How to Add Awesome Crowd Noise to Your Radio Broadcast

Crowd noise play a crucial role in a successful radio play by play broadcast. These tips will help you add awesome crowd noise to your radio sports broadcast, so you can sound your best and put out a great product for your listeners!

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The Fastest Kid on the Block: The Marty Glickman Story
Call of the Game
Press Box Revolution: How Sports Reporting Has Changed Over the Past Thirty Years

As an aspiring or established sports broadcaster, a podcast is a great way to help you improve your skill and get your work out to the public! At Sportscasters Club, we use Buzzsprout to host our online radio show, most importantly because it is the easiest and quickest solution out there.
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(You also get a $20 Amazon gift card for trying out Buzzsprout)

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Transcript

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when broadcasting a game on radio, the crowd can have a huge impact in bringing your listener into the action. It can help them be excited. And today we will discuss some ways that you can have the best crowd noise

spk_1:   0:17
possible. Theo. Welcome to the Sportscasters Klub radio show, where it's all about becoming a better sportscaster on a better sports fan. And now your host, A man who began his sports broadcasting career way back in 1993. Rick Schulz Welcome back to the Sportscasters Club. Online radio show Sportscasters club dot com is where you find out all the information about what we do, whether it's our books. Our seven hour course are hundreds

spk_0:   1:10
of free articles, but right here on the online radio show, we talk about the topics that you ask us about and that are top of mind in the sports world. I am Rick Shoulds. Thanks for being here today. Last time we talked about the fact that sports are probably going to come back after the virus, they're probably going to return initially without fans in the seats, and it's gonna be strange. And in that episode, if you haven't listened to it. You can go back and listen to that episode because we talked about some of the ramifications, how it's gonna sound, how it might look, what are some things a sportscaster needs to take into account and how it might affect the players we touched on those topics last week. But this time we're talking about in good times. How do you get excellent crowd noise for your radio broadcast? How do you use that to make your broadcast sound better? We're talking specifically on radio before I get

spk_1:   2:08
into answering that question. Just want to remind you we have our free Facebook group. You can join us where we've got sportscasters and sports fans that collaborate, share ideas, ask

spk_0:   2:20
questions to each other. It's

spk_1:   2:22
a great place to network and learn more about the sportscasting industry. It's completely free. It's a Facebook group called the Sportscasters Club Community. So simply go to Facebook, search for the Sportscasters club community and join us in our free online group. You've got some great people from all around the country and all around the world is a matter of fact, and I like to hear their input. Sometimes I put questions out there. Sometimes they do, and it's a great place to be. So it's sportscasters club community on Facebook hope to see you there. So

