my life on the under belly of sports tv

The Grind, Internet TV

2006-11-29T00:35:00.000-05:00

Well, the World Series was a huge let down and I dove back into the grind! A good mix of college hockey, basketball, and Detroit Pistons.

I have mixed a couple hockey games one at MSU and one at UofM. UofM's Yost Ice Arena presents some new challenges this year. They have moved the location of the visiting teams locker across the arena from the original location. This has caused a major change in the way we run cables throughout the arena, where we are able to place microphones, and conduct interviews. Before we were able to set-up one interview location, now we have to make two. Extra work for the A2's.

I am paying dues at the Palace for Detroit Pistons broadcasts on MyTV20. I guess MyTV20 is the flagship station for the Pistons Television Network. They usually do a pre-game and/or post-game show from some location on the concourse level of the arena. If you see an interview/press conference of a visiting coach with a Pistons mic flag in the shot- That's my hand holding the mic. Our talent is usually tied up on-air for the post game show and I end up being the one this task falls on. I guess there could be worse responsibilities!

I have also been doing a some of ESPN 360 shows as an A2. These are "broadcast" on ESPN's broadband offering ESPN360 over the internet. Usually a broadcast from UofM or MSU against a lesser known school like Chicago State or Northern Iowa.

World Series Games 1&2

2006-10-23T13:49:00.000-04:00

Made it through the first two games(just barely). Great experience working with Fox en Espanol. Technical notes: For game 1 we only had an EFX feed(field & crowd sounds) from the big Fox truck. I mixed this with our announcers but had no program feed from Fox, so when they went to an interview or sideline reporter we didn't hear what Fox was showing. This was a problem because our video feed was from Fox and we had no cover camera to use as a bail out. - You would see the interview but not hear what was being said. The big change we made for game 2 was adding a program mix from Fox. I would mix that into our show when Fox would go to an interview or have something on screen that did not match with our show. The Spanish language announcers from my show would then translate the English feed. Still an easy show with a few problems. Now lets hope the series stays close for a return to Detroit and a couple more days work for the local crews!

World Series Set-Day

2006-10-21T10:34:00.000-04:00

Finished the set-day at the World Series around 9:00p.m. last night. A long day - spent most of it standing around waiting for Comerica Park facitlities to construct annouce booths on the mezzine level of the park. They actually built small booths out of plywood with plexi-glass windows. There are about 7 to 10 of these throughout the mezzine level of the park. The booths accomodate International television and radio broadcasters including: ESPN Intl, Televisia, Fuji, NHK, and the BBC. Whoever laid out the original plans for these booths under specked them, they are maybe 6ft wide by 8ft long. It will be difficult to fit two or three announcers, a producer and a stage manager but we are gonna try!
The next bottleneck was waiting for MLBI to set-up the announce gear. They are using a fiber based system to provide audio and communications to and from the announcer postions. It's a very cool system that connects each booth via a single gigabit ethernet connection locally, (within announcers area) then fiber Telecast to a production truck outside the park. From this point all audio and communications is down converted to analog and sent to the individual production trucks for each network (i.e.Fox,ESPN). Thanks to Randy from Relay House our production facilities guy!
Lots to do today - still have to verify all connections, tweak mic settings and make sure all communications systems are working. Then I think there is some kind of championship game or something.
Take a look at these photos taken from my cell phone: (They mostly show various crews taking a break from set-up to check out the park. Plus a couple of sat units.)

World Series in Detroit?

2006-10-19T01:34:00.000-04:00

Way back in April 2006 there was no way you could have told me that the Detroit Tigers baseball team would get to the Fall Classic this season or any season soon. I just would have laughed right in your face! But here we are; and I'm laughing for a different reason - I will be working the World Series for a Fox Sports International(Spanish language) broadcast. I look forward to bringing my view of the series to this blog.