Painting scenes from far away
Radio broadcasters have been forced from courtside seats by the pandemic
Even after 34 years of broadcasting Robert Morris men’s basketball games, there’s still an indescribable feeling that overtakes Chris Shovlin every time he enters an arena.
But on a bitterly cold night in late January, the kind Shovlin often trudges through to reach those electric venues he savors, he takes a detour. Instead of heading into the UPMC Events Center, the Colonials’ lavish 21- month old arena, Shovlin crosses Massey Way on the school’s Moon campus and heads into an academic building. There, his office for the evening awaits.
It’s not the kind of courtside seat to which he’s accustomed, with a screaming and captive audience behind him. Rather, it’s a well-lit, 550-square-foot room out of which the university’s student radio station operates. Everything Shovlin needs is there — a microphone, a pair of producers, pages of notes and statistics and, most important, a 32-inch television airing Robert Morris’ game that night at Wright State, which Shovlin will be diligently detailing over the air almost 250 miles away.
“We start the pregame show and I don’t know if I’m going to be able to see the game or not …” — Chris Shovlin, Robert Morris announcer
Under normal circumstances, he would be there in southwestern Ohio, doing the job he has had for three decades. But these, of course, aren’t normal circumstances, and Shovlin isn’t the only person in his profession having to suddenly acclimate to them.
This season, as college basketball persists through the COVID-19 pandemic, the radio broadcast crews for Pittsburgh’s three Division I men’s basketball programs haven’t been traveling for road games as they
customarily do, an arrangement that provides them, literally, with a front-row seat to the action. Rather, they’ve been in various rooms across the Pittsburgh area, following the games on television screens as they narrate the action from afar.
While it’s part of a larger, national trend, its emergence in Pittsburgh would seem to be more jarring. Duquesne’s Ray Goss and Pitt’s Bill Hillgrove are the two longesttenured active Division I men’s basketball play-byplay announcers, in their 53rd and 52nd seasons, respectively, at their schools. Shovlin, who has been doing Robert Morris games since 1987, is the relative newcomer of the group.
But as their professional lives have changed so rapidly, they’re handling things the best they can.
“Through our voices, we’re transmitting pictures,” Shovlin said. “I think it helps when it’s an electric atmosphere and things are exciting and the place is packed. It helps build it up. When you’re sitting in a studio, there’s not that same excitement. You’re wondering, ‘Am I really generating that same experience for the audience?’ But when the game starts, I get as loud and excited as I would if we were in a traditional atmosphere. I hope it’s carrying over. I don’t know if it is.”
Though not identical, Hillgrove and Goss have similar arrangements to Shovlin’s. Hillgrove and broadcast partner Curtis Aiken have been calling games from Entercom’s studios in Green Tree, where they have three big-screen televisions and each member of the team has a computer showing stats in front of them. Goss and longtime color commentator Jarrett Durham have, like the program they cover, been more nomadic, moving from the Tobin Building on Duquesne’s campus to the nearby Cambria Hotel to the recently completed UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse.
The marvels of modern technology allow them to chronicle games taking place hundreds of miles away, but the setup has presented its share of difficulties.
Some are inherent to the endeavor. When a radio crew is courtside, for instance, they have access to the referees, who can explain a call to them. At the very least, they can see the official making a gesture, holding up fingers indicating an offending player’s number or verbalizing a call, even in a packed gym. Remotely, they don’t necessarily have that, as a camera might not be focusing on the referee.
Radio is a delicate act, requiring those practicing it to offer a picture to those who can’t see. Broadcasters are, as Hillgrove said, “the eyes of the listener.” For them, it’s a sacred duty. Over the past several months, the freedom radio usually offers has become something more cumbersome, tying a broadcaster’s call to decisions being made by television producers.
“We’re at the mercy of whatever and you’re guessing,” Hillgrove said. “Well, if you’re guessing, what’s the poor listener doing? Guessing even more. That’s the fear, that we’re not up on top of situations like we would be courtside or at the arena.”
Beyond that, there are occasional mishaps.
