Picking the Music: The A1 Gets To Play DJ

Sports broadcasts give lead mixers leeway to express their inner A&R

“Sugar Magnolia” by the Grateful Dead is an oft-heard choice as the ballgame slides from the end of an inning or a quarter to commercial break. An upbeat track that suggests more joy to come, it’s also a regular pick by an A1 corps with a particular affinity for jam bands like the Dead and Phish. That track and dozens of others are on pre-approved lists managed by the broadcasters’ music and clearance departments, who ready music dedicated to an upcoming broadcast, an effort intended to keep any uncleared music played in the venues off the air to avoid infringements. Often, the specific songs are chosen by A1s, some of whom came to broadcast after careers in music production or performing.

Jam Banders

Although A1s know how to mix a song in the studio, they have been feeling out how music works for sports shows.

“I’ve been playing jam bands since, like, 1991,” says A1 Joe Carpenter, who mixes FOX Sports’ MLB broadcasts. “I’ve been playing the Grateful Dead and Phish for the past four or five years.”

“Sugar Magnolia” is a favorite of many self-described Dead-Head A1s.

He notes that the genre’s typical extended instrumental passages in songs is easier for announcers to talk over but acknowledges feeling a push for more-contemporary music in recent years. He adds that he has plenty of options in broadcaster-cleared choices, pulled from Sigma Broadcast’s Spot On software, which offers the option for a “sanitized” version that won’t incur additional use payments at re-air.

“It’s very situational,” Carpenter explains. “You want something that works situationally with the music and the title and what’s happening on the screen — like sometimes a slo-mo replay — as we roll out to commercial.”

Music choices that A1s make constitute a series of running observational puns, such as when A1 Florian Brown cues up the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” after a penalty call during an NHL game.

“The production and the music departments pick artists and music profiles for each league and show,” he explains. “From that bag, the A1 usually tries to match a song to a particular situation. The process for choosing and clearing music takes months and involves lots of [legal layers]. But sometimes people just pay the fine if it re-airs later. It can get expensive.”

Carpenter concurs, acknowledging that, when mixing a game, the A1 can serve as program director, DJ, and paralegal. “Until about 2005 or so, I would just free-wheel it and play whatever I wanted off my laptop. My producers all trusted me, and I would play whatever I wanted.”

Broadcaster Music Teams Monitor Legal Issues

Then came the Arcade Fire incident. The Canadian band’s “No Cars Go” track aired in a post-halftime montage during FOX Sports’ coverage of Super Bowl XLII in 2008 without, the band alleged, its permission. That spurred increased control over the process.

“Now the music department is really, really [careful] about music and getting rights cleared, understandably so,” says Carpenter, once a regular in the “tapers” section of the audience at Grateful Dead shows, where recording the shows was permitted and even encouraged by the band.

He works with FOX Sports colleagues, including FOX Sports Senior VP, Production and Talent Development, Jacob Ullman and Producer Jake Jolivette, both of whom are described by Billboard as “fellow FOX Sports Deadheads” who work on the broadcaster’s MLB productions. FOX Sports VP, Music, Nicole de la Torriente-Nelson leads negotiations with publishers and labels, and Associate Director Yvonne Wagoner prepares approved playlists for broadcast teams. ESPN Music Operations Supervisor Joanne Strange leads the group responsible for all the music on that broadcaster’s NFL and college-football shows.

Still Keeping It Loose

It’s not quite 1970s, West Texas, late-night DJs pulling deep cuts from a crate of cool LPs. Nonetheless, A1s continue to have considerable latitude on music choices within a game, although the assortments are narrower and more intensely pre-cleared by broadcaster music supervisors. Playlists are also sometimes limited by sport and genre.

“Generally speaking,” explains Dan “Buddha” Bernstein, senior A1, NHL and NFL, ESPN, “we’ll have a pool of theme and highlight cuts that are good for a particular sport, to use freely throughout the events, and a few ‘commercial cuts’ [for going into breaks] that [the broadcaster has] arranged to use for a certain length of time. Some sports, like the NFL on ESPN, tend to have a number of commercial cuts available throughout the season; other sports may be more [restricted] in terms of spending on music. [But] within that framework, the choice of what to play at any given time during the broadcast is usually mine.”

It’s not just personal taste but also keeping an ear tuned to what the audience has been listening to ahead of the show, seeking continuity. Says Bernstein, “I’ll try to use theme music to establish what show people have tuned into early on in a broadcast and a few more times over the course of the show to maintain that connection. The rest of the time, I’ll try to play music that matches the energy of the situation.”

That could be a lyrical connection: for instance, playing “Hold the Line” by Toto after a big defensive stand in a Monday Night Football game. Sometimes it’s instrumental music to provide a smooth musical bed under announcers’ patter, such as an instrumental version of “Joker and the Thief” by Wolfmother, which he recently dropped during a series of goal replays in an NHL broadcast. “In all cases,” he explains, “my goal is to enhance the moment through music, telling the story in a different way than the visuals but, at the same time, drawing out the emotional quality that music brings.”

Sometimes the event itself or the location helps pick the songs. For instance, Carpenter turned to Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind” when the Yankees played home games during the World Series in October, then switched to Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” for the Dodgers’ home games.

Historically, baseball has perhaps the deepest pool of themed songs ripe for picking, like John Fogarty’s “Center Field.” Says Carpenter, “I always have that one ready to go when I need it.”