
NFL Draft 2020: Bleacher Report Builds Remote, Distributed Control-Room Infrastructure To Deliver Live Coverage With crew and talent in their respective homes, B/R will produce 12 hours of live coverage in three days By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital
Thursday, April 23, 2020 - 10:14 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
Few events on the sports calendar are bigger than the NFL Draft for the video-production and -technology teams at Bleacher Report. Last year, the digital-sports-media powerhouse enjoyed its biggest weekend in the history of the brand, with its B/R app pulling in more than 250 million content engagements over the three-day stretch of the Draft.
In 2020, however, precedents matter little, and the NFL Draft soldiers amid a global pandemic that has shut down the sports world, including many of the facilities that sports-content creators work in. At Bleacher Report, which has closed its Manhattan offices, the video team was faced with the challenge of putting on four days' worth of live coverage with everyone - both in front of and behind the camera - working from home.
Adding to the challenge, this year marks the first time that Bleacher Report's live NFL Draft coverage will be streamed directly into the B/R app.
To produce live shows, Bleacher Report has built a remote control room in Steve Pellegrino's Queens apartment. Through LiveU servers, he is able to take in feeds from talent in their respective homes and even tap into key tools based in B/R's Manhattan studios.
We needed to adapt our production workflows, says Steve Pellegrino, director, video technical operations, Bleacher Report. It was important to our team that we could still execute on a live-show experience for our audience while also providing the same VOD clip-outs from those live shows.
After Bleacher Report cleared out its facility in March, Pellegrino and his team took about a week to work through their options. How could they pull off a widely distributed live production from their homes? What technology would they need? Could they leverage any of the infrastructure built into their new, now empty studios?
Before building a full-fledged video control in Pellegrino's Queens, NY, apartment, the tech team installed LiveU server and encoder equipment in many of the crew members' and talents' homes. They used LiveU LU-Lite, a laptop version of LiveU's encoder, which makes it easy for everyone to hook into the main network. It also takes up very little space, which was critical for team members residing in smaller NYC apartments and homes.
It is great for talent who live in small apartments, cracks Pellegrino. I am grateful to our talent for being patient with us as they have had to become much more technical in this work-from-home environment.
With the transmission layer settled, the crew moved on to live streaming, switching, and audio/IFB/comms. At the mothership in Pellegrino's apartment, the team installed a newly purchased Livestream Studio 6, a 4K switcher/encoder that can run on a PC or Mac computer.
Bleacher Report's Steve Pellegrino: It was important that we could execute on a live-show experience while providing the same VOD clip-outs from those live shows.
With a LiveU quad server, Pellegrino can take in all the RTMP feeds from the various LiveU gear distributed amongst the talent. In addition, it allows him to tap into the Ross Xpression graphics machines housed in the Manhattan studios. The graphics operator, who resides in New Haven, CT, is able to access Xpression directly and have all the live capabilities available from the main control room.
There's a similar pathway for playback. B/R is routing a channel from its main studio's Ross Mira to the LiveU encoder. The playback operator, who will be helping play out more than 200 player highlight packages as picks are made throughout the Draft, will be working from Pottsville, PA, also with the same controls he would have in the NYC control room.
Audio, meanwhile, is being handled from the Rutherford, NJ, home of Audio Engineer Mark Steinmetz. Through a LiveU server, he is able to pull down the same talent feeds as Pellegrino, while de-embedding the audio off those video-server feeds and pushing it into a Yamaha QL1 mixer. That creates a mix for talent while also feeding the audio to Pellegrino's Queens control room. The audio is being delivered over Verizon 1-GBps public home networks via two Z/IP ONE IP broadcast codecs from The Telos Alliance.
It's great because it allows me to focus on cutting the live show from my video-control room and Mark to be able to handle all the audio workflow on his end, says Pellegrino. If you watch a lot of TV shows right now with remote contributors via Skype, WebEx, etc., the audio quality is not very good. Our workflow has proved to produce a much better-quality audio source.
