ESPN VP Bryan Burns Discusses ESPN 3D Network
ESPN was represented at CES 2012 in Las Vegas with a large booth area, showing off a boxing ring and broadcasting an event in 3D. Some of the major cable networks, including ones like AT&T U-Verse, carry ESPN 3D to showcase some of the world’s biggest events in live 3D technology. Gaming Illustrated Editor Sean Gibson sat down with ESPN Vice President Bryan Burns, who runs ESPN 3D, and discussed various topics about 3D technology and ESPN’s strategy about the future of 3D in the home.
GI: Sean Gibson of Gaming Illustrated here at the ESPN 3D booth at CES 2012. If you could introduce yourself and your relationship with ESPN.
BB: My name is Bryan Burns. I effectively for the company run ESPN 3D. It’s about 30 of us that actually do that but it’s one person that has to bring it all together in that space, so I’m effectively in charge of ESPN 3D.
GI: I know a lot of the people behind 3D technology were really excited when ESPN announced that they were jumping into the space, pretty much as the first major player. How much of a leap of faith is it for ESPN to jump into dedicating an entire channel for 3D technology and programming?
BB: Well, leaps of faith are not foreign to us. I can recall very vividly almost ten years ago when we announced ESPN HD and people said “Are you crazy?”. Then I would say “Look to all your houses now and see what you’ve got in your house.” So this is not foreign territory to us. I wouldn’t say it wasn’t a leap of faith but it’s something that we normally do, because our whole mission in life is to serve sports fans, and as we’ve certainly seen this week when sports fans see what we do in 3D, what we hear is “Wow! Awesome! I’ve got to have that! I can’t believe this!” So we know we’re on the right track here.
GI: Now, I have AT&T U-verse, we get ESPN 3D so I’m familiar with it. Would you talk about the relationships you have with the cable networks and the adoption rate that you’ve had?
ESPN 3D Camera
BB: Well, the actual adoption rate, which to us is who we have contracts with, is running faster and higher and farther than HD at this stage. We have what we call 60 million “available to” households, and what that literally means is that we have deals in place with cable operators, satellite companies and telco operators that have 60 million available homes. In my case what that means, I live in Connecticut and we have a deal with Comcast, so the feeds and the wire are going by my house. I chose to go out to Best Buy and buy a TV, brought it home and I can get it. And that’s the big step that you have to take to get distribution – you have to first get it in the wire.
GI: Talk about the partners you have – college football, pro football, all the different sports. Certainly there’s new cameras to be installed in some of these stadiums. How much of a logistical nightmare or has it been easy to get the 3D cameras in place and making sure the cameras look up to ESPN’s quality?
BB: It’s been terribly hard but we’ve made some significant changes. The difficulty at first was that we were sending two trucks, two sets of cameras, two producers, two directors, two talents, two everything out into the field and to your point, many stadiums said “I just can’t go kill another 200 seats to put in cameras.” Our productions people, our operations people and technical people have basically invented something in the last six to eight months that we laughingly call “5D.” It’s kind of a joke – we call it 5D. What that means is we can now in some locations go in and take a 3D unit in, just one unit, and then pull the left-eye feed out of the truck and make that into our 2D HD feed for ESPN HD. We are doing our entire college basketball schedule, about 45 games, in 5D for both 2D and 3D and that’s a really significant change for us as far as the economics are concerned.
GI: 3D technology overall, I’m not quite sure what the adoption rate is for home consumers. For me, I’m a gamer, I’m a tech nerd – certainly we should be the highest pinnacle of your demographic. But can you speak to the demographics you’re really trying to reach at this point?
BB: Well, I think the demographics are almost going to be dictated to us. I think that when this first came out a couple of years ago that pretty much most of the consumer electronics industry was at “Buy a 3D TV.” That confused consumers because consumers thought they had to buy a 3D TV to get 3D programming of which there wasn’t very much. The reality of the situation is, is that you’re going to buy a good high-end HD TV with 3D inside and that’s a sea of change as far as perception’s concerned. We believe that there’s going to be an increasingly large percentage of sets that are going to have the 3D chip inside anyway. You might walk into a store to buy a screen for gaming or to fit a particular space in your house or some totally other reason, and then lo and behold there’s going to be a 3D chip inside; instead of coming onto us or Comcast or AT&T or DirecTV or whoever that convince you as a consumer that you should do whatever the plan is to get the 3D service when you have a 3D set.
GI: I’ve got a hard question for you – this is going to be like picking against your children here – but what of the sports that you cover would you say offers the best 3D experience?
BB: I get asked that question all the time and I’m not going to answer it specifically but somewhat generally because the best stuff for us is our own products, the Winter X and Summer X Games, and the reason for that is we own the events – we can put cameras where we want. And we can build the camera plan into the structure of the facilities rather than going into somebody else’s stadium and use what’s there. That gives us tremendous flexibility to get the most exciting shots for 3D and therefore the footage for our X products is probably the best we have.
GI: Once upon a time I used to do work with Andrew Feldman and Bernard Lee over with ESPN Poker, and I sat with them at the World Series Main Event one time, and I did get an opportunity to also talk to Norman Chad who thought poker in HD was ridiculous. But I’ll be honest – I would love to see the World Series of Poker in 3D. I would love to see those cards and chips fly right at me!
BB: We’re finding out that things happen that we don’t expect to happen that really brings sports to life, and that’s been the biggest thing we’ve found – it brings a presence as if you’re really there and that makes it really, really cool.
GI: Any final words here for all the big ESPN fans that have quickly adopted this 3D technology and are just really geeked about what ESPN is doing right now?
BB: Watch for more. I think we need to get our television situation solved and then start to work more on can we stream to a tablet, can we get in the gaming business, things of that nature that are important to you. And I think we’re on the verge of really starting to think about those things to make 3D a broader opportunity going forward.
GI: Well, thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate it.
BB: Alright, Sean, thanks so much.
