By Juliane Pettorossi, Editorial Assistant
Earlier this year, SVG launched the Sports Asset Management (SAM) Committee, dedicated to advancing the sports-media industry's content-management and storage capabilities and tools. This group, composed of asset-management leaders from each of the major U.S. professional leagues and college-sports entities, spearheaded this week's Sports Asset Management Forum and will contribute in-depth content to the upcoming online SVG Sports Asset Management Playbook (to be unveiled later this year). SVG is profiling the careers of all eight SAM Committee members.
Tab Butler, director of media management and post production at MLB Network, always craved a career in television. Throughout his high school years, he interned at WNEP-TV Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, PA, working in public relations and visiting local cable companies across northeastern Pennsylvania.
After a while, he was able to trade the Monday-Friday portion of his job for what he really wanted to work in: news. He worked on a small team of three as a film photographer and writer for the station's weekend news.
Butler continued his path in the television industry into college. While at Ithaca College, he received his 1st Class FCC License and worked a summer job for PBS station WVIA-TV Scranton, PA, as a broadcast-operations engineer. During his junior year, he interned at NBC New York and was trained as a video engineer to work in sports and news, assigned to the 1980 NBC News Conventions unit.
After graduating, he joined NBC and was assigned to work on news, sports, and entertainment shows. He was senior video engineer on Late Night With David Letterman when it started in 1982.
He subsequently became senior video engineer on NBC's N-1 mobile unit, focusing on sports and entertainment field production, and was promoted to technical director of NBC Nightly News in '84. Over the next four years, he also served as TD for sports events with Teddy Nathanson and Harry Coyle.
They were the two that really gave me a shot at sports video and TD'ing, and I did a tremendous number of shows with both of them, says Butler. I absolutely loved working them. They were incredible.
Over the next 13 years, Butler worked as technical director, sports and news technical manager, and the director of NBC Brooklyn Studios before joining Grass Valley as a strategic account sales manager covering the CBS Network, moving from broadcast to sales.
During the 1996 Olympics, he says. I had the opportunity to work with the Grass Valley video-server technology, as it was being introduced to the sports world. I was so impressed with the technology; I wanted to play a part in advancing the technology in the marketplace.
Over the next 11 years, Butler worked for various technology companies in the area of sales and marketing. Among them: EMC's Media Solutions Group, VideoBank, SeaChange International, and IBRIX.
In 2008, Butler was recruited to work on the launch of MLB Network as director of media management, overseeing the design of media-management workflows, helping take the network on-air on January 1, 2009, and keeping the media-management component running.
Butler has been tasked with the challenge of managing MLB Network's content with its continued explosive growth balanced with now aging technology. The media-asset management team developed specific tools to meet the needs of baseball production, such as the DIAMOND asset-management system.
DIAMOND has captured and cataloged every pitch from every game since Opening Day 2009, he says. We have over 400,000 hours of content now indexed within the MLB Archives, all managed by DIAMOND.
Currently, Butler and his team are in the middle of redesigning and upgrading the now five-year-old technology. If your computer is five years old, he says, you're probably complaining about how slow it runs.
He adds that it is getting more difficult to get parts, pieces, and support for hardware and software which is no longer in development such as Final Cut Pro and other platforms like our Aurora 7.1 platform. Software is supported, but just in a maintenance mode.
When it comes to overcoming today's challenges, Butler understands the need to design a system that is going to last longer than five years. MLB Network is currently working with partner companies to build an architecture that will buy infrastructure longevity, working to provide a fault-tolerant environment that has no service disruption. MLB Network is attempting to build a modular system, so that key components can get upgraded enabling a seven- to 10-year lifespan out of the new platform.
Butler was a fan of Major League Baseball long before he began working for MLB Network. During his early career at NBC, he had the opportunity to work on All-Star Games and World Series. He was technical director on a number of NBC Sports Game of the Week telecasts, and his first NBC Sports remote was a Mets game at Shea Stadium in 1980.
I had a lot of exposure and a lot of fun with baseball as well as other sports, he says.
Television is in his family's blood. Butler's wife, Pamela, is currently an associate director on NBC's Today. When not managing media at MLB Network, he enjoys playing and watching golf, which also reminds him of memorable times spent with his father.
It is so exiting to work in a business where our technology and tools are changing in leaps and bounds, he says. It seems like our broadcast tools are only limited by our imaginations. We are blessed to live in interesting times.
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
13/05/2026
New Adobe Premiere Color Grading Mode Accelerated on NVIDIA GPUs
Joel Pennington May 13, 2026
0 Comments
New NVIDIA RTX-accelerated features streamlin...
13/05/2026
Grass Valley announced that dB Broadcast has delivered new IP-based outside broadcast (OB) trucks for Cloudbass, featuring Grass Valley LDX 100 Series cameras a...
13/05/2026
Ikegami will exhibit the latest additions to its wide range of broadcast production cameras, control units, viewfinders and monitors on stand 5D3-1 at Broadcast...
