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The Football Diner Big Interview:
Karl Baumann
interviewed by Michael E Lawrence
29/9/2007
If you don’t know who Karl Baumann is, you should do.
As the Producer of Sky’s live coverage of the NFL, he is both the voice that speaks into the ears of Kevin Cadle and Nick Halling, and more importantly, the man who has shaped live Pro Football coverage in the UK in his 7 years in the role, planning and putting together the shows we see each week on the telly.
He picks the games, he picks the guests, he picks the features: he does it all.
Karl has long been involved in American Football in the UK, even making a triumphant return to the gridiron as a defensive end for the Ipswich Cardinals recently.
Football Diner was fortunate enough to take him to lunch in a pub round the corner form Sky studios, near Syon Lane. Luckily for the Football Diner credit card, the wait for food was prohibitively long, but Karl was kind enough to cover a whole range of subjects over a liquid lunch instead:
On being the producer of Britain’s most watched live Pro Football show
FD
Thanks for agreeing to the interview first of all; for those people that don’t know, who is Karl Baumann?
Karl
I am the producer of all the American Football on Sky Sports.
FD
And for the layman, what does ‘producer’ mean?
Karl
It’s a little bit like running a film set, only in film you’re using someone else’s script – on live TV, you still have a director that directs the cameras, but it’s the producer’s gameplan. I’m the guy that writes the script and I’m the guy that decides what features to run and when, which commercials to fill according to what’s happening around the league and so on. On the Sunday triple headers I’ll be monitoring what’s going on, trying to see what floats Nick and Kev’s boat, making the decision about what direction we take the fills in.
FD
So you’re involved in every facet basically you’re planning it, you’re making it happen, overseeing it
Karl
 Yeah, basically I set everything up too I have to book people, guests, set up special shows for example September 30th, our Countdown to Wembley show, we’ve organised it to have Nick in Miami, Kev in New York we’re looking forward to it, it’s gonna be a big day!
FD
And how did you get to this point, to producing Britain’s main live show has it been a long journey?
Karl
I was the right guy in the right place at the right time, although basically I was the tea boy for my first few shifts! When I first started it was Gary O’Reilly I started the first Sunday of October ’95 and I was running autocue and making tea and coffee, even though I make the world’s worst tea. I don’t even drink tea and coffee!
FD
We’d forgotten all about Gary O’Reiily
Karl
Well, back then Nick Halling wasn’t even a regular when I first met him I remembered him from his Gridiron (magazine) days and told him his name seemed familiar. I remember saying to (Karl’s predecessor) Charles Balchin that I’d love to help out on NFL Europe, and they took me on full time to help out on the ’96 season of that. It was onwards and upwards from there I was producing taped shows like international Netball in ’97, started producing live NFL Europe shows in ’99, and then in 2000, when Charles was moved onto Nationwide Football, I inherited the NFL, which at that point was just one 9pm game every Sunday.
On the NFL show’s evolution since Karl took over
FD
And what about your contribution to the show since it’s been huge surely?
Karl
Well what I did and this is what I’d like to put on my gravestone in 2000 it was my idea to bring in highlights of the early games, which hadn’t been done before; in 2001 we started taking in e-mails, which really flew. That helped benefit both presenters: because with e-mail you can change subject, it allows you to go completely off topic and talk about things that maybe aren’t directly connected to the game in hand. That worked towards an area of Kev’s personality a real strength that had yet to be tapped. Then by 2003, we started the interactive features and the rules package too for casual fans. And then more recently we got the NFL fantasy competition going with the NFLUK – the first year we ran it there were 20,000 people playing! And now here we are we did our first triple header last year, and now of course we’re doing triples every Sunday.
FD
So do people under-estimate just how much you’ve shaped NFL coverage in the UK?
Karl
Well, I couldn’t say! But look, I don’t do this job for money, I do this job because I love it. I absolutely love it, and I’m a lucky man a pig in mud! Nothing is more satisfying to me than when something we do on the show has a big impact.
On features like the Matt Hampson bowl and the Mike Singletary interview
FD
What kind of thing?