Steinmetz is also managing comms and IFB from his audio-control room, using a Unity Intercom app to talk to crew on partylines. He also has four VoIP lines installed in his home that talent can call into for independent IFB channels. The VoIP integrates with the Unity system so that producers can talk directly to talent.
The LiveU infrastructure allows graphics, playback, and audio operators working from home to leverage the same tools they would if they were in the NYC control room.
Ultimately, through this workflow, we have created a distributed-control-room model for remote production, which is working, says Pellegrino. We are very excited to conduct our [NFL] Draft production with this process and are already thinking about building out this process as B/R continues to work in a [work-from-home] environment.
When it comes to actual streaming delivery, Pellegrino can deliver an RTMP stream and a LiveU encode stream from his a
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...
16/06/2025
By Bailey Pennick
One of the most exciting things about the Sundance Film Festi...
16/06/2025
The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is officially underway for...
16/06/2025
On Spotify, francophone content continues to cross borders at an unprecedented rate. In 2024 alone, more than 123 million listeners worldwide streamed audio con...
16/06/2025
TYSONS, Va. Tegna Inc. is embarking on a notable expansion of their already substantial local news programming by launching live and on-demand, local newscasts ...
16/06/2025
Netflix has announced that it is expanding its global programmatic ad offerings by partnering with Yahoo DSP. This will enable brands to buy Netflix advertising...
16/06/2025
Instrument now boasts full NKS support
Sub51 and Soundtrax have just announced the launch of an updated and improved version of their innovative sample-base...
16/06/2025
NEW YORK In a landmark agreement to overtake the burgeoning connected TV (CTV) advertising market, Amazon Ads and Roku today announced a new integration that gi...
16/06/2025
ATLANTA, BALTIMORE, CINCINNATI and IRVING, Texas The four major broadcast groups behind the ATSC 3.0-based EdgeBeam Wireless datacasting joint venture today nam...
16/06/2025
BURLINGTON, Mass. Avid today announced an extended agreement with Amazon MGM Studios to integrate Avid's Media Composer and Avid NEXIS on Amazon Web Service...
16/06/2025
Maxon, maker of powerful, approachable software for creators working in 2D and 3D design, motion graphics, visual effects, gaming and more, today announced the ...
16/06/2025
Alfalite, the only European manufacturer of LED displays, announces the launch of SKYPIX RGBW & IM, a new series of ceiling-mounted LED panels designed specifi...
16/06/2025
Two new compact 4HP modules introduced
ALM/Busy Circuits have just announced the launch of two new Eurorack modules, the Pip Filter and Pip LFO, both of whi...
16/06/2025
16 Jun 2025
VEON Announces USD 35 Million Share Buyback Announcement marks the third phase of USD 100 million share buyback program
Dubai, June 16, 2025: VEON...
16/06/2025
Save 40% or More on All Ivory II Collections!From now through June 30th, enjoy huge savings on all Ivory II Piano Collections. Our biggest discounts ever are be...
16/06/2025
Behind The Broadcast Booth, Ep. 3: Golf. My Future. My Game. Founder and CEO Cra...
16/06/2025
The REMI Revolution Is Here: How Remote Production Technology in Esports Pioneer...
16/06/2025
From Super Bowl to Indy 500, New Orleans Artist Frenchy' Captures Energy of...
16/06/2025
NFL Films Enhances Post Studio With Dolby Atmos Audio Forty-three channels of audio enable the facility to migrate to immersive By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Mo...
16/06/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Storj's David Colantuoni on Expanding Cloud-Based...
16/06/2025
Grass Valley 4K Cameras Head to Greece for View Master Events' New OB Truck By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Monday, June 16, 2025 - 2:33 pm
Pri...
16/06/2025
Monday 16 June 2025
Sky Arts' Access All Arts Week, a free nationwide arts ...
16/06/2025
Monday 16 June 2025
Families and children are invited to dress up, have fun and raise money to protect nature
WWF UK and Sky Kids are teaming up to launch Wea...
