When growing up in Detroit and Pittsburgh in the 60s and 70s, I noticed that broadcasts of sports events at home games sounded pretty much like a studio, probably because they were in fact using studio equipment. On the other hand, road games sounded like they were broadcast over the phone.

Fast forward to today. Home and road games sound pretty much the same. I figured it had something to do with both technology and phone lines, but hearing "Coast to Coast Weekend" and Ian Punnett (sp?) talking about how two of his four ISDN lines being down made me wonder about the technical issues again.

Can any of the techie-types here talk about the remote broadcast equipment used "back then" and the technology of today?

Major sporting events on major networks have relied on satellite delivery since the 80's. However, co-ordination, cueing, IFB, etc. are pretty important facets of any remote broadcast and erratic service therein are usually the cause of screwups, etc. As you drill down the pecking order of networks in today's landscape, those that have money to guarantee satellite access still have to balance the other needs of their news division and the limited transponders available. Smaller networks and lesser sporting events often have to rely on non-satellite means to get programming back and IFB established. Sure, if its the Olympics the phone company will put in gobs of equipment at the site, but if it's just another Saturday college game in the AAA league, it often relies on the same methods used "back then" including dedicated, equalized phone lines, RPU, terrestrial microwave, etc. The internet does provide an additional tool that never existed before and I'm sure it's being used in various ways like VPN, VOiP, etc.

The stations that you heard airing home games in the 60s and 70s probably had a dedicated line from the press box to the studio. Although this would have been put in by the phone company, the dedicated line wouldn't have gone through the telephone company switching equipment, so the sound quality would have been on par with a studio production. These same types of analog lines were also used for many years by many stations to get the audio from the studio to the transmitter site.

The problem with those dedicated lines is that the station has to pay the phone company to keep them connected, regardless of how much the lines are used. It is a lot cheaper to use an ISDN or a regular analog phone line to send the audio to the studio. The new technologies have created more options for linking up the studio to the remote sporting event, but the choice of which method is used is, of course, economic.

cell phone and marti. 1 min 30 twice an hour

Nothing like giving the advertiser a quality presentation for their 800 dollar investment. That brings in the foot traffic!