America’s Cup Telecasts Take Viewers Into Yachts

More than the races themselves, the America’s Cup is a spectacular sports telecast because of the technology involved, according to ESPN coordinating producer Jed Drake, who has been doing this sort of thing for nearly 10 years.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, a baseball game is a 3,” says Drake, “and this is a 12. This always is a challenge. But we’ve been doing it long enough that we’ve kind of got it figured out. The trick to doing this is to always do something better.”

Which this year includes more on-board microphones and cameras than ever.

“We expect every time this event comes around we’re going to do something new and different, or at least noticeably better,” said Drake. “The three things we’ve done that are noticeably better are the on-board pictures, the on-board audio and SailTrak.”

All of which keeps viewers interested, even if they - like most of us - have never touched a mainsail.

“The America’s Cup is really something special,” said ESPN analyst Gary Jobson, “even to people who can’t sail. First, you’ve got the unique feeling of what the sailors are talking about on board the boat. Second, with cameras aboard the boat, you get to see the competition. Three, it’s a slowly evolving drama that changes from day to day. We try to make sense out of it since sailors tend to speak in one-word sentences.”

Which makes ESPN host Jim Kelly’s job all the more difficult because, he said, “one of the things we’ve learned was that the most important microphones in this television show are on board the boats. My job is traffic cop - basically, to lay out and let the onboard microphones tell the story. Punctuation is the key for this ‘95 regatta, as opposed to when we started in Fremantle when the camera didn’t move. We didn’t have the technical bells and whistles. Now it’s more listening to the on-board microphones and helping explain what they’re talking about.”

The audiences, too, have become more sophisticated - as the sometimes-critical messages posted on America Online attest to. When ESPN failed to cover the end of Dennis Conner’s spectacular come-from-behind win last month (switching the telecast to sister network ESPN2), the e-mail lines went nuts.

“There’s an audience that’s grown to anticipate our coverage,” said Drake. “This isn’t just another yacht race; this is something special.”