The Manningcast got off to a bit of a rocky start but is humming lately. The brothers had to get their legs underneath them, just like the production team.
ESPN Front Row spoke with Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli project lead Chris Strong about how the operation has developed across the season.
“In working out the technical workflows and facilities for both studios,” Strong said about in-season adjustments. “We needed to stick to what we could do now to make the timelines and then make adjustments as the show dictated and buildup the studio infrastructures. Each show we improve upon what we learned on the previous one. That could be a signal flow change for the talent, placement of video in their monitors walls or scenic adjustments or additional feeds.”
The broadcast’s quality has grown on a nice trajectory since a couple of Week 1 stumbles. The Mannings are routinely hitting break cues now, and the B-Roll video aired during guest interviews has become a great way to inform the audience even more.
“Aside from the hyper-condensed timeframe to pull this show off,” Strong said in the interview. “I think the most challenging aspect of the ManningCast project is having talent in separate studios in different spots of the country with the production control room in a third location and the main Monday Night Football telecast is happening in a fourth location.”
Four locations are a lot to juggle for the broadcast, and it requires precision with what goes on the Manning’s screens.
“Timing is key to everything,” Strong said. “Making sure that Peyton and Eli see footage at the same time in order to react to it, while hearing each other in near real-time, is key. Our latest focus has been to work on getting the guests, who are at four more additional locations, into the same sync with our control room and studios, while hearing the brothers near real-time in order to provide the smoothest dialogue and banter for the show.”
The brothers are taking a break for the holiday weekend and return for the Week 13 matchup between New England and Buffalo.