Bartel Miller felt it right away. From the moment NBC started broadcasting Sunday night’s National Football League showdown between the Buffalo Bills and the Pittsburgh Steelers, there was a quality about the way Miller's hometown was presented that seemed different than any broadcast he remembered.
Sure, he found the best part of the whole thing in the outcome, the way the Bills pulled out a 26-15 victory over a longstanding NFL power, thus expanding their case for inclusion among the game's elite.
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Yet there was something more, Miller said. The NBC camera crews did not stop at Bills Stadium in Orchard Park. They went into the community itself, especially downtown, with an array of shots from the ground and the air that reinforced what longtime residents already know, but rarely see paired to a football telecast.
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“Usually,” Miller said, speaking of network “scenic shots” and cutaways during football games, “what you get is Niagara Falls and chicken wings.”
Not this time. An international audience was treated to firsthand views of the Electric Tower, illuminated for the Yuletide, a skyline icon unique to Buffalo. There were shots of the Gold Dome Building at M&T Center at a moment when – in a happy coincidence – M&T Bank had just done extensive repairs and restoration on the lights for the dome, according to Keith Belanger, M&T's head of corporate services.
"It just really popped out," said Belanger, who – like so many with Buffalo loyalties – was moved by an especially memorable aerial shot that collectively portrayed the tower, dome and a Metro Rail train, gliding past.
Loved it. pic.twitter.com/w8Fhwospr1
— Bo Didlee (@deejbobbydee) December 14, 2020
Yes, there were obligatory and striking images of the falls. But viewers also caught a glimpse of the Botanical Gardens and Canalside. They saw the marquee of Shea’s Performing Arts Center, from the ground, and some sweeping images that captured all of downtown – lights burning at night – with the Seneca One tower in the foreground, its newly restored decorations in the shape of a massive Christmas tree as a centerpiece.
The 38-floor tower is owned by Washington, D.C., developer Douglas Jemal. Barely a month ago, Jemal asked Sean Heidinger, a do-everything guy in the building, to check for Christmas decorations in the basement. Next to an old tattered sleigh and busted ornaments, Heidinger - joined in the search by several colleagues - found the framework for the tree, once used by the old HSBC bank.
The staff scrambled to put it up, unaware it was about to become a highlight on national television.
“This was the icing on the cake in saying we were back,” said Heidinger, who also hinted that Jemal intends to do something of skyline prominence in the coming weeks to honor the Bills, “and I think it is fair to say it was a significant moment for downtown Buffalo.”
Miller, 59, certainly saw it that way. He has lived in Buffalo since he was 4, when his mother moved here with her children from Michigan. As a kid, Miller learned that then-Bills owner Ralph Wilson was from Detroit, which touched off one of those mystical childhood connections: The way Miller saw it, they were two guys from Michigan committed to the same Buffalo team.
For a while, Miller was a teenage neighbor of the great Randy Smith, then lighting it up for basketball's Buffalo Braves. After graduating from the old Seneca Vocational High School, Miller went on to a career in maintenance at the University at Buffalo. He retired six years ago, at about the same time that weariness at all the anger and bitterness online inspired him to start a Facebook page called “Buffalo: A toast to the town,” as a kind of optimistic antidote.
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The idea, as he puts it, was both “a remembrance of Buffalo, New York’s great past” and an emphasis “on all the aspects of this amazing city.” The group now has almost 17,000 members – including many Western New Yorkers who have moved to points around the nation – for whom Miller awoke Monday morning and posted a collection of the televised cutaways from the Bills-Steelers game, along with thanks to NBC for showing “the world just how beautiful the town and area really is!”
The post exploded. By Tuesday, it had beyond 1,000 “likes” and 600 shares, as well as more than 150 comments – and those numbers were climbing. "NBC did us justice," wrote Kevin Craig, now of Topeka, Kan., responding to images compelling enough to leave him homesick – a response offered with similar passion on several other Facebook pages dedicated to Buffalo.
“I was just amazed,” Miller said. “I don’t know who took those pictures, but my God.”
At NBC Sports, spokesman Dan Masonson provided a statement from Sunday Night Football producer Fred Gaudelli, who praised a news gathering team of Kevin Brown, Kevin Soldani and Tricia Surber, as well as photographers Jeff Hopson and Chris Kizner.
“We always strive to capture the iconic structures, streets and places in every city we visit,” Gaudelli said. “The Electric Tower stands out in the skyline of Buffalo, and was obviously lit for the holiday season, so it was a natural for us to showcase.”
On Twitter and Facebook, there was speculation that the upstate sensibilities of NBC sportscaster Mike Tirico – a Syracuse University graduate who roomed in college with Paul Peck, now the voice of UB's Bulls, and godfather to Peck's daughter Rachel – might have had something to do with the unusual focus on the city. Peck recalled attending a Bills game against the Jets with his roommate during the bleak years of the mid-1980s, and he said Tirico absolutely “gets it” when it comes to the long vigil of the Buffalo faithful.
As a measure of how thoroughly Peck said his friend prepares, Tirico contacted Kim Peck, Paul’s wife, to make sure of the pronunciation of the Oishei Children's Hospital before he shared the tale of how #BillsMafia donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to honor quarterback Josh Allen’s grandmother, Patricia Allen, who died last month.
Peck, as impressed as anyone by the way the city was portrayed, wonders if the pandemic – which eliminated any chance to film spectators celebrating in the parking lots or the stands – inspired the NBC crew to be even more creative.
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“It was awesome,” said Nick Dolpp, a vice president for Iskalo Development, owner of the Electric Tower. “They showed us as a city where someone would want to move and live.”
That tower, of course, is a beloved jewel: Built in 1912 as a municipal statement on light and energy, its original lighting scheme was designed by W. D’Arcy Ryan, an international pioneer of illumination. Over the years, it gradually emerged as a symbol of the Yuletide and a gathering point on New Year's Eve – which meant Western New York natives around the nation and abroad were suddenly reconnected with a talisman of childhood.
All of it leaves Miller with a theory on why the NBC images triggered such reaction. Sure, he said, it was a dramatic change from what we have seen for many years. But it was also an evocative burst of beauty and hope at an especially frightening and difficult time, as evidenced by the unusually quiet streets in the images.
“People are shuttered in place,” he said of the pandemic. “They’ve got nothing to do.”
Miller’s mother was manager of Burgerland, a little restaurant not far from the old War Memorial Stadium, at a time when such Bills greats as Cookie Gilchrist would casually stop by. Most powerfully, he remembers going downtown “when Main Street was Christmas,” when the sidewalks were packed with shoppers and the aroma of roasting nuts and fresh cookies floated past storefronts that blazed with yuletide lights.
For those who always think of Western New York as home, Miller believes the combination of a dynamic Bills victory with such unexpected yet familiar images led to an emotion – in short supply right now – that he associates with the downtown Christmases of childhood.
“People were happy,” Miller said, just as they were Sunday night.
