We’ve seen many broadcasters working remotely in the past few months, including some in top national games, from Mike “Doc” Emrick in the NHL (including the Stanley Cup final) to Marv Albert in the national NBA in TNT games and Kirk Herbstreit in the Sugar Bowl Florida State-Miami. The most recent that may end up following this trend is Tony Romo, an NFL analyst at CBS. Romo missed last week’s Cardinals-Rams game due to the COVID-19 protocols, with Boomer Esiason filling in (and creating controversy with his comments on Chris Streveler). But Andrew Marchand’s The New York Post reported on Tuesday that Romo could end up calling up the CBS playoff game Bears-Saints remotely next Sunday:
CBS and Tony Romo could use the remote “Kirk Herbstreit” model this Sunday for their late afternoon wild card game between the Saints and the Bears, the Post found.
Romo lost last Sunday’s game due to COVID protocols. He may be prevented from traveling from his Dallas home to New Orleans on Sunday.
… Although a final decision was not made on Romo, CBS would have a similar configuration [to Herbstreit’s] at your home or at a local studio. Just as Chris Fowler, played by ESPN, was in place for the semifinal, Nantz would be in New Orleans for the Bears-Saints.
Although remote transmissions sometimes have some technical problems, they usually work very well. There are some disadvantages compared to the normal model of having step-by-step commentators and color analysts on site, but remote approaches have enabled greater security for older broadcasters, such as Emrick and Albert, and have made this possible for younger broadcasters, such as Herbstreit (and now, perhaps Romo) to still call the games after COVID-19 exhibitions and positive tests.
And given how popular Romo is in the NFL on CBS broadcasts (there’s a reason why ESPN tried to catch him earlier this year, and a reason why CBS spent $ 17.5 million a year to keep him ), it would certainly make sense to try to find a way for him to still call that game. And this is especially true because it is a playoff game and therefore has even more eyes on it. There was probably not enough time to set this up before last week’s game, which is why CBS ended up bringing Esiason, but with more notice, it looks like they could make it work if Romo didn’t call himself for Sunday’s game . Let’s see if they end up doing this.
[The New York Post]