Karl
Well a recent example is the Matt Hampson bowl (Matt Hampson was paralysed in a rugby accident after breaking his neck) we got an opportunity there to film Martin Johnson playing American Football on behalf of the Matt Hampson trust. It was so satisfying to be able to help in that situation, and then on top of that to get people writing in saying ‘well done to you guys’, ‘well done to Johnno’ and ‘well done to Matt’. I think 40,000 were raised for the Matt Hampson trust, which was great.
FD
Are there other features that have struck a chord?
Karl
Nick did a brilliant one on one interview, as he does often he’s a brilliant broadcaster frankly he did a brilliant sitdown interview with Mike Singletary, and the e-mail reaction to that was absolutely huge. We’ve done some momentous pieces over the years and we get such strong e-mail reaction. We don’t please everybody of course, but if I could work out a way to do that, I’d be a billionaire!
FD
What about moving forward is there more you want to do?
Karl
I’m very, very happy with where we are at the moment, I think we’re doing things like the September 30th show the countdown to Wembley, and in so doing we’re again pushing the boundaries, as we do at Sky. To me, Sky Sports set the standard for sports broadcasting around the world, and I’m proud to be a little part of that.
On what goes on behind the scenes when Nick and Kev are presenting live, and upcoming studio guests
FD
Ok, how about a little bit of background for people watching the Sky show we see Nick and Kev talking, you’re meanwhile shouting in their ears what’s going on behind the scenes that we can’t see?
Karl
I don’t shout in their ears I just talk in their ears! I’ll try to help and guide them sometimes, though often they don’t need any help, both of them are very good broadcasters. Nick’s been doing it, and in the media generally, since he was fresh out of college, and Kev’s been doing TV since his days as a basketball coach. The pair of them work very well together. And now we have guests in every now and then to change it up, since there’s 11 hours of coverage in a night.
FD
And are there lots of studio guests on the horizon we don’t yet know about?
Karl
Yeah there are I found Shaun Gayle who’s been really popular. He’s almost taken for granted now because he’s been with us a while, but he’s excellent at what he does. People sometimes say ‘why don’t you get Joe Montana on?’, and the reality is it’s for the same reason you don’t see Joe, or a Barry Sanders, on ESPN in the States: people either have a knack for communicating on TV or they don’t. You’ve got to find the right person, and Shaun Gayle is the right person for us because not only does he have a wealth of experience at a very high level as a former All Pro, he had a long career and he’s a rare breed of American, in that he’s travelled the world several times over. He loves the UK. He likes us, we like him! Of course we’ve got Cecil Martin, Neil Reynolds, Ian Allen, Scott McCready. I’m so happy with the line up we have though of course I’m trying to arrange some other people too, though I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag.
FD
Really?
Karl
Really.
FD
Right.
On forecasting the 2007 NFL season
FD
Let’s appeal to the fan in you a little bit and ask you what you think might go down in the NFL this season?
Karl
I see the Chargers coming on LT’s poor start will disappear; I see Dallas doing pretty well; I see Detroit actually winning 10 games as Kitna promised; I see the Bears at least making the playoffs; I see Arizona finally coming good, though only wild card at best; I see a lot of things in my crystal ball!
On the Giants vs. Dolphins at Wembley, and Sky’s coverage of it
FD
Though two teams conspicuous in their absence there are Miami and the New York Giants
Karl
 That’s true, though the Wembley game the day itself is still going to be fantastic, no doubt about it. It would still be a fantastic game if both teams had been 0-7 when they get here! Because finally in the UK, we’re going to see the real thing first hand. In all honesty we’ve seen in week three that both teams have a lot to offer, and the fan in me can’t wait to see it. I look to see good football, and I like to see good games, even if that’s two mediocre teams in a great ding dong as opposed to one powerhouse rolling over a lesser opponent. I think it’ll be two teams who are evenly matched, and it’ll be worth watching for the atmosphere alone.
FD
And there’s a lot planned on Sky?
Karl
Yeah we’re gonna be on air from 1pm GMT, on Sky Sports 2 and HD2, we’re gonna do continuity from Wembley, which means Nick and Kev being there with a couple of guests, and we’re looking to get a lot of celebrities there too. We’ll roll tape in of (superb NFL history series) America’s Game before the live programming with the stories of the ’72 Dolphins and probably the Super Bowl XXV winning Giants team.
