve done a competition-focused recap of last weekend’s Indiana-Purdue dual meet that was the first ever live dual meet to air on the Big Ten Network, but for much of the swimming community this was about so much more than the times and the final score. This was a meet about swimming turning the corner, and perhaps providing a foundation and example to expand the coverage of swimming on TV.

Bob Lanning, a Senior Coordinating Producer at the Big Ten Network, called the event an overall success.

“I like to monitor several different sites during events like this, and one thing I noticed was an explosion of interest on the internet surrounding the meet. Sometimes you’ll watch basketball games and other sporting events, and you won’t see but 2 or 3 mentions. During the meet, they just kept coming.”

Lannin said that two specific facets of the swimming community’s facination with this meet really jumped out at him. The first was that people were incredibly appreciative of the Big Ten Network, and they were receiving kudos all around the web. The second was the passion – he pointed out that while swimming might not draw the volume of a football or a basketball game, the fans are extremely passionate about their sports and about their schools.

But this first-ever event almost wasn’t. Here’s the story on how this meet came to be aired.

Every year, universities in the Big Ten Conference get the opportunity to pitch certain “university selected events” that they would like the Big Ten to consider airing. Each submission gets hashed out among different producers and executives, in terms of the “producability” of the event.

The producers look at a number of criteria in deciding if an event will be a good fit, and Lanning says that when Indiana came to them about televising this meet, it met all of them. That includes the excitement surrounding two good programs, two rivals, a competitive, and a competitive meet. They also look at things like can it be fit into a television format. Will it be exciting for the home viewer, and can it be well-broadcast without going to overboard with the requirements.

Lanning said that he immediately picked up on the excitement of airing a dual meet, as he is a big fan of Olympic sports. He has previously worked with ABC’s Wide World of Sports, which allowed him to get exposed to a number of different sports. He also pointed out that Indiana has been on the front-end of getting these sort of smaller sports onto the Big Ten Network – last year, they also came forth with a proposal to air a regatta. The network is also looking at airing water polo in the future, by request of Michigan, who has a women’s team.

So the decision was made that the meet would be aired, with the idea of doing a tape delay (with time to edit the footage). As the meet aired, about two weeks prior, Lanning started looking at the schedule and noticed that there were no other live events to go on in this time slot. He went to other people in the company and said “is there any reason we can’t do this live?” The answer was no, and so things kicked into overdrive to push this into a live event.

There were a few changes that had to be made to the format to meet the television requirements for commercial breaks. The meet was stretched from a two-and-a-half hour time slot to three, to allot for those mandated breaks.

Ben Turner, an SID at Purdue, said that the meet went very well.

“I think [some swimmers] were still caught a little off guard at the extra downtime due to TV timeouts,” but that overall the early feedback was overwhelmingly positive for the event.

This was a sentiment echoed by many, but all acknowledged that they were more than happy to go through a minor growing-pain to get the meet on television.

Melanie Schlanger, Assistant Athletic Director at Indiana, echoed that enthusiasm. She pointed out that everyone involved was willing to be very flexible in order to ensure the success of the live event.

Schlanger also made an excellent point that Indiana was the host of last year’s Big Ten Women’s Championships last February, which were aired on taped-delay, so there was already a TV layout setup and they knew what would need to be done for the telecast.

Here’s what some of the swimmers and coaches had to say about the meet:

Brendan Joyce, Senior, Carmel, Ind.
Won the 100 Fly (from Lane 8) Saturday –
“It was a good bit different than any other meet I’ve been a part of. There were way more breaks than I kind of expected. I think most people weren’t expecting to sit behind the blocks for as long as they before some events. But it was absolutely a good experience overall.”

Purdue Men’s Head Coach Dan Ross –
“It was definitely different than a normal meet. I know how football coaches feel now; when they have those big long timeouts, it kind of messes up the flow of the meet. But I thought we handled it pretty well. It’s just different and something we have to get used to. We need that exposure, we need to get [college swimming and diving] out there. I had people texting me during the meet from all over the country saying what a great job it was and how much fun it was to watch.”

Purdue Women’s Head Coach John Klinge –
“I thought the impact of the television breaks on us was minimal. I thought it was great in every way. The broadcast crew and the way it was setup was well done. It was definitely exciting for all of us to be part of that meet. The excitement level for the athletes to have that opportunity was a factor before the meet, but once the meet started we just focused on what we were doing.”

Lanning owed a lot of the meet’s success to the crew that was working it. Though this was the first live dual meet, he was quick to point out that the Big Ten Network has aired every Big Ten Championship since its incarnation. He also gave a lot of credit to the veteran trio of producers Doug Wren, and announcers Rowdy Gaines and Cynthia Potter, who are all go-to members of NBC’s Olympic broadcast coverage.

When asked about what he would do differently next time, Lanning said the he filled up nearly 6 pages of notes of minor changes he would make to ensure the best broadcast possible. Given the overwhelmingly positive feedback, seeing so much room for improvement shows a lot about the Big Ten Network’s dedication to portraying swimming and diving as professionally as they would any other sporting event.

An example he gave surrounded the lighting in the diving well. Due to the camera position (against a wall with no light), he felt that it didn’t show up great on television (anyone who’s ever tried to photograph or video tape in a natatorium is well aware of this issue). Next time, he said that he would add a soft light against the boards so as to capture the divers better as the emerged from the water.

As to whether or not this will become a staple on the Big Ten Network, Lanning said that the network would definitely give serious consideration to future requests under the banner of university requested events. The strong response to this first meet, however, definitely seems to have made an impact on the network and its producers.