NESN puts WEEI Sports Radio on TV with fiber-controlled cameras
Oct 27, 2011 11:57 AM, By Michael Grotticelli
WEEI now does video simulcasts of the "Dennis and Callahan Morning Show" each weekday on NESN.
For eight years, New England Sports Network (NESN) has depended on Telecast Fiber Systems fiber-optic transceiver technology for its local television coverage of the Boston Red Sox and Bruins games as well as collegiate sports on a cable network that covers four million homes in six New England states.
Beginning last November, however, NESN partnered with WEEI Sports Radio in Boston to break new ground in combining radio and television media and experiment with remote-controlled fiber-optic technology.
WEEI, one of the most successful sports radio talk stations in America, now does video simulcasts of the "Dennis and Callahan Morning Show" each weekday from 6 to 9 a.m. It's aired live on NESN in New England and later in prime time across the country to 3.7 million viewers on NESN National.
This unique programming partnership brings together the two most popular sports media companies in New England in ways that complement the strengths of each organization. It — and other experiments like it throughout the nation — may signal a new trend in combining the power of media assets.
For the show, NESN installed four remotely controlled Sony BRC-H700 HD cameras with PTZ mechanisms connected to Telecast Fiber's bidirectional 5400-series POV remote camera systems in WEEI's studio in Brighton. The POV system allows video, audio, monitor return, a genlock signal and duplex data for the PTZ camera control to be combined on the single fiber connection.
Dark fiber supplied by Sidera Networks feeds video signals back to the NESN HD Television Center in Watertown. In the Watertown control room, NESN directs and switches the four video feeds and add graphics, finishing the program. No personnel is needed at WEEI during the recording. In the morning, before each show, the crew simply makes contact with the WEEI staff through the intercom system.
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