Originally Posted by Media Team
Hi everyone – I’ve no intention of posting regularly on here for reasons explained below, but there are a few things here for us to clarify, so here’s a bit of a run-through. It’s a long post but I hope it answers a lot of questions.
Live streaming – Yesterday we had an issue with the on-screen graphics (the sponsors, bottom of the page) that stopped us going live when we’d intended. Annoyingly, we actually got it fixed at exactly 18:59 and nearly got away with it, but then a separate issue outside of our control – that required a call to one of the external companies – stopped it going live for 2-3 minutes afterwards. Unfortunately it was one of those that, had we not had both issues together, it may not have been noticed but both together exacerbated things. We’ve already sorted the graphics issue for Saturday’s game.
Personally, I can’t speak for what happened with the clock ticking down to 19:45 – at the point of purchase on InPlayer it said the live stream was starting at 18:45 so as far as I’m aware – though it’s not me who dealt with that side of it – InPlayer had the correct time. Obviously at the point people were being greeted by that screen I was running around trying to fix other issues so I didn’t see it myself. If it was going to 19:45 then it would have been wrong anyway – we should have been set to go live at 19:30 for a 19.45pm kick-off at the latest.
The payment issue on the day of the game was with InPlayer, which Glyn has covered elsewhere.
Team news – We were sent the team news in advance yesterday. There was another urgent issue being dealt with at the time, completely unrelated, and, while the correct image was sent through, so was an incorrect one. Unfortunately it was the latter that was picked up by the media team member sorting the graphics, and they only became aware of the mix-up when the team sheets were passed around. It’s another one of those things that could have happened to anyone/any team but on top of everything else we were dealing with it becomes another stick to beat us with.
Dixie’s mic – It was caused by an issue with the mixer, which hadn’t showed up when testing the set-up. We worked through the first-half to try and fix it, trying all sorts of things, before finding a compromise for the second-half. We’re still working on finding out what went wrong – to confuse matters further, we can see the full footage on the Pixellot back-end and the sound is much better there than what was coming through on the stream. We do at least have a solution, however, so the next stream should not have the same problem. At least we all know what Dixie has for breakfast, I guess.
Website – As everyone knows, there are multiple issues with the websites. Ourselves and Glyn are working through massive to-do lists in that regard. Ollie and I have been in contact with the club website provider to resolve a lot of the issues on there – the league table and fixtures being probably the most obvious, but there are other issues like an out-of-date ad in the carousel – but it has been a frustratingly slow process. We’re as frustrated as anyone, arguably more so given how it reflects on us, but please rest assured the out-of-date information is not a sign of apathy. We didn’t design the websites. The issue with Mark’s live stream pulling through to the website automatically today, even after it had failed on YouTube because of the sound, is another one caused by how the site has been set up – something we want to change.
Tone – As has been stated before – and something that’s certainly not changed for this season – the Media Team are encouraged to have their own voice. We are not a department of the WST, but we are a department of the club. That said, we are given a degree of editorial freedom – within reason, of course. There is no party line being towed by anyone, there will never be scripts for broadcasts/highlights/questions etc. We’re not a mouthpiece for one or all of the board. Despite all that though, we are there to promote the Football Club so we have to strike a balance. You might not agree with some of the things I say on air, and likewise anybody else, but there’s no secret agenda to anything we do say.
To give the Solihull game as an example, there were questions coming through on Mixlr that pretty obviously I was never going to ask Shaun Pearson or answer myself. Still, I threw as much as I could to him and I hope most people found what he had to say interesting. I certainly enjoyed having him summarising. Of course, people still get abusive.
After the Solihull game, honestly I thought my questions were firm. It was ‘how do you explain that performance? Where did it all go wrong?’ rather than ‘were you disappointed..?’ etc. Someone still called me spineless on Twitter. But there were other press members at that game to ask questions that the club’s own media are never going to ask. Likewise, I arranged two press conferences in the week before, one by phone and one via Zoom, to try and accommodate the need for written press, audio and video. We invite a large press list, which includes local, regional and national press, radio stations and TV companies. We are very open to external press and certainly offer more than most teams in this league. It’s up to them what they do with those opportunities.
General comments – As I don’t intend posting here often, primarily because I don’t want to be viewed as an official voice and have people incorrectly read too much into what I do/don’t respond to, a few other things while I’m here:
We’re trying to improve the live streaming game by game. In the first instance, the league offered us a streaming/payment solution in one go, which we decided to pursue.
At the time, we were severely limited on press numbers with potential for that to carry on into the season, and the robo-cam ensured we could broadcast the game no matter what as it can be set-up remotely.
To put it into context, we had someone outside of our usual media team lined up to film the Cefn Druids game, and we’d had a thought to offer 90-minute playback after the game if it was successful. This was with a view to introducing live streaming for the other friendlies. On the day, the person in question was unable to come in because of the COVID guidelines – something that only became clear less than an hour before the game. We’d already had another member of the media team pull out in the morning because they knew they would not pass the symptoms form we have to fill in (despite being certain – as was later confirmed – they only had a cold).
Even then, there was an external company we were in talks with to offer a live streaming option for pre-season but that too ended up shelved, leaving us with a camera that simply wasn’t broadcast quality; the BT camera is not sent until the eve of the league season.
Against that context, the robo-cam – plus the ready-to-go streaming platform – seemed an ideal solution but delivery times etc were very tight. We weren’t helped when the streaming provider then pulled out leaving us needing an alternative. Other teams that were also signed up with them had to go DIY – hence some offering free streaming for the first couple of games through necessity – and it was thanks to some big shifts from Glyn that we were able to get everything good to go.
We’re now looking to improve it game by game, so introducing a co-commentator in the last match, for example. We also had full control over the camera to stop it chasing the pigeons at set pieces and I hope you agree it made for a much improved visual feed compared to the first game. As the season goes on, there are plans for even bigger and better.
Finally, thanks to everyone who has supported what we’re doing in the media team. I’m mostly responding to critics’ questions here (and that’s fine, there were valid points raised) but I can also see the support we’re getting on the live stream, on Mixlr and elsewhere on our output. Can I just take the opportunity to say it’s massively appreciated.
Colin (Press Officer)
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