Globecast Westlake Facility Ushers in New Era of Technical, Production Capabilities

Globecast Westlake Facility Ushers in New Era of Technical, Production Capabilities Live integration of sports now possible via three production control rooms By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director

Thursday, February 27, 2025 - 10:08 am

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Globecast Westlake at the Four Seasons Westlake Village is officially open for business. And while it might have taken a couple months longer than anticipated, Eddie Ferraro, Globecast Americas, Managing Director, says the move was made without impacting their clients whose channels are on the air 24/7 while also creating some new business opportunities and making the move to a hybrid ST-2110 IP and SDI infrastructure.

Globecast's new headquarters in Westlake, CA, gives the company more capabilities to serve clients in a number of ways, including studio operations.

It's a testament to our team that we're now fully operational out of West Lake Village today, says Ferraro. And now we can do live integration for sports which is something we have not really been known for. But we are really leaning into that in the coming years.

The words Four Seasons and Globecast may seem like the broadcast equivalent of the Odd Couple, but this Four Seasons is different as when it was first constructed it included a 21,000 sq. ft. broadcast facility, including a small teleport, a 6,000 sq. ft. studio, and a small sound stage.

The plan was to launch a full-time 24/7 health and wellness channel, says Ferraro. But the son of the owner, David Murdoch of Dole Foods, was supposed to run the channel and he was tragically killed in a car accident and the whole idea was put on hold. The broadcast infrastructure remained unused for years.

Ferraro says that by making the move Globecast has added seven additional revenue-generating spaces which translates to about 2.5 times the revenue generating space that was available in the original Globecast building in Culver City.

We also upgraded our domestic network, which is now 100 gigs in and out. We also went from 24 satellite antennas down to two but we're now managing RF remotely in Santa Paula, about an hour's drive away for occasional use KU band and other things and it's working out fantastically, he says.

Ferraro says the technical operations center and master control room has also been expanded and improved technically.

The configuration of the space allows us to expand our MCR to be able to accommodate more channels and associated operations, says Ferraro. As everything moves into the cloud and/or across fiber networks, we have to have an IP infrastructure that not only supports our customers today, but also tomorrow. This means across developments like UHD, HDR, virtual reality and live event productions, which can include 30 simultaneous source feeds from remote locations. It's a complete paradigm shift and the combination of moving to this new facility and completing our move to IP means we can best serve our customers. An exciting future awaits.

There are also three production control rooms that can be used for remote productions or to work hand-in-hand with the on-site studio.

Ferraro says the biggest advantage of the new location (along with the additional space and the upgraded infrastructure) is that Globecast is now on one floor (although a 6,000 sq. ft. studio space is upstairs for clients as well, something Ferraro says should come in useful for rights holders during the 2026 World Cup and 2028 L.A. Olympics).

We have a lot of scalable space and now it's up to the team to go get out there and deliver and deliver on what we've built for them, he says.

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2025/02/27/globecast-westlake-facility-ush...
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