spk_0:   2:55
last time we talked about no fans in the seats, What does that mean for broadcasters? What does it mean for players? Let's talk about a couple things you want to keep in mind when setting up your crowd Mike. And this is directed mainly at collegiate athletes or collegiate broadcasters, minor league baseball broadcasters, high school, everything other than the top level professional broadcasters. If you're the New York Yankee broadcaster, you've got an engineer who does this. If you're on the Mets broadcast, Chris Mankowski is handling all of this for you. You don't have to worry about it. But in the lower levels, the minor leagues, college sports, often times the play by play person is charges in charge of everything. They're the talent, the director, the engineer, everything all wrapped up into one neat little package. So, for example, when I was broadcasting professional baseball in the middle late nineties, I had my suitcase of equipment that I would log onto the team bus. I was responsible for taking it off the bus, and this thing was like £100. It had so much stuff in it and I would love this thing around. I can remember one day the handle broke. It was this big tan suitcase, hard shelled suitcase. Heavy is anything I could. And so then I had, Let's say we went on a week long road trip. I had all my normal belongings, my suitcase, you know, with my clothes, my toothbrush, all that stuff I had my carry on bag with. Maybe my scorebook Sports Illustrated, my CD player, my headphones, my Walkman. Back then, it was generally CDs in the middle late nineties, maybe a book to read. But then I had this third piece of equipment to carry. And when it was just me, really a pain because it was heavy, it was bulky. It was unsightly. It was just this huge thing. So imagine carrying those three bags if you're racing to catch a bus before it leaves. And, interestingly enough in the book Untold Tales From the Bush Leagues, there's a story about one of our fine broadcasters. Put the story in the book about when he, when he lost his his suitcase. He lost his equipment. That was a really cool story. And there's also a funny story and untold tales from the Bush leagues about one of the minor league broadcasters who the phone line wasn't working. So he had to sit in the team offices where he couldn't see the game, and he had to recreate the game from the team offices. So he had to get word pitch by pitch. They would send him little notes telling him what happened. I think they did it battered by batter, and he would see what the batter did. And then he would describe that action and make it seem as if he was watching it. So doing a recreation very much the way that Ronald Reagan used to in his early days before acting and before his presidential days. Ronald Reagan. If you google it, you'll find some great stories about Ronald Reagan doing the recreation, And Marty Glickman used to tell us about his days recreating baseball games from a studio where all he would get was the result of every pitch, and he would have to describe and make up in his imagination what was going on, and that story was included in the other one of the other books we published called Secrets of Sports. Broadcasting these books all by the way you can find on Amazon or IT sportscasters club dot com. But the reason I bring up those recreations because ah, broadcaster truly had to use their imagination all you would get his Strike one. And so it would be up to you to dress up that flowery descriptive terminology and language to keep your listener engaged. You would have to describe what kind of a pitch it waas what the batter did, what he looked like, what the fans were doing down below. As you look down towards the field, all of those things instead of being able to see it. A broadcaster broadcasting as a recreation has to imagine it first and then describe it because they're in essence, they're making it up. And in the earlier days of baseball on the radio, that's what happened a lot of the time. So that's that's a part of baseball. It's always fascinated me on the radio, those recreations, but when you're lucky enough to be in the stands and have a crowd a crowd can certainly help add a whole lot to your broadcast. The crowd can add ambiance. It can fill in a lot of the dead space. It can add excitement, intensity. It can give your listener a real feel that they're there. It does a whole lot to help bring the listener in, and it can also make you the broadcaster sound really good and on top of your game. For example, when you call a play a split second before the crowd reacts to it, it makes your listener have confidence in you. It lets them know that you're right on top of the action. For example, if I say spot ola right wing shoots from the three point line, good. If I say good and then you hear the crowd, you know I'm calling the action as it's happening. But if I say good two seconds after you already heard the crowd cheer, you lose confidence in me because you think I'm behind you. Think I can't keep up that I'm not accurate to what's going on and you'd be right. And so that's always a way to build. It builds suspense, especially in basketball, because when a guy shoots a long shot in basketball. What are you doing? When you're sitting in the seats, you're holding your breath. You're watching the ball travel through the air, you're waiting your anticipating, you're hoping and then boom. Either it's good or it's not good and the crowd reacts in kind. And that's what we want our listeners to do as well. In their imagination, we want them to be able to picture the ball whipping around the perimeter, and then a long shot from the left corner is up and it is good. We want them to have that tension and that anticipation and that drama, as they would have if they were in the park. You could say the same thing about a long fly ball. You could say the same thing about a close pitch. It's on the corner. And before the umpire makes a signal, you can say the same thing about Ah bang bang play at first base by staying right on the action and then using the crowd as a broadcaster, we can use that to intensify and illuminate our broadcast in the mind's eye of our listener. So how do you do that. How do you