Much of Thursday was spent reacting to what Joe Buck did or did not say on Andy Cohen's radio show about plans for virtual crowd noise and/or fans being inserted into game broadcasts once leagues start up.
In short: He thinks it's "pretty much a done deal" that FOX will sweeten the broadcasts from empty stadiums with fake crowd noise, and that they're "working on" virtual fans.
My thought is the same as it's been throughout this pandemic, because it's easy: Just add crowd noise and forget about the virtual fans.
Crowd noise is essential, even if it's fake. Here's why: You're going to want to use the field/court/ice level mics, right? Well, consider how uncomfortable it's going when a football play ends, the mics are muted and there's nothing underneath the commentators.
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Yes, without the crowd noise you'll be watching a freaking podcast.
Because if you have no other noise, the field mics will have to be muted outside of gameplay in a place that empty. Yes, hearing players play a game with no other sound would be extremely cool, but the games aren't on HBO. The "what am I supposed to tell my kids?" crowd would be a headache and a half. Your entire twitter feed would be dozens of iPhone videos pointing at the television at the exact same part to show "look! The guy swore and I heard it!"
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It would be the worst.
So something has to be in the background. Music? You'd complain about the song. Or someone would. Or it would get stuck in your head, become a meme or something else terrible.
Just do the fake crowd noise as something to have in the background. Then at the end of plays when they mute or lower the game sound, the background audio doesn't just completely drop out.
That's the end of this column. It's like eight words, but that's eight more than I ever thought I'd write about hypothetical crowd noise in empty stadiums.