Jason Benetti frustrated by how many games are now produced remotely

Few in the play-by-play field call games as seamlessly as Jason Benetti appears to.

But as with any job, it can always be easier.

Appearing on The Solid Verbal podcast, the Fox college football and MLB announcer was asked what changes could be made to decrease the difficulty of calling games. In responding, Benetti offered two answers. The first is having names under the players on the screen, like the Madden video game. His second response, however, he said, might be more controversial to those within the industry.

“A lot of games now are produced from studios, whether it be in Bristol or Charlotte or Los Angeles. And I know people have commented about the video quality on that thing,” the voice of the Detroit Tigers said. “What you don’t know — and [the Fox] college football crew is exempt from this and the angels sing — but what you don’t know is those games that are produced from a studio, the monitors that we have in the booth are on somewhere between a two and five-second delay.

Benetti explained that such situations leave announcers with only the field or court to rely on. In fact, the delay is so drastic that the monitor, which shows the announcers what their audience is seeing on TV, effectively becomes a hindrance.

“In the psychological experiment sense, the word ‘Confederate,’ somebody working against you, the monitor is actually a ‘Confederate,'” he said. “Because if you try to sneak a look at the monitor on a catch in corner or something like that. Like a college basketball game, there’s a three in the corner at Madison Square Garden. All the fans are standing. We can’t see it. We cannot use the monitor. So actually, the people at home have a better look than we do live, which is kind of crazy. But the way the industry has gone, the proliferation of games produced in a studio, they have not figured out or spent the money on fiber to make sure that our monitors are live.”

As he is wont to do, Benetti turned to pop culture to illustrate his point further.

“The way I think about it is all those scenes in Breaking Bad where Walt is reacting to Gus, right?” he said. “If that were on a two-second delay, you wouldn’t get the same human reaction. And so it drives me absolutely up the wall in our industry that so many games are produced like that because we’re competing with shows like that. We’re competing with Hollywood for the entertainment dollar and time. But we don’t have live reaction to plays that are really difficult to see, even at the medium level of college football and college basketball.”

Benetti’s frustration is understandable and sheds light on a technical aspect of broadcasting most viewers likely haven’t considered. Unfortunately, as he noted, this trend only appears to be growing as networks continue to cut costs.

Until networks make the proper investments—be it producing more games on site or acquiring the necessary technology to avoid such delays—this appears to be an unfortunate reality of broadcasting. In the meantime, let’s talk about those Madden-like name displays, which seem feasible in the AI age.