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Just read the November 2009 article by David Feherty in Golf Magazine about the CBS crew breaking down and setting up the communications at an event. David provides a great behind the scenes account of how the "smellies" tear down the set up after a tournament, pack it up and then set it up again the for the next tournament.
However, we would take issue with one of his statements:
Other teams work on the fiber optic cable, which as I found out, has to be treated differently. There is no bending, knot-tying or knitting with this stuff, as you can it shatter it easily and annoy the production manager, who is the person who can have you assigned to the dumper crew, or worse still, McCord's tower next week.
Fiber optic cable is actually quite durable, weighs much less than copper, can send more data through the system and as such is much easier to pack up after a tournament.
We thank David for highlighting the efforts of the crews that set up at each tournament. To those of us in broadcast production they are the real heroes.
This last weekend I went to see WPRI-TV using our equipment at the Rhode Island Country Club in Barrington, RI for their expanded news broadcasts from the rain soaked CVS Caremark Charity Golf Classic. WPRI needed to set-up an announce position next to the course for two reporters, two guests, and a jib camera for beauty shots. The system operated for three days, much of it in the rain. As the broadcast area off the fairway turned into a swamp, it spotlighted fiber’s immunity to water; no hum buckers, no plastic bagging of connectors, no shock hazard, etc. The entire interconnect was accomplished on a single 500 ft. run of TAC-4 cable between the announce set and production trailer.There was some old and some new equipment on site. A legacy Ethernet Viper was used for the heart of the announcer system, moving HD program video, return video, six program audio channels, IFB , and ClearCom channels. One of the new Sony EX-3 cameras was fed through the Viper Mussel Shell while the second set camera was connected through the spare Mussel Shell fibers to a new, Telecast Copperhead equipped to interface with the Sony EX-3. The Copperhead provided full camera signal interface, remote control functions, operator intercom, and tally. The third Sony EX-3 jib cam was fed back to the production trailer using a Telecast Rattler system.At the very end, you should have seen the Jumbotron Truck trying to leave, driving up the muddy hill. A lot of money changed hands with each attempt up the slippery slope.
See Broadcast Engineering Magazine coverage.
