John Howard is one of the most experienced Technical Directors in live sports, working week in and week out on NBC’s Sunday Night Football and contributing to 10 Super Bowl broadcasts over the last 20 years. Here, he shares his perspective on the craft behind live production and why the role of the switcher is often overlooked.
When people talk about big championships, everyone talks about the cameras. The new angles, the pylons, everything they added this year. That’s all great. I love that side of it, but that’s not what makes the show work.
The vehicle that ultimately tells the visual story is the switcher. And nobody really talks about that.
And the job itself is often misunderstood. It’s not just cutting cameras. A Technical Director is involved throughout the entire planning PROCESS, not just building the show and setting it all up, but making sure everything works to plan before it ever goes to air.
I’ve been doing this a long time. Sunday Night Football on NBC, week in and week out, that’s my office. I’ve also worked on 10 Super Bowls. The scale is enormous, but that’s not really the challenge.
On this year’s show, we had three fully loaded K-Frame XPs in the compound. One dedicated to pre-game, one I used to cut the live game, and another in a separate unit handling replays and additional elements. All of them were essentially full.
You think 192 inputs is a lot. On a show like that, it’s not. You need that and then some.
What experience teaches over time is how to structure it. What stays close, what moves elsewhere, how everything is organized so it works when the show is live. That’s the job.
“Elegance is the standard. Not flash. Not complexity for its own sake. Elegance.”
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the real challenge isn’t the technology. It’s not overthinking it.
There’s a lot of firepower available. A lot of options. And it’s very easy to go too far. It’s easy to over-plan, to overbuild, to try to account for everything. But that complexity comes back in the moment when things get busy.
Most of the work is muscle memory. Sitting at a panel, everything needs to be exactly where it is expected to be. No searching, no hesitation.
That only works if it has been built properly beforehand.
That’s where discipline comes in. If something doesn’t need to be complicated, it shouldn’t be.
A lot of it also comes down to the relationship with the director. There’s an understanding there. Sometimes a call comes in, and holding a shot just a fraction longer helps the moment. That kind of communication isn’t written down anywhere, but it’s critical.
Every show is different. A football show is not built the same way as a golf show. The layout changes, the priorities change, the approach changes.
The system has to adapt to that. The setup needs to follow the show, not the other way around.
On Sunday Night Football, I try something every week. It might be small. It might not even make air. But the goal is always to make something better.
Over time, that becomes a creative back-and-forth. A transition, a look, something subtle that fits naturally into the show.
Not everything needs to be used. If something doesn’t add to the story, it doesn’t belong there.
That’s really what it comes down to.
Sunday Night Football goes up against prime-time entertainment. It’s not just a game. It’s a show. And the audience is broader than people think.
So the question always comes back to the same thing. If the show is watched with no sound, does it still make sense? Does the story come across just from the pictures?
If the answer is yes, then it’s working.
I don’t think we talk about this enough.
Grass Valley, the name alone, it means television. It means broadcast. But what matters is that it keeps moving forward.
The company continues to evolve, continues to innovate, and does it at every level, not just at the very top end. That matters.
And it works because it’s not one-way.
There’s a constant exchange. Feedback goes back to the engineers. Ideas come from real use. Nothing is built in isolation.
A lot of the time, what is needed is actually simpler. It just has a clear purpose.
That’s the relationship. It works both ways.
Every live frame of NFL football in the United States, CBS, Fox, NBC, ESPN, AMAZON PRIME, every single one goes through a Grass Valley switcher.
Think about that.
Seventeen years, across every broadcast, at that level.
That doesn’t happen by accident.
It happens because the product keeps evolving, and because the people using it are part of that process.
And that’s what keeps us all moving forward.
