TERRY ADAMS

There is no sports production on the planet larger than an Olympic Games, and no broadcaster does as much as NBC Olympics in terms of content creation and innovation. Since the 2000 Sydney Summer Games, Terry Adams, retired VP, IBC engineering, NBC Olympics, was at the center of the effort, overseeing the technological infrastructure of NBC’s footprint at the International Broadcast Center. It was a run that saw multiple changes in technology and workflows and a massive expansion of programming.

According to David Mazza, SVP/CTO, NBC Sports and NBC Olympics, in more than 25 years as engineer-in-charge (EIC) in mobile units, Adams worked on some of the biggest sports and entertainment shows and had a knack for executing big shows flawlessly.

“He also had a great eye for both picture and sound quality and never compromised either,” Mazza added. “He could get along with almost any client and remained calm no matter how big the show or how big the challenge.”

From the very beginning of his time at NBC Olympics, Adams was involved with driving innovation. The 2000 Sydney Olympics featured a technological advance that transformed the Olympics technical setup: the “Rack in a Box,” or RIBS, which then-director, technology, Matthew Adams (no relation) conceived after communicating with some Department of Defense logistics folks.

“The whole issue with the Olympics is scale,” said Terry Adams. “When you deal with manufacturers, they can have a product working on the bench with, say, 20 nodes on it. Then you tell them you need 250 nodes, and the whole thing collapses. The demands of an Olympics are just massive scale.”

Growing up in Cleveland Heights, Adams fit the classic youngengineer profile: he enjoyed taking things apart to see how they work. And the AV club in junior high and high school sparked his interest in TV. But it wasn’t until he got to Ohio University and began working at WOUB Athens, the PBS station affiliated with Ohio University, that he had a sense of a career path.

Doing everything led to a skill set that allowed him to interview for a full-time position at Television Production Center (TPC) in Pittsburgh. TPC’s acquisition by Unitel gave Adams a chance to take the next step in development.

In 1996, Adams got his first taste of Olympic operations, working on the host-broadcast production of the Atlanta Games, for which Unitel provided facilities. In 1998, Adams joined the NBC Sports family and settled into a role with NBC Olympics ahead of the 2000 Sydney Games.

Mike Sheehan, coordinating director, NBC Olympics, said he had the pleasure of working with Terry as a truck EIC prior to their working together at NBC Olympics.

“He was magical,” said Sheehan. “What every remote-production person looks for is a smart, engaged truck technical leader who can see what the production people are trying to accomplish and help the team do what is best for the show. Terry was a great truck EIC in his early years, and he was a great partner at NBC.”

Moving to NBC allowed Adams to experience having the momentum of a huge broadcaster behind him when working on arguably the biggest sports event in the world. It was especially helpful when it came to discussions with manufacturers, who saw the opportunities and challenges of meeting a literal Olympic-size challenge. And being at NBC placed him at the center of major transitions in broadcast engineering and technology.

In 2005, Adams led the transition to HD, which was made in two steps during the 2006 Torino Games and the 2008 Beijing

Games. With 2016 Rio and 2018 PyeongChang, NBC started experimenting with 4K HDR, and he oversaw the conversion to enable the NBC IBC to simultaneously handle 4K HDR, 1080p HDR, and 1080i SDR, in both 50 Hz and 60 Hz. At the same time, the IBC was converted to an IP infrastructure, a monumental task in itself — and both these transitions were made in the middle of the pandemic.

The biggest challenge of his career, Adams said, was the move to HD. “All the bandwidth went up, and the picture shape changed, which had such an impact on the production folks. Everything was new, and we weren’t even sure all the gear was going to work together.”

The move to IP was his next major challenge, and it involved a lot of backup plans and incorporating the IT pros with the broadcast veterans. Lots of learning going on.

Working on an Olympics broadcast has historically been one of the best ways to see the world in a meaningful way. The stress is high, but a months-long effort offers a unique opportunity to see how the rest of the world works and lives.

As for the evolution of technology, Adams considers the solidstate camera, with CCD-based imagers instead of tubes, was the leap that made the biggest difference.

“Before that,” he explained, “we would spend a lot of time aligning the tubes and testing the camera. And, if you dropped it on the ground, you had to start all over again.”

Adams’s influence extends beyond sports. He was instrumental in getting the low-light-level Live From Lincoln Center and Live From the Met series on the air, with some of the most magnificent images on TV at that time. He also designed and supervised construction of mobile units and oversaw the transitions from tubebased to solid-state cameras and from analog composite NTSC tape recordings to digital component HDTV files.

Mazza said a calm, pragmatic way of solving problems allowed Adams to have such a long and successful career with the Olympics unit.

“In such a highly charged environment,” Mazza said, “with all the pressure that builds up on the two-year planning cycle, it can be overwhelming. But TA always handled it with ease and gave those around him a great sense of confidence.” –

Ken Kerschbaumer

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