WSJ football article about (magic) yellow line for first downs.
January 27, 2000
The New Star of TV Football
Is a Yellow First-Down Line
By JOE FLINT
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
When the St. Louis Rams and Tennessee Titans square off in the Super Bowl
on Sunday, one of the unlikely stars of the show will be a virtual yellow line on
the screen. It will mark precisely how far the offensive team has to go to gain
a first down.
Behind the yellow line lies a surprisingly complicated feat of technology.
Thanks to advanced software, the line doesn't seem to cross the white lines,
yard numbers or team insignia actually on the football field. Nor does it cover
up players or referees when they cross it. In fact, as the cameras move to
follow a play, the yellow line adjusts to the angle but stays in place on the field.
With each first down, it vanishes, and a new one appears on the TV screen
farther down the field.
It's just the latest example of how the battle for
sports audiences in an era of proliferating
choices on TV and the Internet is increasingly
turning to high-tech weaponry. An early example
was the blue spot that Fox Sports imposed upon
hockey pucks, giving them the illusion of comet tails as they whizzed across
the ice. Fox football commentator John Madden says he's pushing for an
electronically highlighted line of scrimmage, so fans can tell if players jump
offsides or commit other infractions.
Some football purists say they find the yellow line irritating. But it is getting
credit for simplifying the game and heightening its appeal for both veteran and
novice fans. "My wife now fully gets 'first down,' " says David Hill, president
of Fox Sports, which uses the yellow line on some its broadcasts too. "It's
demystified part of the game."
Generating the yellow line, which has been used in professional and college
broadcasts since fall 1998, requires a complex computer system trucked into
the stadium where a game is to be played. Sunday's Super Bowl XXXIV, on
Walt Disney Co.'s ABC network, will mark its first appearance in the National
Football League championship game.
To create the yellow line, Fox and ABC rely on Sportvision Inc., a New York
media company in which Fox is an investor. The system uses software to
"cut" a hole in the shape of the first-down line into the TV picture and then fill
it with yellow on the broadcast signal.
In cutting the hole, only the color of the field is removed in most cases. As a
result, players and referees can cross the line as if it were underfoot, and
numbers and insignia that are on the field in real life aren't discolored.
$20,000 Per Game
The yellow line isn't cheap, costing an estimated $20,000 per football game,
and requires well-timed maneuvers from a small squad of operatives. Before
the game, Sportvision technicians put sensors on the three main TV cameras
on the field. The camera movements are fed into a central computer. During
the game, a network spotter in the broadcast booth tells a technician where the
electronic first-down line should be located. The technician types the location
into the computer, which selects which pixels in the broadcast image to turn
yellow.
The whole process takes about 25 seconds. In one preseason game, a
technician typed in a bad coordinate but otherwise the system has operated
largely error-free this season.
A pioneer of the yellow line was ESPN, Disney's sports cable channel, which
signed a deal with Sportvision to use the yellow line in its Sunday night games
two seasons ago and discovered it was a big hit. After ESPN came Fox and
ABC's "Monday Night Football." Fox Sports Productions, another News Corp.
unit, has become an investor in Sportvision. "We did market research that
showed 92% of the audience wanted to see it on every game," says Bill
Squadron, a former News Corp. executive and now chief executive of
Sportvision.
In the new era of digital wizardry, TV producers face thorny ethical questions.
CBS Corp. recently took heat after it used technology from a company called
Princeton Video Image Inc., a Sportvision competitor, to alter a Times Square
billboard ad in New Year's coverage. The billboard, advertising the NBC
network, a unit of General Electric Co., would have appeared behind "CBS
Evening News" anchor Dan Rather. CBS electronically replaced the rival logo
with its own.
The NFL has made it clear to the networks that it doesn't object to the
first-down line but doesn't want stadium ads tampered with. Such alterations
of billboards have become commonplace in many local telecasts of baseball,
although not, so far, on national sports telecasts. The NFL is "cognizant of
protecting national advertisers," says CBS Sports president Sean McManus.
"They don't want us inserting or covering up any signs."
The technology has led to a legal battle between Sportvision and Princeton
Video Image. In October, Sportvision filed a patent infringement suit in U.S.
District Court in San Jose, Calif., against Princeton Video, claiming the
company has no right to use the technology. Princeton Video subsequently
responded that the Sportvision's patent is invalid. The suit is pending.
Fox's Mr. Hill says that although he and Mr. Madden have kicked around other
ways to use the yellow-line technology in broadcasts, he's wary about going
crazy with the graphics. "You have to know where to draw the line," he says.
Copyright ¸ 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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12:27 addendum - just noticed that this is the "serious thread." Sorry, Ramsey. I thought I was on the other thread !
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