Green is Universal: Football Goes Green

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Football Goes Green

Posted at 01:07 PM on November 05, 2007 comments (2)

By Joe Gesue, Football Night in America

football nite On Sunday, NBC's Football Night in America went "green." The behind-the-scenes story from editorial director Joe Gesue.

... after brainstorming ideas (does this mean we have to do extended highlights on the Eagles and Jets -- teams in green uniforms?) -- we figured one way to send a real message was to turn off the lights at the end of Football Night in America, and keep them off right through halftime and the postgame. This sent our information team back to their physics textbooks and web sites to calculate how much energy we could conserve (requiring refreshers on kilowatt hours and reviews of power company press releases), and how to explain the numbers in comprehensible terms.

So at the same time we were breaking down Brady and Manning in their head to head matchups, and all the various records the sensational rookie running back Adrian Peterson was smashing, we were learning that 4 hours of power down in the studio could conserve about the same amount of energy it takes to power an average home for a month.

As it turned out, our hosts and analysts had fun with the "lights out" portion of the shows while introducing our viewers to the company's plans for the upcoming week. Bob ("As you see, we're in the dark, and I mean more than usual."), Cris ("they finally got our lighting right"), and Keith ("Collinsworth stole my wallet!") all ripped off good lines in between delivering information and while lit only by flashlights and candles.

There were some logistical hurdles, for sure: it's difficult to read highlight copy in the dark, and on a set as large and complex as ours in Studio 8G, you have to walk carefully to avoid bumping into a colleague or an unforgiving piece of equipment.

In the control room, one of the big events was connecting Bob in New York with Matt Lauer, who was in place north of the Arctic Circle in Greenland. Bob had some fun with the sled dogs in the background behind Matt, hoping they were of the friendly sort. Matt quickly shot back that he was prepping for a cover shoot for "Dog Sledders Monthly".

In the end, preparing to kickoff the Green is Universal initiative on Football Night led to some small but tangible results. A number of staffers took mass transit to work instead of driving, hopping on a subway or taking Metro North from the suburbs. At least one started studying his electric bills going back several months looking for trends and ways to save. And even though we'll go back to business as usual next week, with the lights on during our football studio shows, we will be turning the lights off in between shows, something we didn't think do in the past until, during our preparation for tonight's show, we determined that doing so will have a positive impact.

Joe Gesue
Football Night in America
http://www.nbcsports.com

comments

Posted by: Matthew Adams on November 5, 2007 03:25 PM

Although I appreciate the sentiment, I think that by turning off the lights you are telling America that they need to go without in order to be "green." This is not the case. Instead of going without lighting for the show (and making little wise cracks about it), you should have used Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFL) which operator at a one-fifth to a quarter of the operating energy of incandescent lights.

And if instead of telling viewers to also turn off their lights during the game, you told them to change just one of their light bulbs to a CFL- you could have save enough energy to power over 40,000 homes for a whole year instead of the 2,000 homes for a month that you mentioned in your broadcast. Here is my math (and please feel free to check it- no physics textbooks needed!):

If all your viewers (estimated at 7.6 million per a press release on the NBC website) changed one 60 watt light bulb with a CFL, they would be saving 45 Watts (75% of 60W). If they used that light bulb 4 hours everyday, each viewer would individually save 65.7 kilowatt-hours per year. Over your entire viewership, the yearly savings would be 473.04 million kilowatt-hours. This energy savings could power 44,391 homes for a full year (assuming an average yearly household energy usage of 10,656 kilowatt-hours as found on the Internet).

Posted by: Ben Rushing on November 5, 2007 06:43 PM

I like how you could only find one comment that agrees with you. The idea to "GO GREEN" was ill-informed and makes no difference in the vast sceme of things. Your network's efforts are the equivalent of bringing only a nife to a gun fight. If you really wanted to save the planet you would quit broadcasting and go into producing organic food for yourselves.