DARRELL WENHARDT

What do the NFL Network, the MLB Network, KABC Los Angeles, and WMAQ Chicago, and the PGA TOUR’s new production facility (set to open in 2025) have in common?

2022 Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame inductee Darrell Wenhardt. Currently principal consultant at CBT West, he has played a major role in bringing together countless opinions and created the workspaces and workflows that have been crucial to the sports-broadcast industry for nearly five decades.

Over the years, he has worked with hundreds of types of organizations, and figuring out what an organization aims to create means countless meetings with countless departments to make sure that the workflows will meet not only the need but the work environment.

“What I like is being able to start with a clean slate with a client and dig into what they are trying to produce,” he said of his professional philosophy. “It’s probably overused, but it’s still about storytelling and being able to meet expectations within a client’s budget constraints. We need to understand exactly what their production requirements are before we even begin to apply technology to it.”

When it works, the new facility can also help reshape the culture. Wenhardt cited his work on the NFL Network’s facility in Culver City, CA, in 2003.

“We worked with [Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer] Geoff Mason through the whole process,” he explained. “What was unique — and a key factor — was that NFL Network CEO Steve Bornstein and Geoff brought NFL Network host Rich Eisen in early. He became a critical player in bringing the right energy to the set and did it in a way that gave the network a unique voice. It was one of those cool times when we got the talent involved.”

The result was a facility that laid a cultural foundation for the new NFL Network facility. A few years later, Wenhardt helped MLB Network launch in a brand-new facility. Both the NFL Network and MLB Network projects offered an opportunity to develop new technology to provide fans with direct access to teams and players.

Tony Petitti, former president/CEO, MLB Network, said Wenhardt played a huge role in the launch of MLB Network.

“His innovation and implementation of the Ballpark Cam system was truly a gamechanger for MLB Network,” he said. “The system connected us to every team and allowed us to show images from every ballpark at any time with a simple toggle on a controller in our control room. We conducted thousands of interviews with players, managers, and coaches. Darrell’s vision and his execution were flawless.”

After graduating from San Diego State University, Wenhardt got his first full-time job as a teleproduction engineer at Grossman Community College, where he learned a lot about system design and spent a lot of time imagining how to build better equipment that students would destroy in a semester. This led to a chance to begin a business in 1974: Centro Corp.

The company was building systems for various schools in California and also realizing that it could make more money on integration work than on designing and building equipment. Growth, however, led to cash-flow problems because Centro was working on multimillion-dollar jobs that required capital outlay for materials and equipment. Several years later, one client, Salt Lake City-based Skaggs Telecommunications Services, decided to acquire Centro and make it a wholly owned subsidiary. Wenhardt declined the offer to move.

“I met Darrell in the early ’80s when I was at NBC and needed a truck built in a very short time for golf and was fortunate to have found Centro to figure out how to do the impossible,” said Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer and Hall of Fame Chairman Ken Aagaard. “Darrell’s ingenuity in pre-building the guts to the truck in his shop and sliding it into the truck that was completed only weeks before we needed it was sheer brilliance. Especially when it worked. We used the truck for multiple years.”

By 1988, after he had gone independent, relationships with Hall of Famer George Wensel, founding partner and president, NEP/ MPS, and Aagaard led to the formation of a new company: Creative Broadcast Techniques (CBT).

For more than 20 years, CBT was at the center of not only the facilities described but also the America’s Cup in 1992 and 1995 and even FIFA World Cups in 2002 and 2006. From the mobile units to the brick-and-mortar projects, Wenhardt built a solid reputation for understanding where technology was headed, how best to apply it to a client’s needs, and how to deal with a wide variety of pressures.

Not to be left out of the latest in sports-video production, Wenhardt and his CBT Systems Team found themselves in the middle of esports development — designing, building, and launching Riot Games’ first venture into studio and full REMI production with a temporary facility in Manhattan Beach, CA, and an 18-camera flypack for events in Cologne, Germany, and Seoul.

Since 2016, Wenhardt has devoted countless hours to development of a new-from-the-ground-up Digital Broadcast Center for the PGA TOUR. Set for completion in January 2025, the project includes development, with NEP, of a completely new set of advanced-technology remote trailers capable of producing CBS, NBC, and ESPN weekly coverage of all PGA TOUR tournaments, plus adding in the TOUR’s new Every Shot Live multichannel streaming service.

Luis Goicouria, SVP, media, PGA TOUR, said Wenhardt has been a rock for the PGA TOUR and its ambitious project to build a new, greatly expanded production facility.

“His knowledge of the broadcast technology needed in this type of facility is truly world-class, and he has been an integral part of every conversation,” Goicouria explained. “Simply put, we would not have been able to pull it off without his expertise and wisdom.”

– Ken Kerschbaumer