Convo: Neil Goldberg

ESPN's senior motorsports producer, Neil Goldberg, has a lengthy legacy in NASCAR television coverage, ranging back to the earliest days when ESPN played a huge role in developing NASCAR's fan following, through a stint at FOX Sports when ESPN took a brief hiatus from covering the sport.

Q: What's the biggest difference you see between ESPN then, back in the early 1980s, and what the network brings to the table now, week to week?

ESPN

Neil Goldberg

• ESPN returns with innovations

Goldberg: As I've said before, the one thing that stays the same is the people behind all of this stuff; that can bring the stories and the technology to bear. But the resources that we have, to really better document and support the stories that we've been trying to tell and the things we've been trying to cover, for all these years, is the biggest difference.

I'm sitting here with my co-producer Jamie Shiftan, and we were talking about making lists years ago -- for me the '80s and '90s, and for Jamie the '90s -- of the things we'd like to do, but the technology didn't exist for us to do it, whether it be computer interfaces or GPS.

But now we're able to take this technology and really ... I kind of look at our broadcast as servicing the multiple platforms that ESPN has on the air at the same time -- whether it be the viewer that just wants to keep their eye glued to a scoring ticker so they know where their driver's running all the time, or the person that wants to be educated, and for them we can run animations. So the technology now exists to support what [analysts] Rusty [Wallace] and Andy [Petree] and Doc [Dr. Jerry Punch] and what our pit announcers are saying or a crew chief is saying on pit road, to further explain and enhance what we're trying to do in the telecast -- and that's the biggest difference.

That, as well as the pure number of cameras we now have to document the race and the little incidents that happen in the race, whether it be on pit road -- the mistakes or the victories -- that happen during the race, all the stories within the story.

Q: Just for a ballpark comparison, how many cameras would have been used for the inaugural Watkins Glen Cup race in 1986, and how many were used a couple weeks ago when the series raced at The Glen?

Goldberg: For the inaugural at Watkins Glen, I would say we'd call it -- if you took all the onboard cameras and the aerial shot -- between 30 to 35 cameras. That's camera lenses, and when I say that, I mean there were three camera lenses in each onboard, so we had an option of three different shots from each onboard, but only one feed coming out at a time.

For the last race at The Glen, we had 60 camera lenses -- so it was easily double.

Q: Looking at then and now, again -- would you say your viewers today are savvier and more critical, whereas before they were just thrilled to have the coverage they were getting?

Goldberg: No, I would say they were just as critical, at least through my years. The people watching motorsports, particular NASCAR, have always generated the most viewer mail. At least it used to be mail -- and then, when the Internet came, there's been more fan feedback than any other sport that I've ever been involved in.

So they're just as critical. And I think they're just as savvy, but I think they've become more television savvy -- and more demanding now. I think they were a little bit more forgiving back then. While their passions rose just as high, I think they were more forgiving because TV was just TV back then, and we had what we had.

But now it's to the point where we're almost our own worst enemy because we continue with the technology across the entire network, whether it's Major League Baseball or Monday Night Football, we spoil the fans because we're just as passionate in our sports coverage as they are in getting their sports coverage, so they expect more out of us.

Q: How was the "draft tracker" created, what goes into creating that image on the screen and after a few races with it, what have you figured out about using it most effectively?

Goldberg: Our executive producer, Jed Drake, has been working with these technologies for years, whether it be the first-and-10 line in football, K zone -- which you see on baseball -- and he's had this image for quite some time, which he'll tell you.

And really, that's what we do -- we come up with ideas and we figure out how to implement them. We look at what we're doing, within our broadcast across the network, and the things we talk about the most, and then we try to figure out better ways to explain it. We're a visual medium, and so much of what we talk about at racetracks is invisible to people, whether it be the internal parts of an engine, or the art of drafting, or aero loose, or aero tight. So that was the genesis of 'what's the next step?'

As far as the technology behind it, through SportVision and GPS and being able to locate the cars on the track, and computative fluid dynamics -- an easier term for that you hear is CFD data -- it's a lot of science that takes the image of the car on the track, locates it and then this image, this graphic image of airflow, which is created through wind tunnel testing and CFD data, is locked into our picture.

