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NFL's first 'Madden Cam' game racks up fans and foes

Game on! Cable-suspended cameras shot most of Thursday Night Football. Some fans declare it a touchdown. Others think NBC fumbled.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
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Gael Cooper
2 min read

Thursday Night Football has been a bit of a drag, with athletes playing on short rest, some getting injured and those hideous Color Rush uniforms. (Remember the mustard vs. ketchup game?)

But this week's game, which ended with the Pittsburgh Steelers beating the Tennessee Titans 40-17, tried out the "Madden Cam" -- or, as NBC actually calls it, the SkyCam.

It's exactly what it sounds like: NBC covered most of the game via a computer-controlled, stabilized, cable-suspended camera system, or to put it simply, two cameras gliding through the air above Pittsburgh's Heinz Field. The angles captured by the new system are similar to how the on-field quarterback views the game and remind many viewers of video-game play, especially the "Madden NFL" series, named for legendary coach John Madden.

"Younger generations of NFL fans have grown accustomed to watching football from this angle through their love of video games," Fred Gaudelli, executive producer of Thursday Night Football, said in a statement before the game. "This telecast will have a look and feel akin to that experience."

Game on, fans. Some loved it.

And yes, some thought the network fumbled by relying heavily on the new technique.

But maybe the best comment came from the official Twitter account for Madden NFL itself.

For now, the telecast was only an experiment, coming out of positive reviews for a week-seven game where fog over the New England Patriots' Gillette Stadium forced NBC to tap SkyCam as the main viewing angle. But surely the network will be closely mining social-media reaction as it mulls future use. Ready, player one?

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