Which one cost more to put on the Jumbotron?
In August, 2004, while working at the Sacramento River Cats, I was getting ready for a game with my technical producer: writing scripts, writing the inning playlist, updating the stats, building the group welcome signs for the matrix board, and creating Jumbotron stills for the game. We were using a $40,000 still store computer that, through the switcher, could call up the still boards to run on the Jumbotron — stills for headshots, promos, and various messages. A rule about baseball in stadiums with video boards: the boards must be completely static during game action. If they are not, the umpire will keep the game from continuing until the board is static, and can go so far as to call a forfeit if the board does not.
About two hours before the first pitch, the still store computer stopped working. Just stopped working. We rebooted it about a dozen times. We restarted the switcher. We unplugged and plugged things in. We re-routed cables to other switcher inputs. If we did not solve this problem, we would have had a board that spent the majority of the evening black. Much of that time was for advertisers who paid top dollar to be on a gigantic TV in front of 13,000 people. Going black was not an option.
We needed stills for the game. The stills were simple JPEGs created by a Mac and Photoshop at my desk. So I gathered up the 300+ stills and imported them into Microsoft Powerpoint. I found an old VGA to RF connector and plugged it into the switcher.
Voila . We had slides.
It was as if we never missed a beat. As far as any fans knew, there was not a single glitch with the video board. I don’t remember the name of the device that died on me, but I remember the price because I could not believe that a consumer grade PC and a $150 piece of software was doing exactly what a $40,000 lemon was supposed to do.
The next day, we switched to a Mac computer and Keynote because the transition effects were better. We used the Mac for the remainder of the season, about three weeks.
The lesson and answer to the question about the future: Content is king.
Technology is important, yes. Deployment is important, yes. Strategy and measurement are very important, yes. You can’t get the content to the viewer without these things. But, no viewer cares about how or why you put the content on the screen. A customer, after watching an outstanding advertisement, will never say, “That was cool. I wonder how that ad got on that TV?” Being in the right place at the right time only works if the content is perfect.
Over the past several months, I have seen a slow but steady growth in interest for quality content. With technology becoming a commodity, and measurement and value being figured out, these will become the platforms to optimal content execution. You can spend a million dollars on infrastructure, and another million on customer research. If your content is poor, customer engagement and impact is poor, and you have wasted a lot of money and time.
I left the River Cats at the end of the 2004 season. I never found out if they replaced the still store computer. If they did, I bet they didn’t spend 40 large.
(Thank you to Tom Catlin, Vice President of Creative Services with the L.A. Dodgers, for providing the headshot. He’s one of the best in the industry today, regardless of whether you love or hate Manny.)