So we're taking several different types of images and locking them together. So that's the science behind it. As far as the practical use, and what we learned on the air in Indianapolis in our first foray on the air with it is how do we use it to simply talk about the things that we talk about every day on the broadcast, whether it be drafting or a car getting loose.

At Pocono, I thought it was a big step for us because I thought we had some comparative things that we looked at, like a pass where a car was running in the draft, pulled out and got airflow on the nose to help it to turn -- and we could compare it to a completely different type of pass with different dynamics, where Kurt Busch, I think it was, used momentum to make the pass.

So those are the things we're trying to do. We're trying to be able to explain what dirty air or clean air is, when we talk about it, and how with car position it can have a different effect.

Q: Back at the end of July, Tony Stewart was taken to task for some comments he made and he criticized ESPN and its coverage at Pocono. What was your response?

Goldberg: I love Tony Stewart and Tony Stewart has called out everybody in [the media center] at one time or another. Tony is great for the sport. He's a hard-nosed racer, he goes out there to do a job and he's going to say what he's going to say. Nobody controls what Tony says. We're all professionals and everything always works out. He will make his choices and everything will be fine.

Q: What is your take on using delays in your broadcasts, given you have in-race reporters, drivers who are wired for sound and also in-race crew chief segments?

Goldberg: The use of delays is a network decision, and ABC, ESPN and NBC do different things. The networks handle different things in different ways. Right now, our approach is that when we are stepping into the driver's world -- when we're eavesdropping on the radio -- to allow the fans to hear the ongoing drama between the teams and the drivers, while they're racing -- we run that through an internal delay in the [production] truck.

That's in consideration for the teams, because we do get to step into their world and eavesdrop on their world; and it's in consideration of our viewers. Outside of that, the drivers have got to take responsibility for what they do -- and usually we're in situations where they're well aware of what they're doing.

So again, those are internal decisions that the network evaluates every week on how we want to approach those things, so we do use delays when we're walking into their world.

As far as in-race reporter is concerned, that's a great feature that Jamie Shiftan came up with. It's something that we've been doing a long time -- talking to drivers -- but to have a driver actually focus his attention on helping us, and again, we do it in a non-intrusive way and we ask the crew chief if it's a good time.

He'll give us the green light and the driver knows we'll be talking to him, as well as the crew chief, and away we go. As far as delays on that, the driver knows what we're doing and we're not surprising him with anything. And with the crew chief, again, the lips have to match the picture, so we don't delay that.

They know they're a part of the telecast at that time and they do take the responsibility to present themselves in the appropriate manners. And the in-race reporter has been fantastic because now we can focus our attention on a driver during the race and good or bad we kind of get to live the race through his eyes on how his own race is developing, or how the race for the guys around him is developing.

It gives us first-hand information that our experts then talk about, which they know through their experiences, but they're not living them on the track at that time, like the in-race reporter is. It's been brilliant for us and exciting for them.

They started out saying, 'Yeah, we'd like to do that.' And now, Jamie's got drivers getting on a list, and they're knocking on our door because they want to be involved because they're as excited as we are to bring the race fan one step closer to the sport.

And I truly believe it's not about a driver saying, 'It's good for my sponsor' -- it's about them wanting to be involved in the race and in the broadcast and to really embrace the fan.

Q: In the simplest way, what are you trying to do with technology?

Goldberg: What we try to do is create images that can better explain to people what they're seeing on the screen. And we'll continue to get better at the explanations -- because it is complicated stuff -- and we need to kind of unwind if from being complicated in our explanation. And I thought we took a very good step in that direction, for example, at Pocono.

Q: It sounds like imagination is your only limit, so what's the next bell or whistle or technological marvel on the horizon for you and the gang at ESPN that you'd like to present to the viewers?

Goldberg: I think I said this the other day, that we're constantly thinking of the next thing, but right now, with things like draft track and another graphic that we debuted in Daytona that we've now refined, which is a pointer graphic that shows cars running in a tight or a loose condition, as well.

That's a graphic that will literally meter what type of condition the car is running in. So we're really trying to combine all those technologies to support what we're doing, with the tech center and the touch screens for the internal parts of the engine, I think, right now is growing those technologies.