FD
And those two teams have huge fanbases over here
Karl
They do indeed! My best friend in the world is a Giants fan and I know so many Dolphins fans it’s ludicrous.
On the ongoing debate as to whether we might see an NFL team in the UK within 10 years
FD
We were talking the other day with Neil Reynolds and we spoke about the idea of getting a team in London within 10 years starting by building up more regular season games over here first. He felt it was possible do you think it’s a realisitic prospect?
Karl
Yes I do. When I took over producing the NFL show in 2000, things were very different. Things were at kind of a low ebb, but there’s so much support now, and the credit for that has to go to (NFLUK MD) Alistair Kirkwood and the London office, as well as Sky Sports. I think Neil’s absolutely right let’s get another Wembley game next year, let’s sell that one out even quicker than this one, let’s then go for two or three the year after that, and then who knows?
FD
Is there anything else that could encourage growth of the sport over here?
Karl
Well the other thing is we need more international players in the sport. Scott McCready (who’s the only Brit ever to win a Super Bowl) will tell you you’ll encounter a lot of bias against you if you’re a non-American playing the game. Frankly, it’s ridiculously amazing what Scott McCready accomplished, which is why I have so much admiration for the man when he interviewed Mick Luckhurst in a Sky piece last year, Mick was blown away. As Mick said, it’s amazing because he didn’t grow up with the sport, but his Dad was in the USAF, and he went out to an American high school, and he got to play football from then. It’d be great to see some of the junior BAFL teams get some sort of exchange programme going where we get to send some of the up and coming UK players out to American high schools. I played youth level American Football and it made me the man I am today!. Kids need to learn the skills at high school age, only then could they look at taking it further and making the professional level like Scott did. The 15, 16 year old kids who have the skill and the genetic makeup to be big enough athletes deserve that chance.
FD
Could call it the Karl Baumann Program?
Karl
I like it!
On NFL personalities Karl has run into not least The Fridge
FD
Let’s talk about the great players you’ve met over the years who stands out?
Karl
It was great to meet the Fridge in ’96 I was just a junior/tea boy at the time, and I had to take him from the entrance gate to the studio, which was harder than it sounds cos it’s easy to get lost at Sky, it’s massive. I probably didn’t take him the most efficient way we were going upstairs, we were going downstairs, and eventually he said son, I don’t care how we get there but I don’t wanna go up any more stairs or I’m gonna burst! His knees were shot. I thought he’d be very impressed if I told him he was one of my heroes, but he was like oh yeah, another one! And then of course we had him on the show during week 4 last season, in his porkpie hat, and he was brilliant. I didn’t mention the hero thing again.
FD
Do any active players stand out?
Karl
It was great to meet so many of the Dolphins in our interviews with them last year Zach Thomas was a really lovely guy, though I’m pleased to say I’m way taller than him!
And finally, on the number of Sky’s viewers, and the infamous ‘Three Kings’ Christmas sign off
FD
The NFLUK has got 115,000 supporters or so, and it’s rising each week are you seeing a tangible increase in viewers for the Sky show?
Karl
I don’t know the figures, but I do know support of the whole sport is on an upswing and that we’re in the middle of that. It’s partly because of the Wembley game, but also because of some really good Super Bowls recently Devin Hester running back the opening kickoff earlier this year was the best thing to happen to the game, because it starts so late and you want people to keep watching from the get go.
FD
Now, a couple of years ago, around Christmas, I saw you and two colleagues on Sky as the credits rolled, dressed as Elvis, dancing around the place. Care to elaborate?
Karl
(Laughing) Well that was a Christmas one off! The three kings and all that, just to have some fun. I saw the Elvis suits in BHS in Watford, and it went from there really! They doubled up as Christmas presents that year too You’ve got to keep a sense of fun after 11 hours of broadcasting.
FD
And will we ever see you in front of the camera again?
Karl
Well, there is a feature on the way that’ll show me playing defensive end for the Ipswich Cardinals, that should air soon.
FD
Will you be wearing the Elvis costume?
Karl
Uh no.
FD Too bad! Thanks for taking time out to talk to us Karl.
Karl
No problem!
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