NFL RedZone Will Keep Viewing Experience The Same Despite COVID Related Adjustments

Scott Hanson just feels more comfortable with a football in his hands.

That’s how the longtime host of the addictive NFL RedZone show started a Friday Zoom call with members of the media, an interesting parallel to the millions of football fans who feel more comfortable when they’re in Hanson’s capable hands anchoring coverage every week. And with the coronavirus pandemic interrupting normal live like never before, Hanson said that he hasn’t seen bigger demand for RedZone coverage than right now.

Fans will still get that traditional NFL RedZone broadcast from 1 p.m. eastern until the 4 p.m. window of games is complete.

“Every touchdown from every game, seven hours of commercial-free football, all the best moment.” Hanson said from his Los Angeles home. “But behind the scenes, we have had to change quite a bit.”

For social distancing purposes, the show’s control room that would normally hold 20 or 30 people is going to be spread out to three or four different rooms.

“I am going to see, physically see, two maybe three live human beings on Sunday,” the 49-year-old Hanson said. “And I would see almost every one of those people live and in person and interface with them at some point. Now, it will be limited human contact.”

This year, the only two people who will physically be in the room with Hanson will be spotters and researchers Bryan Larrivee, Green Bay Packers broadcaster Wayne Larrivee’s son, and Tim Guilanians. And the physical set itself will also be pivoted so Larrivee and Guilanians can be more spread out and distanced in the room.

Hanson will have to adjust to some things even before the show itself even begins. RedZone’s preshow meeting will now happen on Zoom. His breakfast before the show goes live at 10 a.m. Pacific, packed with salty dense proteins so he won’t have to use the bathroom all day, will now be eaten at his famous desk from a to-go container rather than at NFL Media’s cafeteria.

Additionally, Hansen and the RedZone crew usually get to utilize at least one preseason week for a dress rehearsal for the regular season shows, but obviously there was no preseason this year. This year, they had to manage by playing some of last season’s games simultaneously and letting the chaos work its magic so the technical crew can get back in the swing of things and get acclimated to their new socially distant setups.

“We’re gonna have to work through some kinks early on,” Hanson said, “But hopefully on air, the audience will get the same NFL RedZone experience that they’re used to.”

That experience will be enhanced this year by having live win share probabilities available to the crew via NextGen stats after certain big plays or moments during the day’s games, though they haven’t decided if or how much they’ll use it, Hanson said. Miles per hour of ball carriers will be another feature RedZone will utilize, with data available 10 seconds after a play ends via uniform microchips. Hanson will see how much value these elements add to the viewing experience.

Hanson himself has gone through dozens of hours and research and preparation himself at home. Like any other year, he’ll know all about the teams, players, rookies, offseason acquisitions and depth charts up to his impossibly high standards like he would any other year, but now without the benefit of preseason games. Instead, he’ll make do with some limited video from practice.

“We’re all learning as we go along. And I will make mistakes on the show,” Hanson said. “But what I want is my percentage to be in the high 99 percentile of not making factual errors, giving the wrong stat, misidentifying a player.”

The goal for Hanson and RedZone is that you the viewer don’t notice any of these things we just talked about in this article so you can sit back, relax and enjoy seven hours of nonstop football every Sunday for the next 17 weeks.

“We have millions of people on NFL RedZone that we are trying to inform, entertain and serve as our audience. And there are going to be some challenges,” he said. “And yet, when we get down to touchdowns, it’s all about football. And I can’t wait for Sunday at 1:00 eastern.”