get the best crowd noise possible? Well, the crowd Mike is an interesting thing, as a as a minor league baseball broadcaster and as a college basketball announcer for Army at West Point. When I broadcast there in the late nineties, right at the turn right of the turn of 2000 I was in charge of setting up the crowd Mike. So I was in charge of setting up all the equipment, and you already heard the tale about my big suitcase in the minor leagues. Incidentally, that now is small, and everything is much more digital than it. Waas. But back then I had a big piece of equipment where I would actually turn and dial a number. Pretty interesting, right? But setting up the crowd Mike was usually the first thing I did when I started setting up the equipment so I would string the I had an extra microphone for the crowd. Mike. So on my on my equipment, I let's say I had three pots. I would turn up the volume on number one. That would be my headset, not number two would be my color analyst if I had one or a guest if they stopped in during the game. And let's say Number three would be my crowd Mike. And so I would try to get that crowd Mike, depending on where we were to the best spot possible. And there were some considerations I had to take. One of my favorite places ever to broadcast a baseball game was, well, Kona Park in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. They were a farm club of the New York Mets. Christopher Reeve used to come to the games and sit in the front row. This was after the Superman days. He was paralyzed at the time, but they had a spot. He was a regular fan. That really awesome to see Christopher Reeve, Superman at the Games and Pittsfield. It was just a great place to be in the summer and to broadcast games. It was, Ah, wooden rickety ballpark sat about 3200 fans, wooden ball park, all painted in blue and orange blue with orange trim. They had the seat cushions on the the expensive seats up front by expensive. I mean, probably five bucks, but but you got a seat cushion with that one. A new your Ah, Pittsfield met seat cushion, and I still have a couple of those Pittsfield met seat cushions to this day. They're out in my garage, and I use them a lot of times when I do gardening work or anything where I need to get down on the ground. But that is neither here nor there, and how I came to have them is neither here nor there. But I would always put my crowd mike at work on a park. We would broadcast up on top of the roof. That's where our broadcast perch. Waas. So I remember one year Connell McShane was doing radio the same Connell McShane you see now on Fox News and Fox Business on TV. He was doing radio for the Pittsfield Mets, so his broadcast booth was down below us in the grandstand and we would be up top on the roof, which I loved. Great vantage point. A lot of privacy. You were separated from everything. It was great, and I would go off to the left on the roof of the ballpark with some duct tape, and I would hang my little XLR directional microphone like a handheld microphone. Hang it right over the overhang over the lip of the the roof of the grandstand. So it so it protruded out and hung out over the field, and I would duct tape it down. So we got great crowd. Mike. We could hear the crack of the crap crowd. Sound sound. We could hear the crack of the bat. We could hear the fans. It was perfect, Great place. I loved us to set it up and take it down because I could get in the perfect spot to give us a great sounding crowd during the broadcast. There were other parks, however, where they didn't draw flies and there were no fans of the games. 50 fans, maybe. And in those instances, I had to be careful where I put the crowd. Mike. Same crowd, Mike. I would still put it somewhere and usually secure it with duct tape. Tape it somewhere where I wanted to get the crack of the bat. But for example, I remember in Utica there were a couple rowdy fans at Donovan Stadium, and by the third or fourth inning there, Saranac had a big presence there, uh, great beer from Utica. But the some of these fans would be 345 beers in by the third inning. And by having the crowd like down there, the possibility was very high. I was going to get some inappropriate language on my broadcast, and that's not just not something of I wanted to happen. Nor did my bosses at the station, because when it did in the commercial, I get a message from Bob Outer would say, Rick, you might want to move that crowd Mike, for something of that nature where I might hear about it the next morning with a phone call. But I would have toe put the crowd Mike in a place where it wasn't gonna pick up that rowdy fan cursing and swearing. But I would also get the crowd, so you have to sometimes take that into consideration where you put the crowd. Mike is important. Another important thing is the quality I always just used in XLR microphone, a directional handheld microphone, and I picked up a good crowd likes you can really get much better microphones now, but the one thing and yeah, I did it at times. Um, I used a headset at times, let's say, broadcasting farming basketball. There were times where, just because of the layout of where I waas having a second headset, I was okay. But that's really made to pick up a voice by the person who's wearing a headset with a little microphone that's not really made to pick up crowd noise. And so I I found it was a little more difficult to regulate that level throughout the course of a basketball broadcast to be where I wanted it. So I always found that that directional mike was best. With basketball, you can pick up the squeaking of the shoes football, depending on the size of the stadium. You know you can put it in a place and really get the crowd. And so that's the kind of microphone I always wanted. The placement is very important. Another important thing you want to consider when you place your crowd Mike and when you use it during the game is the tendency. I think for most broadcasters is toe have it too high because if you don't hear it, you just assume your listener can hear it. But that's actually not true at all. A little goes a long way with a crowd, Mike, and what I mean by that is just having it up a little bit, gives that ambient noise and