FOX Sports, TNT Sports Elevate Production Plans For MLB’s Star-Studded League Championship Series

DirtCams, UmpCams, BaseCams, drones, and much more highlight the speciality camera lineups

Major League Baseball has reached its Final Four and each of the National League Championship Series and American League Championship Series delivers exciting matchups for fans.

While FOX Sports got the NLCS showdown between the New York Mets and Los Angeles Dodgers going on Sunday night, TNT Sports is ready to get underway in The Bronx on the ALCS side with the Cleveland Guardians and the New York Yankees. Both broadcasters are significantly stepping up their production and operations plans for the LCS.

Here’s a peek at some of the high-level highlights:

NLCS: FOX Sports Goes Cinematic in Hollywood

Following a successful Division Series round, FOX Sports ratchets up the unique sights of the sounds of the MLB Postseason with a juicy East-West matchup between the Dodgers and Mets. The broadcaster is adding several of the specialty camera systems that have become staples of their MLB coverage this Postseason, including DirtCams, FlyCam, UmpCam, and live drones.

FOX Sports has also brought back its drone partner Beverly Hills Aeriels to pull in some gorgeous shots that were sprinkled in throughout Sunday night’s Game 1 broadcast:

Dodger Stadium looking beautiful this time of year 😍 pic.twitter.com/nCpWuyy6m3

— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) October 14, 2024

“We’re constantly improving the workflows and for this Postseason we will have new camera sensors, transmission and remote control of our entire arsenal of specialized camera technology,” says Brad Cheney, VP, Field Operations and Engineering, Fox Sports. “We spend lots of time with our vendors all season to find the best places for these camera systems, some work and some don’t, but when we hit the Postseason, we’re ready to deploy and show the world how amazing these players are.”

After producing the majority of its regular season games remotely as HRP (Home Run Productions) from its PICO facility in Los Angeles, all NLDS, NLCS and World Series broadcasts will be produced on-site. Fox Sports’ primary mobile units throughout the post season will be Game Creek Video’s Yogi (A & B units) and NEP’s ND1 (A, B, C & D). Will continue to rely on remote technicians for some roles throughout the postseason as well.

FOX Sports used UmpCam during the NLDS between the San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Dodgers.

Fox’s NLCS coverage and World Series coverage will feature 18 to 20 manned cameras (including 10 super-slo-mo systems of various frame rates), plus an RF handheld, two RF MoVI gimbal systems, six robos, three POVs, two Phantom ultra-high-speed systems, two DirtCams (a third will be added for World Series), a FlyCam wired system, and a drone from BHA.

In addition, Fox will roll out 52 effects mics and three parabs to capture the sounds of the game, as well as a multitude of replay resources – 128 records and 30 playouts for NLCS and 142 records and 32 playouts for World Series ­– to ensure every moment of the drama is captured.

Postseason pregame and postgame shows also shift to on-site locations for the NLCS and World Series. These remote studio shows will be produced out of a separate truck on-site with additional remote technicians supporting the show.

Key vendors supporting Fox include CP Communications, Fletcher, Lumen, LiveU, The Switch, Game Creek Video, NEP, CES Power, RF Wireless, Beverly Hills Aerials, Bexel, and Pure Polish Fiber.

The operations team is led by Fox’s longtime MLB stalwart Francisco Contreras and also includes Anil Leatherwala, Nick Utley, Nicole Perrin, Judy Acone, Eric Guyton, Monika Chislov, Jennifer Freund, Pam Chvotkin, Itzel Rocha, Hannah Seaman, Tom Lynch, Sid Drexler, Taihe Miller, Patrick Karayan, Brady Polansky, and Lou D’Ermillo.

ALCS: TNT Sports Adds Datacast Alternate Broadcast

On Monday morning, TNT Sports shared the details of adding an alternate broadcast options for viewers for the ALCS. On truTV and streaming on Max, TNT Sports will produce MLB DataCast throughout the entire ALCS – an analytics-driven altcast hosted by JP Morosi with analyst Dexter Fowler and stats analyst Mike Petriello.

The broadcast including data, technology, and graphics from partners like MLB’s StatCast, Inside Edge and Ross Video to take fans deeper inside the game. From an operations perspective, the show will be hosted from TNT Sports’ Atlanta headquarters and will feature real-time custom graphics and 3D renderings of the biggest moments of the series.

In its 18th consecutive season broadcasting games in the MLB Postseason, TNT Sports is back with some high-end production toys on game coverage, including BaseCam, UmpCam, and live drones courtesy of Warner Bros. Discovery’s in-house drone team. It’s BaseCam that has, arguably, become TNT Sports’ MLB signature. Designed in partnership with Camera Corps, Basecam has gained acceptance with ground crews since 2020.

TNT Sports is also deploying an on-field Steadicam shooting in shallow depth-of-field. Saturday’s Game 5 between the Guardians and the Detroit Tigers saw a great shot from that camera following a critical grand slam from Cleveland’s Lane Thomas:

GUARDIANS GRAND SLAM FOR THE LEAD IN GAME 5 OF THE ALDS 😱 @BRWalkoff pic.twitter.com/nrePZrW5iZ

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) October 12, 2024

As for RF Wireless’s UmpCam system, TNT Sports used it for the first time during the ALDS.

“[UmpCam] is new for us so we’re thrilled to add it to the broadcast,” says Chris Brown, Warner Brothers Discovery’s VP, Technology and Operations. “We’re working closely with the league and umpires’ association to make sure that everything is being done the right way and we’ve been really happy with what we’ve seen thus far.”

On the drones, TNT Sports will team up with its colleagues at CNN and the in-house WBD drone team to fly a live drone. According to Brown, the drone can be flown inside and outside the ballpark in Cleveland at Progressive Field but only inside the venue at Yankee Stadium.

The project has been in development for months and TNT Sports ran a full test during an Atlanta Braves game last month in order to get the league to give the in-ballpark drone a thumbs up.

“The big difference is going to be inside the stadium,” says Brown. We’ve been able to use drones outside of the stadium for quite a while, but we have generally not been able to fly them inside so that’s going to be big. They will primarily fly outside the field of play and never while play is happening.

“One of the other big concerns for the league was noise since we would like to be able to come in as low as possible,” adds Brown. “But we didn’t want it to be disruptive to player-coach conversations or anything like that. In the end we found a great solution and I think it’s going to be a game changer for us.”

Jason Dachman contributed to this report.