Live from Morgantown (via Bristol)

That's how NBC SN covers F1 currently as well; commentators watching the live video in a Charlotte studio. They do have a reporter at the event; not sure if he's with a team or just by himself and they contract with someone to do video of him. I would imagine the full broadcast crew goes to the race in Texas.
As for the ESPN basketball thing, I agree with others it sounds pretty disgusting and cheap. We know ESPN has the money; just look at the bowl season dollars. Like MC, my biggest issue would be ESPN trying to pretend their crew is there.

 

Been doing the same on some Mountain West games as well.

 

Yeah, they do. I see it on our budget every once in a while.

I hate it, especially when the reporters live tweet like they're at the event without mentioning they aren't there. It's disingenuous.

 

At some point, something will happen that bites the broadcaster in the butt for doing it this way. What if the coach is attacked by a fan off-camera? Or there's an earthquake? They might as well do a sports version of MST3K if they aren't going to send folks to the game.

 

A few years ago I had to make a long drive on Christmas Eve and, to give myself a break from Christmas carols, found the Hawaii Bowl on ESPN radio. They were simulcasting the TV audio. Saves money, but it was terrbile radio! How much could it have cost to hire a couple of local announcers (Hawaii was not playing), instead of flying over a crew?

 

I can't fault anyone for not going to West Virginia.

 

I'm not defending them by any stretch, because not having on-site announcers is low-rent at best, but the P-G story says ESPN did send a sideline reporter and a camera crew to Morgantown. So if some kind of news had happened, they had a presence in place. And I'm OK with that. As long as someone is there for the network, I don't think it's terribly egregious to have the play-by-play person in a studio elsewhere -- as long as they're not trying to mislead the viewer.

Which is a big caveat. Saying "Back here in Morgantown ..." is highly deceptive, but I'm going to give the guy the benefit of the doubt that he wasn't thinking about the implications of what he said. In front of a live microphone, even the best announcers sometimes misspeak. Of course, I didn't watch the game, so I don't know if his misstatement was part of a bigger plan to intentionally deceive the viewer.

Writing off TV, well ... sometimes you do what you have to do. If you take a byline (and you really shouldn't), you definitely don't take a dateline. And vice versa.

 

Didn't some guy get fired by the Sacramento Bee for "covering" a Giants game by watching it on TV?

 

I wish they had lost their video feed for 20 minutes. That would have been hilarious, try calling the game off Internet updates.