16/06/2025
The Rohde & Schwarz R&S M3AR radio family reaches 10,000 unit milestone, demonst...
16/06/2025
FOX Advertising Launches Enhanced Brand Storytelling Program with Strategic Inve...
16/06/2025
Run with Ray is back! RT Radio 1's The Ray D'Arcy Show hits the road th...
15/06/2025
July 2025 in Dublin, Berlin, Amsterdam & London
Photo: Thea Martre
Music Production for Women (MPW) have announced that they will be running a series of fo...
15/06/2025
Composer/producer launches free virtual instruments
Sulcata Sound is the latest venture of Jason Graves, a two-time British Academy Award-winnning composer,...
14/06/2025
NEW YORK Pluto TV and the All Womens Sports Network have launched a free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) AWSN channel in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and the Nor...
14/06/2025
NEW YORK and CINCINNATI E.W. Scripps has announced a new, multiyear agreement with the WNBA that will continue Ions regular-season coverage of the league on Fri...
14/06/2025
WASHINGTON The National Association of Broadcasters highlighted the hidden importance of spectrum in the production of major sporting events and described wha...
14/06/2025
WASHINGTON Sunsetting ATSC 1.0, expanding business opportunities for NextGen Broadcast and increasing international adoption of the ATSC 3.0 standard were top o...
14/06/2025
SAN FRANCISCO Samba TV and Acxiom have announced that they will dramatically expand their longstanding relationship....
14/06/2025
July 2025 in Dublin, Berlin, Amsterdam & London
Photo: Thea Martre
Music Production for Women (MPW) have announced that they will be running a series of fo...
14/06/2025
San Francisco State University's School of Cinema Uses Blackmagic Design
Brie Clayton June 13, 2025
0 Comments
More than 40 Blackmagic Design came...
14/06/2025
Boris FX Mocha Pro Adds New AI Tools To Tackle VFX Tasks Fast
Jessie Electa Petrov June 13, 2025
0 Comments
The 2025.5 release helps artists work more...
14/06/2025
AJA Debuts DRM2-Plus Mini-Converter Frame at InfoComm 2025
Brie Clayton June 13, 2025
0 Comments
Next-gen frame addresses diverse rackmount needs wit...
13/06/2025
(L-R) Lindsay Utz, Michelle Walshe, and The Right Honourable Dame Jacinda Ardern attend the 2025 Sundance Film Festival premiere of Prime Minister at Eccles T...
13/06/2025
Photo credit: Atsushi Nishijima
If you're a true lover of rom-coms, chances...
13/06/2025
Pure Drama and Fierce Rivalries set to dominate the world's most iconic spor...
13/06/2025
Johannesburg, 12 June 2025 - The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an a...
13/06/2025
ABILENE. Texas A severe storm knocked down the tower and severely damaged the news studio and main facility of Sinclair-owned KTXS here on Sunday, June 8....
13/06/2025
Berklee's Music Business/Management Department Recognized by the Music Biz A...
13/06/2025
WASHINGTON The ATSC, the Broadcast Standards Association, honored veteran technologist Aldo Cugnini and Clarence Hau, Senior Vice President of Standards, Policy...
13/06/2025
(Editor's note: The 2025 UFL Championship Game between the D.C. Defenders and Michigan Panthers kicks off Saturday, June 14, at 8 p.m. Eastern. The game wil...
13/06/2025
New iPad/iPhone synth App announced
Following on from last year's release of Gradient Synth - which reached #6 on the App Store's Paid Music charts ...
13/06/2025
LONDON Warner Bros. Discovery has announced that HBO Max will launch direct-to-consumer in multiple new countries this July as the streamer becomes available in...
13/06/2025
AI voice transcription and captioning platform Verbit has added a new feature to its Captivate ASR solution the ability to identify specific features in automat...
13/06/2025
WASHINGTON Federal Communications Commission member Anna Gomez has wrapped up two weeks in California visiting broadcasters, television studio executives, enter...