Try our new AI powered Smart-Search!
If 2020 was considered a disruptive one for the television production community, 2021 was a year where trial and error and the lessons learned became real-world REMI deployments to keep live sports and entertainment content on the air. Production studios too learned to adapt with fewer crew allowed inside and social distancing becoming the new normal.
In the action-packed and frenetic world of motorsports operations, crew communications at the track can be as important to success as the actual performance of the car itself. Monitoring telemetry from the cars and managing and distributing hundreds of audio channels has also become vital. It’s hard work configuring the required technology infrastructures on a weekly basis during the 11-month Formula 1 (F1) racing season, but well worth it.
For broadcasters to be profitable and stay ahead of the curve in this competitive market, they need to develop hybrid strategies with secure technology to accommodate remote workers without losing productivity. This was a direction the industry had been heading towards for some time, but the pandemic forced the industry’s hand at a more accelerated rate.
The pandemic has affected the system design and operations of live sports production in a myriad of ways. At first it was difficult for many to figure out but then evolved into the deployment of innovative types of distributed workflows and crews that drastically altered the physical positioning of technology and human resources.
Sitting at home watching the Olympics 400m Women’s hurdles final live on NBC’s 4K HDR channel, home audiences were captivated by the sweat and effort displayed on screen with immersive sound of the runners’ feet hitting the track. Viewers thousands of miles away could be excused for thinking they had the best seat in the Japan National Stadium. The live 4K HDR broadcast of NBC’s primetime show throughout the Games were an extrasensory experience unlike any previous Olympics telecasts.
TV equipment manufacturers are doing what broadcasters do best: Creatively helping each other work through a difficult technical challenge.
With mature, cloud-based services now prevalent across the industry, helping to process and distribute content faster and more accurately than ever before, the long sought-after promise of producing content in the cloud—reducing cost and physical barriers—prompted broadcasters and production companies to experiment with new ways to make it a common reality.
If there’s one thing the production community has learned during the pandemic, it’s that ensuring the safety of the crew on site or in the studio should always be first and foremost in people’s minds. The second takeaway is that sending less people on site and implementing more remote support is the new normal that the industry is, somewhat begrudgingly, coming to terms with.