Soccer Night In America, At Least Up To Normal Standards - Brotherly Game
Soccer Night In America, Fox Soccer Channel's new "showcase" for MLS, debuted on Friday to much fanfare. The Portland Timbers hosted the Philadelphia Union and pulled out a 1-0 victory in front of more than 18,000 signing and chanting fans. The game wasn't spectacular, but games involving the Union rarely are.
More to the point, the broadcast went reasonably well, which unfortunately, is actually saying something for FSC, who has earned a reputation for third-rate production quality. The Brotherly Game, SB Nation’s Philadelphia Union blog, actually came away reasonably impressed.
In terms of the production itself, the new graphics were used properly at all times, and replays seemed to be better timed to avoid missing any on-going action than in the past. With the exception of just a couple of instances, camera angles were transitioned to and from smoothly, and there wasn’t a ton of “let’s stop showing the main camera feed so we can show you a close-up of an area of the pitch where nothing’s going on anymore” moments, if that makes any sense.
It’s more than a little sad that the broadcast is earning praise for simply failing to suck. But, when you’ve run the product into the ground as thoroughly as FSC has in the, “not sucking” is a huge improvement and right now, we should probably be happy with that.
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