Fox presents "Rent" (not quite live) (1 Viewer)

[B-ROLL]

I'm not passing judgment, yea or nay, on the piece itself, because we all have our tastes in musicals. But I witnessed some mindboggling technical issues that I'm very curious about. There were seemingly huge broadcasting problems on Fox's end, including both before and after the show, which I haven't seen addressed anywhere, so maybe someone can shed some light on it.

Shortly after setting my DVR at around 6:30 pm to record the show at 8:00, I was flipping a few channels and happened to come back to the Fox channel, only to find a quiet steady high pitched tone accompanying a display that looked like this (but without all the info, just the "test pattern" and the time readout):

View attachment 54671

I snapped this picture after the show, but prior to the show, both of Fox's channels in the NYC area (as accessed via Comcast / Xfinity cable -- channel 1005 for HD, 5 for SD), were displaying this image for nearly an hour. It changed back to regular broadcasting maybe half an hour before the show, but whatever program was on lacked proper audio. No dialogue could be heard, just background music. And then it went out again, maybe ten minutes before "RENT" was to start. There was again no broadcasting from Fox until literally about a minute before 8:00 pm when the musical began.

Shortly into the show, I noticed that I only had audio in my center channel and a little bit in the left and right speakers. There was literally nothing going to the surrounds, which isn't at all typical for specials like this. Checked the receiver settings, but didn't attempt to troubleshoot any further as I was only intending to have the show on in the background and I'd watch the DVR capture some other time.

Immediately following the show, my screen went black for a moment and then this display reappeared, this time with the info shown above. I can vouch for it being there for at least those 24 minutes past 11:00 pm; I have no idea when they returned to regular broadcasting.

But wait, there's more! The musical had questionable balances between singers, band, etc., which may or may not have been a function of my receiving only the front channels. But during commercial breaks, sometimes a particular commercial would play normally, other times one would play without any voice being heard -- there would be either silence, or music, and occasionally it even sounded like the music didn't match the commercial, as though Fox was shooting canned music out there to help cover the problem. (That could just be a bad guess on my part.)

Additionally, once the commercials ran their course (silently or not) at each break, there followed a sort of generic "Fox" display, in total silence, lasting precisely two minutes (I timed one of the later ones at 2 1/2 minutes). When this faded out, the musical seemed to restart where it should -- i.e., it didn't look like it was already in progress. This 2+ minutes of silence occurred at the end of every commercial break over the course of the three hours. Someone posted this shot on Facebook:

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Maybe someone has reported on all of this by now. Last night I only saw a comment by someone on another cable system mentioning the outage before the program. It was a mystery to me how all of this could have gone un-remarked upon by so many viewers.

I use OTA and the show was in DD 5.1 (very little in the surrounds but as usual {MHO} with these kind of things -there was some out-of-phase stuff as well) Several mic issues throughout the show ... The audience cheering like they were at a concert at inappropriate moments was distracting ... I think the 2008 live recording disc would probably be my goto ...

 

[mattCR]

I agree on getting the same musicals over and over on TV. And, I get it in some ways. I've been to broadway a few times over the last few years and I admit, I could watch Hamilton a few hundred times, but there are other productions that I found fun: Heathers: The Musical, Mean Girls; The Musical were both great; I enjoyed Dear Evan Hansen - which I guess is becoming a movie.

But here is the thing: Disney has several that, if ABC did this, they could yearly do a lot of great performances easily and it would be a financial windfall for them in the way it isn't for NBC or Fox. I mean, the mouse house could do Newsies, as an example, and get a lot of eyeballs for a performance they'd have.

But, that's me.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Obviously, the networks want big name shows to bring in eye balls. But I think the problem with a lot of the more interesting musicals to stage is that there's no way they'd get by network standards and practices. It was fascinating last night getting to see what did and did not make it through uncensored.

I'm still waiting for another one with the ambition and skill of execution that the live Grease brought to the table. Incidentially, Hudgens was the MVP of both "Grease" and this.

 

[Jake Lipson]

But here is the thing: Disney has several that, if ABC did this, they could yearly do a lot of great performances easily and it would be a financial windfall for them in the way it isn't for NBC or Fox. I mean, the mouse house could do Newsies, as an example, and get a lot of eyeballs for a performance they'd have.

ABC announced a couple of years ago that they were going to do The Little Mermaid, but then they scrubbed that because the film side of Disney wants to produce a live-action film version of it. They obviously didn't want to decrease the novelty of that by doing it on TV as well. As long as Disney is still on their remake kick, I expect ABC doing live musicals based on their catalog titles remains off the table.

Newsies already had a professionally filmed live taping of the Broadway touring production, including several members of the original Broadway cast who came back to reprise their roles just for the taping. It's excellent. I doubt a TV production could be any better.

 

[Charles Smith]

I use OTA and the show was in DD 5.1 (very little in the surrounds but as usual {MHO} with these kind of things -there was some out-of-phase stuff as well) Several mic issues throughout the show ... The audience cheering like they were at a concert at inappropriate moments was distracting ... I think the 2008 live recording disc would probably be my goto ...

Thanks. Checked it on the DVR, cranked it up, and on my 7.1 setup I could hear some ambient sound (audience and a bit of music) out of the rears, but nothing out of the sides. Putting my ear to the side speakers, I could just detect a distant high pitched “chatter” or “squeal” -- inaudible unless my ears were practically touching the speaker grill. No idea what that would be.

Spot checking a couple of other DVR’d musicals and operas, I found better output from the surrounds, with the Met Opera making the very best use of them.

 

[B-ROLL]

Thanks. Checked it on the DVR, cranked it up, and on my 7.1 setup I could hear some ambient sound (audience and a bit of music) out of the rears, but nothing out of the sides. Putting my ear to the side speakers, I could just detect a distant high pitched “chatter” or “squeal” -- inaudible unless my ears were practically touching the speaker grill. No idea what that would be.

Spot checking a couple of other DVR’d musicals and operas, I found better output from the surrounds, with the Met Opera making the very best use of them.

I have a 7.1 system as well but the TV only outputs DD 5.1.

I suspect the audio engineers played it safer by putting most of the "soundstage" the center channel and doing some L-R directional audio based on the talent's placement onscreen.

The sound recordists at the Met have been doing it for eons and know how the house sounds. I'm sure there are lots of ambient mics placed around the house which was designed to reproduce sound as cleanly as possible.

RENT-(almost)Live was shot on a soundstage at FOX(?) with sets and audience all over the staging area

... I also I think PBS really pays attention to sound and FOX well ... if the audience can hear it ...that's close enough. I suppose I should mention that what was broadcast was mostly a pre-recorded dress rehearsal. That may be some of why some of the mics weren't hot for certain performers at different times ...
IF FOX-Dis-knee decide to release a DVD (or Blu-Ray) I hope they include the Live Concert version that was done during the broadcast but not fed out to the affiliates etc ...