makes the listener feel as though they're at the game. They can hear the sounds, but when you turn it up too high, it over powers you the broadcaster. And that just sounds bad. Sounds bad for you. It's hard to sometimes hear what you're saying. Hard toe. Hear your words and you're talking over the crowd, especially in the midst of a big play when the crowd naturally gets loud. Having a crowd Mike that's too high is a very common problem. You'd rather have a too low than too high you wanted in the middle because too low makes it sound like there's nobody there, which for a while there's going to be the case where there's nobody there right now as we come through this pandemic in the year 2020 but in a normal time, in a normal venue, regardless of the sport, you wanna have that volume right in that middle zone, so it's got enough crowd noise to bring your listener in, but it's not overpowering you. That's really and no, no, you don't want it too high. And if you think it's perfect, most times turn it down just a little bit because it's usually a little higher to the listener and the crowd. Noise is a little more to the listener than it is to you, the broadcaster with a pair pair of headphones on with a headset on. So I turned it down a little bit and the third key to having good crowd noises to use it to amplify your broadcasts. I kind of mentioned this before, but you really want to stay ahead of the game. You can't have something happening on the game during the game and having the crowd react before you describe it. Unless it's something completely out of the blue that you weren't anticipating and couldn't be anticipated. So you always want to be describing the action as it's happening. And when I say you know, Bobby Moore sets and he delivers fastball on the inside corner, strike one. I wanna be able to say that before you hear the crowd react to it, or I want to be able to say the pitch is on his way before you hear the crack of the bat because that gives you confidence in me. You always want to be. We're talking radio specifically. You never want to have a crowd react and a really overtly loud way. And you not describe it because then the listeners going toe wonder, What am I missing? Sometimes this can happen. Let's say if the fans are doing the wave, which they used to do, it's not as common these days as it wasn't, Let's say the eighties, but you would be listened to a radio broadcast and then you hear a loud roar and then you hear it get quiet again. You know, in the middle of ah, of an inning when the pitch wasn't being delivered. Fans knew at that time that it was the way from sometimes a broadcaster could mention that, But as a broadcaster, if you hear a loud increase in the crowd noise, for whatever reason, you want to bring your listener in and describe what's happening. So I could. I mentioned the example of Christopher Reeve a minute ago and maybe, let's say, during a slow period of the game, maybe they they go down and present an award to Christopher Reeve or they acknowledge a fan or ah ah, fan makes a great catch of a foul ball and the crowd goes crazy. You want to describe what's going on to your listener, because otherwise they're gonna be wondering what they're missing. And you never want to put that imaginary line that tells the listener you're not at the game because that sends a subliminal message that you're missing something by listening on the radio. We always want them to feel like they're not missing anything by listening on the radio. Sure, you can't see it, but we're describing all the pertinent information to them. And so we want to let their imagination run with it and let them picture the game as you describe it in their own mind. But you want to make sure that they they're seeing everything that someone at the game would see. So if the crowd gets really loud because the hot dog vendor did ah ah, flip over on the right side concourse and they all got excited by that And your fans, your listeners here, a big commotion being made by the crowd. You want to tell them why? Because even if it's not part of the game. It's something they would notice if they were in the stands, and they certainly hear it. So that's a key. That's definitely an important thing to keep in mind. So you want to use a quality mike. You don't want to let the crowd overpower you and you want to stay ahead of the crowd. But using feeds three keys, I think it's really going to help you use the crowd to your advantage. And the goal, obviously, is to produce the best broadcast possible for your listener. When I come back, we wrap it up. Are you searching for one on one coaching to take your sports broadcasting career to the next level? Visit the coaching section on our Web site. Sportscasters club dot com.

spk_1:   21:53
Well, it's hard to believe another scintillating episode of sportscasters put online radio show is about to come to its

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end. I want to thank everyone that sent in questions over the course of the months, questions that you've sent in, that we've answered, hear on the radio program and you can send them to questions at sportscasters club dot com. We love to answer your questions, and we got some great interviews lined up, a swell that we're gonna have for you whether they be media professionals, broadcasters. But this

spk_1:   22:26
is certainly a place that you can learn from others and learn how to be a better broadcaster and a better sports fan. So thank you very much for listening to this two part series. Last week we talked about sports

spk_0:   22:38
starting back up with no fans in the seats.

spk_1:   22:40
Today we talked about how to achieve the best crowd noise possible for your radio broadcasts. I hope you've learned some things. If there's anything else you want to touch on, shoot us an email and let us know. And certainly you can find a lot more of our information at sportscasters club dot com. I am Rick Schulz. Thanks for listening and will talk to you next time. Thanks for listening to The Sportscasters Klub radio show at sportscasters club dot com. Don't forget to subscribe, so you will never miss an episode. And thanks for liking sharing, boasting reviews and spreading the word