13/05/2026
FISE, working with the founding members of the XR Sports Alliance (XRSA), Accedo, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and HBS, have collaborated to develop an immersive...
13/05/2026
Canon Unveils New EOS R6 V Full-Frame EOS Camera and RF20-50mm F4 L IS USM PZ Bu...
13/05/2026
Boston Conservatory at Berklee Honors Beth Morrison and Moses Pendleton at Comme...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Creative software developer Foundry today announced the latest developments on Nuke Stage. A purpose-built application for end-to-end virtual production and in-...
13/05/2026
A definitive portrait of one of Ireland's most influential musicians
New TV documentary airs Monday 18 May on RT One and RT Player at 9.35pm
Watch the...
13/05/2026
Agentic AI is changing the way users get work done. Following the success of OpenClaw, the community is embracing new open source agentic frameworks. The latest...
13/05/2026
Reinforcement-learning agents - AI systems that learn by trial and error - can c...
12/05/2026
Beyond the Hype: A Strategic Post-Hoc Analysis of NAB 2026 If NAB Show 2026 had an underlying theme, it was a quiet, industry-wide pivot from the high-energy sp...
12/05/2026
Guntermann and Drunck (G&D), a Panoptec Technologies Group company, and CT Square, led by Chandresh Shah, have announced a joint venture to distribute G&D and V...
12/05/2026
With 30 days until the start of the FIFA World Cup 2026, Telemundo, the exclusive Spanish-language home of the tournament in the United States, has announced th...
12/05/2026
The NHL has announced the return of Stanley Pup for its third consecutive year, a 90-minute special featuring adoptable rescue dogs competing on a miniature rin...
12/05/2026
NBCUniversal presented its 2026 Upfront to advertisers at Radio City Music Hall, detailing upcoming programming across NBC, Peacock, Bravo, and Versant properti...
12/05/2026
FOX Sports has announced funding for the Fandom and Social Connection Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Publ...
12/05/2026
TNDV and Live Media, both divisions of Live Media Group, supported live broadcast coverage around NCAA Final Four weekend in Indianapolis, including the March M...
12/05/2026
The European Football Alliance (EFA) has announced a content distribution agreement with Fubo Sports Network, the free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channel ...
12/05/2026
For the first time, Spanish-speaking fans in the U.S. will have two separate tel...
12/05/2026
CP Communications led a comprehensive spectrum management initiative on behalf of Churchill Downs during Kentucky Derby week, coordinating RF assets across the ...
12/05/2026
LiveU has announced a strategic partnership with DRONERESPONDERS, a 501(c)3 non-...
12/05/2026
Open Broadcast Systems has announced that BMC TV, a specialist in IP transport of broadcast content, has selected the Open Broadcast Systems 5G Flyaway solution...
12/05/2026
NEP Europe, part of NEP Group, has announced it will deliver broadcast solutions...
12/05/2026
Grass Valley has announced continued collaboration with Ravensbourne University ...
12/05/2026
Stats Perform has announced the launch of Opta Pulse, an AI-assisted video creation and distribution platform for leagues, rights holders, and broadcasters. The...
12/05/2026
FOX Sports has announced a collaboration with Sesame Workshop to integrate Sesame Street characters into FOX Sports' FIFA World Cup 2026 programming. Conten...
12/05/2026
To date, NHL Productions has produced 19 broadcasts with commentary in American Sign Language
NHL in ASL (American Sign Language) may be just one show, but the...
12/05/2026
Google's Brian Albert: creators, athletes, highlights, nostalgia, second-scr...
12/05/2026
A still from Past Lives by Celine Song, an official selection of the Premieres program at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. (Courtesy of Sundance Institute | p...
12/05/2026
Spotify is where fans and artists come together, turning discovery into somethin...
12/05/2026
Features patented Marco-MMC clocking technology
Black Lion Audio's latest release combines the company's expertise in clocking with their renowned p...
12/05/2026
New Track Panel, sequencer upgrades & more
Following their recent public beta release, Reason Studios have announced the full release of Reason 14. With the...
12/05/2026
One month to go! SBS reveals expansive FIFA World Cup 2026 lineup beyond the pi...
12/05/2026
Rohde & Schwarz presents its advanced solutions for power electronics testing at...
12/05/2026
aconnic AG (ISIN: DE000A0LBKW6), Munich, has developed a modified fund raising p...
12/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/05/2026
Tyrell Corporation, specialists in high-end live sports and entertainment broadcasts, was tasked with delivering compelling broadcast coverage of premier equest...
12/05/2026
Registration is now open for IBC2026 as the global media, entertainment and technology community prepares to converge on the RAI Amsterdam from 11 14 September ...
12/05/2026
Ross Video, a global leader in live video production technology, will present its latest innovations and integrated production workflows at BroadcastAsia 2026, ...
12/05/2026
500 selected leaders from around the world across start-ups, corporates, and venture capital. Over 50bn in assets under management among attending investors, a...
By Juliane Pettorossi, Editorial Assistant
