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BROADCASTERS CONTINUE TO FIND NEW WAYS TO GET THE JOB DONE
SPECIAL REPORT REMOTE PRODUCTION
Broadcasters Continue to Find New Ways to Get the Job Done
The pandemic accelerated the move towards producing events either entirely or mostly entirely from off site. The result is that leading production companies and broadcasters are now looking to reshape their future plans. This special report features an overview of some of the key stories we reported on that point to the future of remote production operations both in the U.S. and beyond. NASCAR’s new production facility will open for the 2024 season and will allow for the production team to produce race coverage from North Carolina.
KEITH D’ALESSANDRO, NASCAR, Senior Coordinating Producer “At NASCAR, we’re all in on the REMI production. We still have very good partners in NBC and Fox but we’re past the point of, ‘oh my God, we’re doing a REMI’ and the negative [stigma] of it. We’re pretty much all in and positive. We have a good core group in Charlotte that now get hired for 12 to 13 events.
“Even on the talent side, of course you are going to have talent that [wants to be onsite] but I bet you my talent would probably agree with me that our setup in our studio is a thousand times better than what it is in some of these racetracks where they’re on smaller monitors.
“I actually like the fact that when my event’s done I go home and when I come back in a month to do my next race, that building hasn’t gone up the road to do a UNC/NC State basketball game and wiped the truck out. That convenience of just knowing everything’s in place when you set it up in January is absolutely comfortable.”
NASCAR Productions To Build State-of-the-Art 58,000-Sq.-Ft. Facility in Concord, NC
In 2024, NASCAR Productions will have a new home in Charlotte, NC. While the race-day production control rooms will be in Charlotte, much of the hardware will be located in an NEP data center in Dallas.
“This now gives us the flexibility to decide how much [of an onsite presence] we want to have from week to week. If we want to have more people onsite for a bigger weekend like the Daytona 500, we’re still going to connect to that equipment at the data center, and people can be onsite. Or, if it’s a weekend when we don’t want to send as many resources out to the track and we want to keep people at home, we can make that decision, too. We also are looking at how we can best utilize equipment. Instead of building out an entire equipment room ourselves, we are looking to be more efficient: rather than having 50 EVSs in here not doing anything for weeks at a time, we can spin them up at [NEP’s data center] when we need them and not have to pay for them when we aren’t using them.” – Steve Stum, VP, operations and technical production, NASCAR Productions READ MORE: https://www.sportsvideo.org/2022/08/10/exclusive-nascar-productions-building-new-state-of-the-art-580000-sq-ft-facility-in-concord-nc/
NBC Olympics’ Dave Mazza on Producing Beijing Olympics from Stamford, the Challenges of 1080p HDR, and Navigating the Pandemic
For the Beijing Olympics, NBC Olympics produced the vast majority of its content from its headquarters in Stamford, CT. Four mobile units pulled up outside of the facility and were home to various productions.
“We have four full venue coverage trucks here at the dock. Even though we had five remote venue controls for Tokyo — for Golf, Beach Volleyball, Basketball, Indoor Volleyball, and Sky Sports — they were almost totally selfcontained. But this time, at the dock, we have trucks doing the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, the Alpine [venue], half of the Extreme venue, Long Track Speed Skating, and Sliding. And one of our small Simply Live control rooms is doing Short Track. All of those venues hit thePrimetimeshow and utilize various studios and elements in SPOC, so they were much more complex this time. Inside SPOC, we also had a lot more facilities and moving pieces. In all, for [Beijing 2022], we have nine control rooms [four trucks and five PCRs], plus another three control rooms for Golf [Channel] operating here.” – Dave Mazza, SVP and CTO, NBC Olympics
Dave Mazza oversaw NBC Olympics operations in Beijing from NBC Sports headquarters in Stamford.
The Open Championship: NBC’s Onsite Efforts Complemented by Stamford Team
It was once again a global effort for NBC Sports at the St. Andrews Old Course for the 150th Open Championship last week. An onsite team of 225 complemented by around 100 people working from NBC Sports facilities in Stamford, CT, and a Hawk-Eye operator in Oklahoma produced shows delivered to NBC Sports, Golf Channel, and Peacock viewers.
