The entire world has changed this past year amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. One of those aspects of change has been working in the world of sports media. Chris Famularo is a Robotic Camera\/Jib operator at SportsNet New York (SNY) and a recent graduate of Seton Hall University. Throughout the global pandemic, Famularo has worked as part of the crew for SNY and has had his job impacted greatly. I spoke with him about the ups and the downs, and his overall experience of working in the sports media world during a global pandemic<\/p>\n
Liam Plate: Can you give us an overview of your position at SNY?<\/strong><\/p>\n Chris Famularo:<\/strong> Sure. So, I\u2019m really\u2026in the business, I would really be called a utility operator, but primarily, I do a lot of camera operation. Both robotically and on a piece of equipment called a jib. But I am able to do a number of different positions between camera operation, I\u2019m a stage manager, an audio assistant. I am a playback operator, a dyno operator. I can do a number of different positions, but primarily I am a camera operator.<\/p>\n LP: I know you had an internship there, but when did you get started at SNY?<\/strong><\/p>\n CF:<\/strong> I started as an intern in January of 2019 and spent the whole semester there from January to May. Then, in the end of June is when I started as a member of the crew as freelance, and I started as a stage manager and A2 (Audio 2). And was really only doing that for the first half of the summer. Then, the second half and closer into the fall is when I got into camera operation.<\/p>\n LP: How did SNY handle the hit of the COVID-19 pandemic?<\/strong><\/p>\n CF:<\/strong> It was\u2026we\u2019ve all been joking about and saying it, but it\u2019s about a year now since everything happened and immediately, we knew something was up when New York was shutting down incredibly fast. New York City alone really exploded in March and it was a little nerve wracking going into work those last two days. That Thursday and Friday, I worked before we shut down for what we thought was going to be a two-week hiatus. That\u2019s how we began as many people did. \u201cYou know, you\u2019re just going to be home for two weeks. Clear out the air. Clean some stuff.\u201d Then three days into that two-week hiatus, we learned that this is going to be going on for an indefinite amount of time and as someone along with a lot of my colleagues who have to be on location. Our positions: we cannot make television from home. So, we knew that this was going to be rough. Nobody knew when we were going to be back. Everything we were based on with SNY being a regional sports network and the primary television provider of the New York Mets. We were waiting to hear what MLB was going to do and when MLB was going to allow for baseball teams to play again, where they were going to play, and how it\u2019s going to be handled. So, we were just idly waiting for MLB to drag their feet to any conclusion. And granted, this was also going on with contract negotiations with the Players\u2019 Association. So, not only were we dealing with COVID, but we were also dealing with the fact that the players and the league weren\u2019t able to make up their mind on how they were going to handle the situation, and rightfully so. That\u2019s a very delicate subject. It was handled with, I\u2019m sure, the utmost care but we had to wait until July. It was Fourth of July weekend, actually, when we went back to work because we needed to give ourselves two weeks to prepare for the opening of the \u201crevival\u201d or the true release of the baseball season. And we came back with a lot of precautions. We had to wear masks just as much as anybody does. We had to wear mask the entire time, still do. We have to follow a traffic flow. We have to send in a temperature awareness thing before we go to work every day to make sure we don\u2019t have any symptoms, any fevers, stuff like that. It\u2019s basically just following all the precautions laid out by SNY and SNY has done a very good job of making sure that we all stay safe.<\/p>\n LP: MLB definitely took the longest out of any major sports league to figure out what they\u2019re and I think they didn\u2019t handle it the best, what did you think?<\/strong><\/p>\n CF:<\/strong> I would agree MLB was the slowest and least likely we thought something was going to come. It was like they had a meeting. It didn\u2019t go well. They\u2019re going to have another meeting in a week, that meeting doesn\u2019t go well. They\u2019re going to have another meeting, Oh, we might not have a season. Oh wait, we might have a season. It might be closer to regular length. It might not. It was just a bunch of hearsay and then you\u2019re waking up every day like \u201cman, when am I going to be able to go back and do what I want to do and make television?\u201d Plus, baseball season is it for SNY. It is what we pride ourselves on. Not that we don\u2019t pride ourselves on every production that we make, but it\u2019s baseball season. We are the primary providers of the New York Mets. We do pre- and post-game shows, we get exclusive interviews. We have exclusivity for this team. So, you want to get back in there and get to work and do what you can do. But basically, the month of May and June was just \u201cthey got a meeting, we\u2019ll hear what they say. It didn\u2019t go well. They don\u2019t know what they want. We\u2019ll let you know.