During last night's telecast, something happened that I had never seen. Both the centerfield and the tight centerfield cameras were flaring so bad from the sun that neither camera was usable. It turns out the the cameras were being used on a new centerfield platform that was 10 feet higher than the previous centerfield position.
So for the first couple of innings each pitch was taken from the robotic camera located on the net behind home plate.
In a situation such as this, an adjustment to coverage was made that gave the telecast a different "look" than a usual telecast. The difference from the two camera angles (centerfield and behind home plate) is the pitch location is better shot from centerfield than behind home plate. The viewer is accustomed to the centerfield look and so are baseball producers and directors. But in this instance the coverage had to be altered. The home telecast will probably have to change the centerfield positions so that future telecasts will not be affected. Since we were on the back ened of a dual we rode the home feed. Tonight, we are solo so we instructed the truck engineers to place the two centerfield positions down one level on the platform.
A person who was greatly affected by the unusable cameras was the video "coach" of our club. He charts every pitch of every game and it is virtually impossible to chart pitches from a camera behind home plate. I received a call from the clubhouse in the bottom of the first inning and explained the problem. The video "coach" was worried that this would occur throughout the series until I explained that the cameras would be moved and there should not be a problem.