NFL Network Flexes At-Home' Muscles With The Switch for Conference USA Schedule Five of the 10-game schedule were produced from The Switch's Burbank, CA, studio By Kristian Hernandez, Associate Editor
Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - 11:31 am
Print This Story
Story Highlights
With college-football championship week and bowl season just around the corner, conferences are assessing their regular-season broadcast operations. While organizations like Pac-12 Networks lead the way in producing games remotely, other conferences are moving toward that model. This year, NFL Network forged a partnership with The Switch and produced five of the network's 10-game schedule of the Conference USA season via at-home production.
When we picked up one game per week from Conference USA, we put out bids and responses from traditional production [companies], but The Switch came back with an at-home model, says Leon Schweir, VP, broadcast operations, NFL Network. There was a price point we wanted to hit, and I think they helped get us there, so we signed up with them during the first week of June.
Bang for the Buck: Both Parties Save Cash on Crew
The main benefit of an at-home model is its cost-efficiency. With a lighter structural footprint at each stadium, the team in Burbank had a lot of flexibility to customize the production as much as necessary.
Inside the control room at The Switch's studio in Burbank, CA
The idea behind it was to efficiently use the crew, says Glenn Adamo, managing director, The Switch. One of the challenges of doing college-football packages is getting local operators and technicians that are at a different level. We've been able to leverage the workforce in Los Angeles with some of the best technical people to work on our games.
Onsite staffers comprised announcers in the booth, a stage manager, and operators for the nine game cameras, but the studio in Burbank housed producer, director, TD, and a crew of operators handling audio, EVS replay, and graphics (scorebug and 1st-and-10 line).
Using familiar technicians enhances the value of the broadcasts and also creates camaraderie, familiarity, and a better sense of communication.
I often had directors or producers come in and be amazed at the crew they had, says Schweir. I called it the house band because they're always there [in the same studio] and they're all competent technicians.
Not only did NFL Network and The Switch have complete autonomy on who worked these telecasts, but the decision to go with at-home production put extra money in their pockets.
[The workflow] was legitimately a 20%-25% saving on what a traditional broadcast would cost since there wasn't a travel day on each side of the game, says Adamo. On the day of the game , the crew came in, worked, and went home usually within eight to 10 hours. It allowed us to maximize the use of personnel that we selected, and it kept the travel costs down to a bare minimum.
Keeping the Quality: Productions Remain Consistent Throughout
From a network perspective, the choice to work with The Switch was a simple one. Having spent time with the Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences, Schweir is accustomed to churning out a high-level product on a relatively low-level budget. The current season provided reliability with a sturdy home base in Burbank.
In previous experiences, he says, we would sometime have trouble with getting competent EVS operators in a certain market, so we maybe got two when we wanted three or four. We would have those additional EVS operators in the central [Pac-12 Networks] location in San Francisco contribute to that same truck show via fiber and IP transport. Sometimes, depending on the type of event, you want to have quickly edited bumpers or resets. Those were often done back in the studio base and dropped into a folder in the EVS on the traditional truck show.
Although the productions are being engineered from thousands of miles away, there wasn't any drop-off in quality.
We've had great success with the at-home version since there was really no noticeable difference between that and the traditional show, says Adamo. Somebody had called us and wanted to know when we were doing our next at-home, and I said, Look at the screen now, and you'll see we're doing it,' and they said, Really? Wow.' As the announcers are drawing on the telestrator, they're seeing it on the screen as they would if there were a truck outside and a telestrator downstairs.
Getting Comfortable: Blending Traditional and New-Age Production
Despite each site's having its own unique set of characteristics, operations at The Switch leveraged the stadium infrastructure when possible.
Out of the whole 10-game package, says Adamo, we had five what we call traditional' broadcasts and five at-home broadcasts. The five locations [where at-home production was deployed] were fibered - Rice Stadium, for example. We were able to capitalize on an installation by bringing back the cameras and 24 tracks of audio.
The crew produced a game between Rice University and North Texas University from 1,560 miles away.
The model combines both at-home and traditional operations to provide a conducive environment for any type of technician.
The workflows were pretty simple, he adds, and, since we did this via fiber, it allowed little to no latency. We tried very carefully to build a facility that allows you to feel like you're in the truck downstairs at the stadium. So It's allowing our customers to streamline their live productions without compromising quality.
The Road Ahead: At-Home Structure Gains Momentum
With at-home models gaining ground in sports-video production and this successful test-run in Burbank, NFL Network has further conviction to deploy this model as a viable solution for o
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
28/08/2025
IBC stand 5.F81
Wowza to Reveal Next-Gen Video Streaming Innovations at IBC 2025
Amsterdam, August 28, 2025 Wowza, a leader in video streaming infrastructur...
NFL Network Flexes At-Home' Muscles With The Switch for Conference USA Schedule Five of the 10-game schedule were produced from The Switch's Burbank, CA, studio By Kristian Hernandez, Associate Editor 