In some cases, the previous game on television went long and bled into the start of the window in which the local team’s game was supposed to air. On Feb. 20, a George Mason-VCU game went into overtime and the first few minutes of Duquesne’s game at Richmond weren’t anywhere to be found on television. They improvised, finding an online stream available through Richmond, but later in the matchup, with the online feed still being used, they only briefly caught Dukes standout Michael Hughes on the court injured before the cameras cut to the Richmond bench during a timeout. It wasn’t until Goss got home and watched the recording of the game on his television that he realized exactly what happened.
“I’m thinking the play’s over and they’re going to show what’s going on. They never did,” Goss said. “All they kept showing was the Richmond huddle. I’m thinking, ‘Why aren’t they showing that?’ ”
Even beyond those headaches, the concept of calling games remotely has been an adjustment for Hillgrove, Goss and Shovlin. Their decades of experience give them a reservoir of knowledge, insight and perspective, but over those years, they develop routines. They become used to what their job offers them and the myriad ways that shapes a
broadcast.
Typically, Shovlin arrives at a game at least two hours early, but for Robert Morris’ first road game this season, his director didn’t get to the studio until 30 minutes before tip-off. That was only the start of the anxieties.
“I still get this nervous feeling in my stomach when we get started because the stream I’m watching doesn’t start until like a minute before the game,” Shovlin said. “We start the pregame show and I don’t know if I’m going to be able to see the game or not and all of a sudden, magically, it appears.”
Rather quickly, the trio has adapted. Shovlin said he leans that much more on the central tenet of radio play-by-play, which is to simply say what you see. Goss sticks with the basics of the job as much as possible, too.
“It just kicks in,” Goss said. “It’s like swimming, I guess.
You always remember what to do.”
Still, as hard as they’ve tried, all three agree that the quality of their broadcasts has been impacted.
None of the three have met their respective team’s firstyear players aside from a stray postgame interview. On traditional road trips, they would be able to get to know these players over a meal at a restaurant or during a bus ride, asking about their families and their hometowns, and establishing a relationship with them while getting information they could incorporate on the air. Being courtside also puts them in proximity to comments made by players and coaches that often enhances the story of the game, something they don’t even get at home games, as health and safety protocols have put them in the arena’s upper levels.
“To be part of that and be
that close to the action, that’s a lot of good flavor for the listener,” Hillgrove said. “That’s been taken away from us.”
All of the changes haven’t been negative. Goss enjoys the clearer vantage point he gets from being higher in the arena for home games. The 84year-old doesn’t miss getting back in Pittsburgh at 2 a.m. after a long bus ride home from places like Dayton, Ohio, or St. Bonaventure, N.Y. Hillgrove said that by working remotely, he gets access to video replays he doesn’t see on-site.
But for whatever shortterm benefits they receive, there are long-term concerns — one in particular.
While not onerous, it costs money to send radio broadcast teams on the road. Even as they ride with the team on planes and buses, there are hotel rooms and meals, among other expenses. As athletic departments across the country feel the financial strain of the
COVID-19 pandemic, there’s a fear that they’ll decide that paying for a handful of extra people to travel is a cost that can be eliminated and that remote broadcasts, while not quite as good, are satisfactory.
“I don’t want to see it go that way,” Shovlin said. “There’s a magic in radio play-by-play where you’re creating a picture of what you see and what you feel. The feel is gone right now. There’s no feel to it right now. I hope that isn’t the case, but it’s in the back of our minds.”
As their seasons wind down — in Robert Morris’ case, it has already ended — they can’t preoccupy themselves too much with those thoughts. There’s still work to be done.
Early in Robert Morris’ 7970 loss at Wright State in late January, the television broadcast showed photos from the Colonials’ Northeast Conference championship victory last March, with a jubilant home arena embracing them as they earned a trip to the NCAA tournament. About 24 hours later, Utah Jazz star Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19, the NBA season was suspended and the American sports world shut down. Nothing from that night on would be the same.
Shovlin knows that well, calling the game that night from a room that curious students peek inside as they walk by. As the contest ends, the fake crowd noise blaring over the room’s speakers is silenced and he signs off, he finds solace in a less-thanideal situation. It could always be worse.
“That’s a weird way to watch a game,” he said. “But it’s better than having no game at all.”