\u201d That\u2019s what it was.<\/p>\n LP: Were you guys able to do any virtual work?<\/strong><\/p>\n CF:<\/strong> Realistically, no. Since I am on the crew with my colleagues, the ones that I closely work with, I\u2019m colleagues a lot of people like on the edit and production team. But for my close colleagues on the crew, there was nothing for us to do. We were just waiting for our superiors to let us know when we can get back in the studio because we have to get ready for this new environment that we are going to be operating in. My job that I got hired as a stage manager. It was a stage manager\/audio assistant position. So, I was directing floor traffic, but I was also preparing audio equipment, I was miking talent up. The pandemic eliminated the position. It is no longer a thing anymore at SNY because you can\u2019t get within six feet of people. You\u2019re not supposed to be physically interacting with another person. We all had to learn how to properly clean all the equipment, sanitize stuff, and being weary of how close we are to one another. Our pre-show meetings now are done wither separately or over headset. That\u2019s completely different from how it was before. Before, we would have pre-show meetings before every single one and people would be interacting with one another. It\u2019s affected how everybody works, how we interact with each other, how our daily job is done now. We have to clean-touch-clean every single thing that we do, and we have to keep social distance, and keep our masks on all the time. Everything is done for our precaution but it\u2019s obviously very different from when I was introduced in the world of television-making. It\u2019s the world we live in now, so I guess there\u2019s no changing it.<\/p>\n LP: You might have touched on it a little bit, but what are the biggest differences between doing your job pre-COVID compared to now?<\/strong><\/p>\n CF:<\/strong> Well, it\u2019s interesting because sometimes there are finite differences where it\u2019s like you can\u2019t be within six feet of each other, you have to keep a mask on. It\u2019s not like anyone has any problems with that because we all understand why. It kind of changes how we worked with one another. It felt a little bit more close-knit. I was able to interact with the talent a little bit more because miking someone up, it\u2019s intimate in a professional sense of like you are close with another person. You get to talk with them and just kind of ask them how their day is. That doesn\u2019t happen really anymore. I still do stuff on the floor when I\u2019m the jib operator, but even then, I\u2019m just staying by where my jib is and I\u2019m focusing on that and talking to someone from across the floor. That\u2019s kind of it, but even now anytime we have a change of season or new content that comes in, we have to do rehearsals and pre-show meetings and stuff like that. Now, positions get merged or they get eliminated or we\u2019ll have to get put into new positions and we have people learning new stuff. It changes even how when you\u2019re training someone. I know it\u2019s crazy to think, but I\u2019m at the point now where I\u2019m training people on positions. Even then, it\u2019s like we have room occupancy limitations like we can only have a certain amount of people in the room to keep that social distance. Then when you\u2019re trying to teach someone a position, I have to be on this side of the room and they\u2019re of there and I\u2019m trying to teach you how to operate a camera robotically. I would love to just show you what I\u2019m talking about, but I can\u2019t. I think that\u2019s the finer details that\u2019s really change because ultimately the job has not changed. We\u2019re still making television. We\u2019re still putting stuff on screen and trying to entertain and inform our viewers, but the finer details\u2026the behind-the-scenes stuff is what has changed. On-screen\u2026I mean sure our talent are six feet apart now and people wear masks in between on commercial break. And you see it everywhere whether it\u2019s on location for basketball, people have plexiglass in between them or the NFL broadcasts they were doing remotely. That\u2019s the kind of stuff that you\u2019re forced to see because we still want to see those talent. At the end of the day, the job has not changed. It\u2019s just kind of how we operate has changed.<\/p>\n LP: Out of all the changes, what has been the most difficult adjustment to working in the pandemic?