Feb 2, 2007 7:58 pm US/Central
Coordinating Super Bowl TV Cameras No Easy Task
Multiple Cameras From Every Angle Are Aimed At The Field To Capture All The Action
by Jay Levine
MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (CBS) ―
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CBS Television is ready to capture every angle of Sunday's Super Bowl game.
CBS
The speed and excitement of football make it the perfect sport for television. Viewers at home won't miss a thing because a TV camera is focused on every possible angle of the sports spectacular on Sunday.
CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports the stakes are high for the broadcast.
The president himself called Super Bowl Sunday a national holiday. The game will be broadcast in Russia and Romania, China and Croatia, in 33 languages in a total of 232 countries.
If you think the pressure is limited to the Bears and Colts, think again.
There are cameras on the field, cameras in the stands, cameras in the air and on TV towers miles away.
CBS Vice President of Operations Ken Aagaard says for a regular season game, the station uses 12 to 14 cameras.
There are special lights borrowed from the set of "Pirates of the Caribbean 3," miles and miles of cable, hundreds and hundreds of people.
Aagaard, a Chicagoan born and bred, is in charge of all this.
He gave CBS 2 a tour of a Dolphin Stadium, stopping along the way to check last minute details.
Everything is all ready, inside and out. Friday they were still rehearsing but Super Bowl producer Lance Barrow said he's "ready to do it now."
Barrow will watch from the control room, scanning the multiple monitors..
A cable camera is suspended by cables from the 4 corners of the stadium, it can travel 20 miles an hour to hover over any spot in the stadium.
"I'll stand in the corner in the corner and hope everything works," Aagaard said.
And all the Chicagoans will be, let's say, politically correct.
"I don't allow anyone to root. I have to enforce my own law on myself," said producer Eric Mann, who is from Highland Park.
Aagaard said, "I'll root for a close game, probably root for the Bears."
Jim Nantz, who'll do the play-by-play, told me he'll mentally prepare by imagining himself just watching the game and talking about it with a buddy, Phil Simms. He tries to ignore the fact that 50 million people will be eavesdropping.
(© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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