“Utilizing NEP Connect onsite 10-gig circuits, we are able to connect our dual Nimbra chassis into the larger Sky UK Nimbra network. This connects at Sky Osterley to an expansive Sky/NBCU 100-G network that rides across the Atlantic and connectsto the NBC Sports Stamford operation. We leveraged 38 transmission feeds to produce and distribute tournament coverage, four Featured Groups per day, Featured Holes, and remote produce our Live Form coverage from Stamford. We also used LiveU technology to bring in the sites and sound of St. Andrews directly to the tournament production.” – Allison McAllister, VP, golf operations, NBC Sports READ MORE: https://www.sportsvideo.org/2022/07/18/live-from-the-openchampionship-nbcs-on-site-efforts-complemented-by-stamford-team/
New remote production workflows have allowed the Tennis Channel to produce pickleball tournaments in a cost-effective manner. Tennis Channel Embraces REMI for Pickleball, Remote Studio Operations
From left: Martina Navratilova, Steve Weissman, and Jon Wertheim at the new studio’s main set. (Photo: Craig T. Mathew/Mathew Imaging)
Bob Whyley, Tennis Channel, SVP, Production, and Executive Producer
“I think we’re doing television in a much easier way. There’s a lot less variables barring something happens to bandwidth but you could say the same thing with an uplink truck when you were doing it from site. You’re in a professional environment with engineers who know how to fix [their equipment]. It’s been a great experience. We’re pretty much all in with REMI.
“I think our team enjoys the familiarity of working in the same control rooms and in the same studios. For some of the bigger North American events and some of the [Grand Slams], we’re still on site. But other events like Indian Wells, it’s just another week for us because tennis is a 48-week sport. Keeping the setup very similar to what we do at home week-in and week-out [is important]. The differentiator is where the talent calls the matches. For our world feeds, we have our talent call the matches at our facility and they’re happy about it because they don’t have to go far and they get a lot more camera time in the studio. The one final hurdle for us is the latency with talent when talent is taking the output from a production control room and looking at it and then coming back to us. [We’re] close to cornering the market on that as well as some other smart folks in here so that’s where we are.
“We create content for multiple platforms. Not only do we have Tennis Channel, the cable network, we also have Tennis Channel+ and we are doing ‘fast channels’ for Samsung or LG TV apps. We can do more and we can save money by doing REMIs to create different platform places and bring in more income.”
Pickleball events have allowed the Tennis Channel production team to continue to refine its REMI operations, and the diverse 10-Gbps Cisco Meraki circuits between the Riviera and the Tennis Channel Expo facility in Santa Monica, CA, will ensure that all signals are delivered at top quality. As for tennis itself? Tennis Channel is in full REMI mode covering the National Bank Open in Canada with a studio desk that also hits all the ATP Masters 1000 and major tennis events around the world.
“We have the opportunity to do things a little bit different with pickleball and experiment a little bit more because we have a blank slate. And, with REMI, we’re able to put on an amazing production at a cost that is a lot less.” – Bob Whyley, SVP, production/executive producer, Tennis Channel READ MORE: https://www.sportsvideo.org/2022/08/10/tennis-channel-adds-pickleball-to-its-roster-of-racquet-and-ball-productions/
SPECIAL REPORT REMOTE PRODUCTION U.S. Open: Sky Sports Discusses Evolution of Remote Production
The Sky Sports production team for the U.S. Open Championship was back onsite in a big way with a team of 35 covering all the action and using the Telegenic TWiz OB as a launch point for 36 camera feeds that are sent to a production gallery in London where the final product is cut and distributed to UK viewers.
“We did the Ryder Cup [last fall] in a very similar way to how we’re doing the U.S. Open this week. Here in TWiz we have a Simply Live system and an assistant producer back at Sky can choose which 36 feeds and camera angles they want to use for the program cut.” – Katie Harrison, golf production manager, Sky Sports
Katie Harrison of Sky Sports inside the TWiz technical area at the U.S. Open.
The Pac-12 Networks produced more than half of its football games last year from its facility in San Francisco.
Pac-12 Networks Tackles Busy Fall With Hybrid Onsite/At-Home Production
Pac-12 Networks’ plan for this football season features an even balance of production models. Sixteen games will be full onsite truck productions; the remaining 21 will feature various degrees of the network’s multicam/at-home hybrid workflow. Even on full truck shows, the network integrates its scorebug and handles some replay operations from its San Francisco headquarters, while the rest of the show is done onsite.
“As a network, we have always balanced goals around producing high-quality coverage of our amazing teams and schools with delivering as much revenue as possible back to our members for them to invest in creating a successful environment for student-athletes. That continues to be a driving force behind initiatives like at-home production and motivates us to continually seek opportunities to innovate in order to deliver on that commitment.” – Ryan Currier, SVP, engineering and products, Pac-12 Networks READ MORE: https://www.sportsvideo.org/2022/08/31/college-football-2022-preview-pac-12-networkstackles-busy-fall-with-hybrid-onsite-at-home-production/
Bill Herbstman, Veteran Director
“Being a ‘road guy’ mostly, you almost have to go into that control room, close the door, and think you’re literally sitting in a truck right next to the stadium. Mentally, you’re on site in that respect. FOX has done an incredible job about setting up [its Home Run Production] rooms and you do feel like you’re in a truck.
“I’m actually comfortable working in both environments: onsite and in a REMI or HRP. You just mentally have to prepare your crew for different scenarios. If you’re working in HRP, you don’t have to deal with the weather for yourselves but you need to understand that the weather situation at your game or race is going to have an affect. But I feel comfortable actually working in both environments.”