Right now we have a touch-screen engine where we can go in and show what happens when there's an engine failure, which we could never physically show people before -- we could only talk about it. I want to get into the car chassis and transmissions, and start to build those images into our touch screen animations and really grow our tools so we can really explain these things to the viewers.

There are a lot of things I have on my slate, as far as where I want to go with the GPS data and some of the information that we gather through our SportVision group, whether it be how the lines on the track change during a long run, for different cars -- and how some get better and some get worse -- and being able to track that and make better predictions during the race of what we're going to see 30 laps from now.

So that's the direction I think we're focusing on now, and not really what's the next technology tool. Our technology tools kind of fill a need -- like, Jamie and I are on a four-hour drive up to The Glen, and we talk about things we do during a telecast.

And out of conversations like that, comes, 'How do we better explain that?' That's usually when we turn to technology and say, 'How can we graphically show this?' Or, 'How can we do this as a feature?'

In the end game, we want to be able to do it with our live, real-time pictures because the less we can step away from the race to explain these things and the more we can do them real-time, that's where the answer is to us.

Q: People have complained about switching the shot after the checkered flag to a standard celebration shot on pit road versus watching 'their favorite driver' cross the finish line, or missing a great race for position that was covered right up until the end of the race. What are you doing, there?

Goldberg: We did just that at Pocono. We held our Turn 1 camera on the start/finish line as the cars finished and we had our drop-down [finishing order] in place. We made a quick adjustment to address that and that's something we've always done.

In fact, that drop-down graphic we use as the cars finish is something I actually came up with years ago -- in the early days with ESPN -- and we want to continue to do that.

At The Brickyard we knew when Tony [Stewart] crossed the finish line the stands and the crew was going to go nuts. It's a fine line sometimes about capturing that moment of victory, because there's one winner and 42 losers.

And I think we kind of got caught up in that at Indianapolis. In hindsight, we always examine what we did and we react and make changes where we feel it's appropriate. And in this case it's certainly appropriate that we make changes and come up with ways to do both.

We have them and we're developing other ways to be more creative in how we can cover the finish and the victory and the celebration at the same time, and we'll continue to do so. Each situation is going to be different and how we cover the finish to show them all coming across the line will be different.

Sometimes you'll see the winner cross the line, with all the cars to follow and the drop-down with the finishing order. Other times we'll have the drop-down, but we'll cut back to one of our other cameras, maybe coming off Turn 4 to the battle for seventh and eighth that's been raging for the last three laps, to carry them to the line.

And then, there will be other times when we'll have a multi-box on the screen where you'll see the winner and the celebration, and then all the other cars crossing the finish line. So depending on the situation that's happening on the track and the nature of the race, we will do that and we'll do it in several different ways.

Q: What's your biggest challenge in a broadcast day -- do you come prepared for anything and expecting the worst, do you have a script -- or how does that work?

Goldberg: We've got a huge team and we've got unbelievable resources, whether it be feature material or sound bites. Through the course of a weekend, I think the biggest challenge is the long days. The race is the easy part.

Going from a practice to a qualifying to another practice to a Busch race -- there are times when we're on the air from 11 o'clock in the morning to 6:30 in the evening without a break.

And for a production person that's a long day -- but if you think about cameramen that are spinning cameras around or running around with cameras on their shoulders, or the pit reporters that are going back and forth between the garages and from a Cup practice to a Busch practice or a qualifying show -- and having to have all these notes prepared -- it's a huge challenge.

We have material that can really support that, and the greater the event we're prepared to leave the material on the table [unused], because if the race doesn't need the support of that kind of material, all the better.

As far as being scripted, we have very well thought-out plans of the things and topics we want to discuss and all the different things we want to attack during the weekend, whether it's a practice show, qualifying or the race.

We're scripted going in, we have a hit list and the way we want to come on the air and the way we want to set it up -- and then we have a toolbox of stories and things we can use that we're going to follow that will impact the weekend or the season.

We have this toolbox, and if the script goes out the window, now we react to the changing conditions and stories as they develop and we try to support them through pictures, elements we pre-produce and the live action on the track and in the garage area.