<\/strong><\/p>\n CF:<\/strong> I think, more so it\u2019s\u2026I don\u2019t know what the greatest challenge would be. I think it\u2019s more so\u2026it\u2019s weird to say right? Because technically the pandemic is still going on, but for me I have been back to work since July. It\u2019ll be, what, eight, nine, or 10 months at this point. So, it\u2019s weird because we\u2019re in a sense of like when are we going to reach that sense of normalcy? Because we\u2019re still operating on the restrictions and stuff like that that have come in place early on in our return to work. You would assume the longer you go and the better the situation gets in your workplace that things would evolve with the changes, but mostly, I\u2019m assuming, for precautions we\u2019ve stuck with the rules that have been set since day one when we returned. Flow of traffic around the building: it sounds reasonable at first, but then when you work in the television industry, you understand that your breaks can be as small as one minute and say those are your only time to problem solve or you got to replace a battery on a microphone or something else. Troubleshooting a camera or anything really. A minute is not a lot of time so, say you need to go get something out of a closet that you can fix this with. You have to follow the rule of traffic all the way around the building to get back to your studio. I guess that might be the biggest issue is the fact of like when it comes to troubleshooting or problem solving and having to abide by this flow of traffic that was put in by our company to ensure our safety. That\u2019s a pretty small thing to complain about.<\/p>\n LP: Kind of looking at the flip side, do any of the procedures make your job easier than before or is it just different?<\/strong><\/p>\n CF:<\/strong> Yeah, it\u2019s just different. I think it\u2019s kind of limited\u2026going back to the miking up part talent, right? That was one of the primary functions of a stage manager and A2. Preparing the microphones and making sure you give yourself enough time to mic all the talent you have in the studio. Now with COVID restrictions, we\u2019re only able to have a certain number of people in the studio at one time, but at most we have two talent in the studio and maybe one person in a remote studio that we have down the hall, right. So, that\u2019s three people you have to worry about. You don\u2019t have to worry about miking them physically anymore. They do it themselves. They were instructed. We had to instruct them how to do it. They learned how to do it. So yeah, that might be considered easier than prior because before COVID we had to be ready pretty much 30 minutes beforehand and have everything set up. We had to do a facility check, make sure it\u2019s all working properly, and then get people miked up with at least 10 minutes before going on-air regardless of maybe they\u2019re having signal frequency issues, or the microphone doesn\u2019t sit right. A lot of that problem-solving happened with the last 10 minutes of a show. So, now we don\u2019t entirely have to worry about that, but we have to be able to problem solve without actually getting in there and solve the problem. It\u2019s more so, everyone\u2019s communication now has, I think, gotten better because now we\u2019re able to elaborate to all of our co-workers or with our superiors about what\u2019s going on or changed. If that\u2019s the easiest thing, then I guess that\u2019d be it because of COVID some job\u2019s responsibilities have been minimize.<\/p>\n LP: With a lot of places opening up and vaccines becoming more readily available, has SNY said anything about making changes to return to some kind of normal in the studio?<\/strong><\/p>\n CF:<\/strong> No, no. There have been people that have been vaccinated at SNY. It\u2019s not even an SNY policy, it\u2019s a building policy that SNY resides in that you have to wear a mask at all-time. Once you enter the building, that mask must be on. We\u2019re required to still take temperature-checks and make sure for symptoms. I think the greatest easing up that we\u2019ve had at tbe company is that we\u2019re able to use a coffee maker now. That\u2019s really the only thing. That\u2019s the big change that has happened from July to now is that we can now drink coffee in the office like that\u2019s it. And I don\u2019t know maybe other things will change like being able to use like a snack wall or something or something to make the office feel like it\u2019s not so like not alive, I guess. Because prior we were still able to go to the break room eat and like take our mask off to eat, but even when we get up like when you go to a restaurant, you can sit down take your mask off and eat, but if you go anywhere, you have to have a mask on. It\u2019s the same thing. So, I personally don\u2019t see things changing because it\u2019s just easier to stick with the blanket statement of \u201cwe know this works. We know this is protecting us. Just stick with it.\u201d It\u2019s the safest option from a company standpoint. Sure, personally, I want to be able to use a microwave in our office and if I\u2019m in a room by myself, I should be able to take my mask off. I would like to not have to walk in the same pattern every single day even if there\u2019s nobody around, but you do what you do so you\u2019re following the rules but you\u2019re ensuring anyone\u2019s possible safety. Even if you don\u2019t notice it, you\u2019re still ensuring people\u2019s safety and you want to be as socially responsible as you can.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The entire world has changed this past year amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. One of those aspects of change has been working in the world of sports media. Chris Famularo is a Robotic Camera\/Jib operator at SportsNet New York (SNY) and a recent graduate of Seton Hall University. 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