In a video released today, LCS analyst MarkZ announced that his broadcast role in 2022 has been reduced, and that some talent is without a spot altogether.
In a video put out today, LCS analyst Mark "MarkZ" Zimmerman announced some changes happening to the LCS broadcast for 2022, and his presence on it. With the LCS being reduced back to only two days a week for most of the season, the role of broadcast talent is also being reduced.
MarkZ's reduced presence for 2022
In the video, MarkZ states that, as a result of there being fewer broadcast days every week for the LCS this year, fewer analysts would be contributing. Specifically, he said that two analysts would do each day, while the third spot would rotate each day. While he didn't name names besides his own, he did say that he'd be one of the rotating analysts.
"The analyst desk will be going to have two set positions - that's the plan right now. These two people will be appearing every day. And then there will be a rotating third spot that is shared between myself and someone else. So what is means is, for most weeks of the year, I'll be on the broadcast one day a week."
This announcement does come as a bit of a surprise, like it seemed to for MarkZ. After leaving coaching for good in 2017, he joined the LCS broadcast and has been a mainstay ever since. However, while most of the LCS talent was directly employed by Riot, MarkZ was always a freelancer. However, it's been a growing trend over the last year for LCS talent to go freelance.
While it's impossible to know whether or not this factored into this situation, it definitely made him stand out for a number of years with content he was able to do outside of the broadcast.
Some broadcast talent has been fully let go
"I'm not going to reveal who's who, that's their thing to announce, I don't want to try and steal any thunder here," MarkZ said later in the video, "And there's other people also who are leaving the broadcast fully, who got hit harder than me, and I'm not trying to take any moment away from them." It seems there's even more changes going on behind the scenes at the LCS.
A lot of new broadcast talent was brought on in 2021. Analysts like Kaizen and Emily Rand were mainstays by the end of the year. But it looks as if some of this talent has unfortunately gotten the short end of the stick with the reduced broadcast days for 2022. We will have to wait and see what other announcements unfold.
One final piece of the puzzle in the LCS broadcast is Joshua "Jatt" Leesman. A community favourite and one of the faces of the LCS broadcast for many years, he is now teamless after his time coaching Team Liquid in 2022. Whether or not he's eyeing a return to the broadcast remains to be seen.
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