NBA Returns: Turner Sports Teams With League, ESPN on Made-for-TV Season With REMI MLB effort at home, the broadcaster opts for onsite NBA production By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Tuesday, August 4, 2020 - 12:41 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
As Turner Sports heads into week two of the continuation of the 2020 NBA season at Disney's Wide World of Sports (WWos) facility in Orlando, Turner Sports EVP/Chief Content Officer Craig Barry is happy with the on-air product to date.
I think it has been really solid and probably surpassed a lot of expectations as a made-for-TV event, he says. We've only done two national days, but it's only going to continue to get better.
The NBA, Turner, and ESPN have embraced the made-for-TV aspect of the production in a number of ways, he notes: It comes through with the additional camera angles. And the audio comes through really well as there is a lot going on with the ambient PA; the DJ; court mics, of which are three or four times as many as usual; and the fan noise, which is driven in real time. It's the best-case scenario under the circumstances.
A massive, 28-ft. desk allows (from left) Shaquille O'Neal, Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith, and Charles Barkley to maintain social distance.
The NBA, Turner Sports, and ESPN share a 200,000-sq.-ft. compound connected to three venues: The Arena, where the main nationally televised games are held as well as the conference finals and finals; the HP Field House, for the regular season and into the second round of playoffs; and Visa Athletic Center, which hosts games broadcast primarily by a regional sports network. More than 436 miles of fiber ties everything together.
In an unusual partnership, Barry says, the NBA and ESPN have collaborated on everything from camera locations to innovations around audio and presentation. Everybody was flexible and listened to ideas, and then extensive rehearsals helped get the production baseline audio mix to a good place.
The philosophy is to have a good baseline mix before adding the announcers, he says of the audio efforts. And then there is the opportunity to take the audio streams independently and mix them up or down.
A railcam captures NBA games from a unique angle.
Turner Sports is producing its games out of NEP Supershooter 8 at The Arena, NEP TS2 at the HP Field House, and M14 at the Visa Center. The A and B units are being deployed to allow greater social distancing, and the compound features six mobile-unit cover tents, two catering tents, two field-shop tents, and multiple cooling stations.
The tents are important because they can lower the temperature of the roof skin by 20 degrees.
Tents would not make sense over a weekend, explains Chris Brown, VP, operation and technology, Turner Sports, but we will be at WWoS for three months, and that makes efficiency of AC super-important. Those are the types of things that everyone is being thoughtful about, like having extra pallets to get things off the ground in case of a hurricane.
Turner Sports is keeping as much of the production onsite as possible, given that it is deploying REMI production for MLB coverage at the Turner Broadcasting Techwood campus in Atlanta.
Robotic cameras play a big role in NBA coverage at the Wide World of Sports in Orlando.
The trickle-down effect would have impacted capacity in the TOC and then the studio and studio operations, says Brown. With baseball, we have no choice but to do REMI, and the potential collisions on a Sunday if NBA was REMI as well got us to have production teams in Orlando with trucks.
One of the challenges in Orlando is observing COVID protocols and having dedicated personnel working in one of three zones: red, yellow, and green.
The team that would put the mics in under the court had to have a chance to meet the team doing the crowd mixes and go over things at the court before the production team would go into quarantine, says Brown. And then, while the floor A2s were in quarantine, a different group would lay the cables. Once the court is declared a green zone, [personnel dedicated to] the yellow zone [are] no longer allowed on the court. So there is a lot of knowledge-sharing going on.
The Turner Sports team is not only covering the game action but also working to make the most of the media availability of coaches and players. LTN and Make.TV have created a system where upwards of 50 robotic cameras and Zoom teleconferencing systems are used to deliver interviews to a cloud-based dashboard.
From there, says Brown, we can route them to 12 decoders, and we can take them live, send them to an EVS replay server, or [make them] available as files for postproduction and delivery via NBA.com, the NBA app, or sound bites for the studio show.
That's one of the small things we're pretty excited about, he continues. The NBA had three weeks to get it installed and configured. It was turning out content last week and adds to the storytelling.
Preparations in Techwood While the team in Orlando juggled different zones and courts, the team at Techwood was ramping up to ensure that studio infrastructure and operations were ready for Inside the NBA to return to the air. One of the most well-respected sports shows on the air, the show brings together Ernie Johnson, Shaquille O'Neal, Kenny Smith, and Charles Barkley every Thursday for an entertaining and informative night of discussion and analysis.
Explains Barry, We wanted to walk before we ran so the first thing was to get the studio infrastructure up and figure out how many people we could safely have onsite, how many control rooms would we need, and to make sure we had the right amount of distance to meet safety and health guidelines. The first four shows were done with the talent remotely, but, when we knew we could get the [
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
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
01/06/2026
Designed to solve a common problem in broadcasting, the automated workflow detects, identifies, removes, and documents copyrighted music
AudioShake has introdu...
01/06/2026
The sports-analytics company combines its data with proprietary AI to help leagu...
01/06/2026
Category line-up & sponsors announced
Photo: Paul Clarke
The Production Music Awards (PMA) have announced that submissions are now officially open ahead of...
01/06/2026
New hybrid sample/synthesis instrument revealed
Excite Audio have just released the latest instalment in their Evolve series, which has been developed in co...
01/06/2026
Latest TONEX expansion captures three rare vintage amps
The newest addition to IK Multimedia's ever-growing TONEX line-up introduces a set of three incr...
01/06/2026
Musically intelligent soft synth gets upgraded
Scaler Music will be probably be best known to many for their music theory tools, but their product range al...
01/06/2026
SBS confirms its broadcast sponsors for FIFA World Cup 2026
1 June, 2026
Media releases
SBS has secured Hyundai, Hisense, Macca's, Rexona, bet365, Com...
01/06/2026
Rohde & Schwarz Satellite Industry Days 2026 guided by the motto From Earth to ...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Marshall Electronics is showcasing a comprehensive lineup of next-generation POV cameras, purpose-built to power today's connected AV environments, at InfoC...
01/06/2026
Adobe Announces Concept to Vector
Deepa Subramaniam June 1, 2026
0 Comments
One of the biggest frustrations we hear from designers is how difficult it...
01/06/2026
Vampire Feature Night Patrol Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton June 1, 2026
0 Comments
Colorist shapes dark, gritty tone for horror thri...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Mardi 2 juin 14h00
FilmLight (ARRI), 10 rue Ren Boulanger, 75010 Paris
Rejoignez-nous pour d couvrir comment FLAPI (l'API FilmLight) peut transformer e...
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...
31/05/2026
Olivia P rez-Collellmir to Premiere Original Work at Gaud Centennial in Barcelona The Berklee graduate and faculty member will debut her choral symphony with...
31/05/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Wins 15 Awards at the Canadian Screen Awards - See Pho...
31/05/2026
Taiwan is home to more than 500 NVIDIA ecosystem partners. More than 1 million N...
31/05/2026
As factories move from isolated automation to plant-wide intelligence, manufacturers need AI systems that can connect live machine signals, quality systems, wor...
31/05/2026
The NVIDIA AI Cloud ecosystem is accelerating the global buildout of AI factory infrastructure. Partners are expanding capacity to meet growing demand from ente...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
NBA Returns: Turner Sports Teams With League, ESPN on Made-for-TV Season With REMI MLB effort at home, the broadcaster opts for onsite NBA production By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director 
