Bryan Cooper

Bryan Cooper
Producer/Director of Flyers
Comcast

I made contact with Mr. Cooper for the station/programming profile. I emailed Neal Slotkin in attempt to contract someone with the Flyers and he got me in contact with Mr. Cooper. I will use Mr. Cooper entierly for my station/program profile.

Bryan Cooper is in charge of the preplanning for the game which involves planning not only the advertisements, in game announcer conversations and the topics of conversation but he is also responsible for making sure that all the cameras and technical aspects of the game are set up and in the places that they are supposed to be. Normally this job is split but as is one of the only director/producers in the league he does both. He got started around 20 years ago when he was picked up

What he likes most about his job is that every day is different. He is never going into work having to do the same thing he did the day before. He also said that there was something about being live that gave him a rush. That what he is doing is being shown live and there is no undo button if something goes wrong, they just have to move through it. Lastly he said that he has a passion for the sport and for the Flyers that makes it work coming into work every day. What he said he disliked the least was apathy. When he goes to away games he works with the crews they have at the stadium and he said he is most frustrated when he gets a crew who's heart isn't in it. As I said in my last post he believes that fans will be given the option to watch there team from many angles and from wherever they want to. Right now a fan of the Penguins who lives in New Jersey would only be able to get the Philly feed but in the future they will have the option to choose between both.

To get started he said that most people get into it through a part time position or an internship. His crew is rather small and he says most people get started working for a sports news show. He said the experience is important but that passion and knowledge of the game that you're doing helps a lot as well. He said that he has worked with many different crews and what really separates someone who's good in sports and someone who isn't is the passion and understanding they have for the game. You could be the best camera man in the world but if you don't understand the game of hockey the viewers aren't going to be impressed. He did not know of any Industry Journal/Trade Publication.

Flyers link
Behind the Scenes

No more channels?

There is a change happening in television today that is a real threat on television channels. When things like Hulu and OnDemand came out people realized that they no longer needed to be sitting in front of their television at exactly 9:00 on Tuesday evening in order to see the newest episode of LOST. Why, when viewers had the option, would they watch a show that may be interfering with another activity when they could just watch in on Hulu the next day? Many viewers wouldn't. I know personally that, except for LOST, I usually sit down whenever I have some free time and catch up on episodes that I've missed. Unfortunately for TV networks this is the way things seem to be going. With the emergence of Wifi enabled television sets what's going to stop viewers from simply going to Hulu.com and watching their favorite show? Many people who are against online viewing are so because of the quality and the tiny screen but when people have the option of viewing it on their big TV sets in clear quality I think they will become fans as well.

The way that this could impact the industry is that it could completely wipe out TV stations as we know them today if they aren't careful. The option to watch TV shows directly off of websites to peoples TV's is going to open a whole new option of viewing armature television. We all know that the site youtube, which is almost all viewer created content, is huge. What is going to keep people from using sites like youtube to create their own shows? And if the shows got bit why wouldn't Hulu offer to show them on their website? This could seriously lead to the end of channel lineups as we know it and the start of armature and independent creating shows and just putting them up on youtube. I think that this is going to have a great impact on the audience. Why would anyone want to search through and pay for television channels, for example the religious channel, if they can just pull up hulu and watch a show online. Or an even better idea. Why not use the OnDemand option. Instead of going onto the internet what if a company build in all the shows to an easy click option on the remote. So that in 10 years maybe there are no channels anymore. When you turn on your television it just sends you to a list of shows and it's your option what you want to watch. This is the way that television is going.

This has some relation to what Bryan Cooper (Flyers Producer) said to me that's going to happen to sports. He said that in the future of sports you are going to have the option to jump in front of your computer and watch any game you want, in any view you want, with which of the two feeds you want. Why not take this and move it directly to television. Say when you turn on your television and you scroll through all the option you decide to watch the Giants game so you click. What if then you were given the option to choose whether you would like the local Giants feed or the out of town Cowboys feed. Then what if they had cameras set up at various positions on the feels and you could choose which one you wanted to watch. Maybe have 3/4ths of the screen taken up by the main broadcast and then the right 4th taken up with three different angles of the game or maybe even three other games.


This relates to chapter 10 which is about webisodes. On pate 319 it talks about how professionally produced content appears daily on an equally impressive number of broadband vide channels. This is what the future of television will be. Instead of making a show for cable TV they will be making single shows to play only on Hulu or OnDemand.

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