
SVG Rewind: CBS Sports Team Reflects on Masters Efforts, New Content Center, New Workflows Remote operations, transmission flypack, drones, and Flycams were part of the effort By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Monday, April 26, 2021 - 1:49 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
There were numerous firsts at this month's 2021 Masters Tournament. First, of course, was Hideki Matsuyama's becoming the first male Japanese golfer to win a major championship.
There were several firsts on the TV-production side as well: most notably, the opening of Augusta National's Content Center, a new complex of buildings (one for CBS, one for ESPN, and one for the Masters Digital Group) that housed the type of operations typically found in a television compound.
A new Content Center at Augusta National gave the compound a first-class look as well as improved workflows.
Everybody was really looking forward to working in the new Content Center, says Patty Power, EVP, Operations and Engineering, CBS Sports. It's just incredible to have the experience of being on a remote [production] that size and able to work in a beautifully designed building.
The Content Center more closely resembles a nice neighborhood - with sidewalks, street lamps, even welcome desks inside the buildings - than a traditional broadcast center.
We had management, production, operations, and the VO booths and announcers for ancillary shows - including Featured Groups, Amen Corner, 15-16, and 4, 5, & 6 - all housed in the Content Center, adds Power. There also was a large camera-storage area, tech management, and a quality- control area for our group.
The Masters is the penultimate significant event during a six-month run for CBS comprising the Masters in November 2020, Super Bowl LV in February, the return of March Madness, and next month's PGA Championship.
The Super Bowl was the smoothest really large event we had executed, says Mike Francis, VP, remote engineering and planning, CBS Sports, but this had another level of complexity and scale that no other event reaches.
Over the past 13 months, CBS Sports has honed a golf-production workflow that continues to rely on personnel working remotely. That was the case for the Masters, for which much of the ARL augmented-graphics team was located in New Zealand and the TopTracer team operated out of a studio at All Mobile Video in Midtown Manhattan.
Previous golf workflows were expanded and merged with several new initiatives at the Masters. The compound housed more than 50 vehicles, including NEP SSCBS, which handled second-nine coverage, and Game Creek Video Encore, which handled first-nine coverage. Also in the compound were NEP Supershooter 4 for the featured groups; F&F GTX20, in its Masters debut, handling coverage of Holes 4, 5, and 6; Game Creek Video Spirit, producing 4K HDR coverage of Amen Corner; NEP Supershooter 5, making its debut and housing TopTracer and ARL onsite operations; and Game Creek Video Celtic, handling On the Range programming in its first year at the Masters.
Francis notes one of the most impressive aspects of the production: all the units ran off shore power, saving more than 60,000 gallons of diesel fuel.
We did not run any generators, he points out. They were there but in a cold-backup capacity in case there was a utility power interruption.
The most important addition to the compound was a transmission flypack from Bexel, replacing the NEP ESU unit and handling video distribution to the various entities onsite.
It helped service all of the distribution of signals to the office spaces in the Content Center, Francis explains. We simply outgrew the NEP ESU unit that we've gotten a lot of utilization out of over the years. We found that the flexibility we were able to get in the NEP Bexel flypack fit our needs a little better.
The flypack also played a large role in ensuring that signal timing was accurate for all onsite production teams.
We used PTP instead of analog black burst, says Francis. That streamlined the process significantly, as timing was something we would usually spend a good portion of the day doing. I give all the credit to Jason Taubman [SVP, technology] at Game Creek Video and Dan Turk [chief engineer, NEP U.S. Mobile Units] at NEP: they have been living with PTP out on the road and knew the extra design precautions we needed to take.
A Tektronix 8000 master clock locked to GPS for timing and made the flypack the master clock. The trucks that were built on SMPTE ST 2110 network connections easily connected their local PTP switches to the flypack, and the baseband and earlier-generation IP trucks (like Supershooter CBS and Game Creek Video Encore) used a bilevel analog black burst.
PTP was the core of it all, says Francis.
The Tech Toys For many viewers at home, the highlights of tournament coverage included the use of drones, two Flycams, and the Atlas shallow-depth-of-field camera.
I give a lot of credit to the folks at Augusta National for working with us to try new angles and new technologies, says Jason Cohen, VP, remote technical operations, CBS Sports. We've opened up the show to be able to showcase the course in a way that was never done before. All those angles and all those technologies provide very different benefits but all with outstanding results. And that is capturing the essence of the course and the tournament in a unique and compelling way.
The drones, he adds, continue to be well-received in golf coverage. At Augusta National, that is probably still the number-one most talked-about enhancement, which was added because of the look and the angle that it can give. It was a different experience from the fall-foliage perspective of Augusta [when the 2020 tournament was postponed to November]. We have different colors in the spring, [and
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...
07/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
07/05/2026
Cobalt Digital Wins Two Future Best of Show Awards at 2026 NAB Show
Manufacturer Recognized by TV Tech and TVBEurope for Innovation in signal processing
Cobal...
07/05/2026
Software and hardware platforms, AI power and user-friendliness on show...
07/05/2026
Intinor will demonstrate its latest technical enhancements for the Direkt series at BroadcastAsia 2026. With a continued focus on reliable contribution and remo...
07/05/2026
Bitmovin has announced that MUBI has chosen Bitmovin as its cloud VOD encoding partner, replacing MUBI's legacy on premises encoding setup to improve scalab...
07/05/2026
Meet Graduates from Berklees Class of 2026 Members of this years graduating class reflect on their proudest moments at Berklee and look ahead to whats next.
...
07/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
07/05/2026
At BroadcastAsia 2026, Interra Systems will demonstrate its latest innovations in automated quality control (QC), real-time monitoring, and captioning. The comp...
07/05/2026
At this year's Broadcast Asia, PlayBox Neo is set to unveil recent innovations across its PlayBox Neo Suite and integrated range of broadcast media solution...
07/05/2026
Strategic three-year partnership marks delivery phase of BFBS' next-generation media vision
Media organisation and military charity BFBS (British Forces Br...
07/05/2026
Amagi, the agentic industry cloud platform for unified broadcast, streaming, and monetization, today announced the availability of its In-Content Ads offering v...
07/05/2026
Lightware Visual Engineering has developed Rack Taurus for rack-based environments such as education and corporate training spaces. It enables clean and simple ...
07/05/2026
Jigsaw24, the UK's leading media equipment supplier and systems integrator, will showcase its expanded end-to-end workflow capabilities at MPTS 2026, signal...
07/05/2026
Ease Live, an Evertz company, today announced that it has been granted a US Patent for its proprietary graphical overlay technology, the foundation for interact...
07/05/2026
Test & measurement innovator Leader Electronics of Europe will present an extensive range of Leader, PHABRIX and LeaderPhabrix test and measurement solutions at...
07/05/2026
At Broadcast Asia 2026 (Stand 5H3 8), LiveU is redefining live production with its most powerful IP-video EcoSystem to date built to help broadcasters and con...
07/05/2026
January 8, 2024
Colorfront (colorfront.com), a leader in high-performance, on-s...
07/05/2026
February 9, 2024
Colorfront (colorfront.com), the multi-award-winning pioneer i...
07/05/2026
March 20, 2024
NAB 2024, Las Vegas - Colorfront (colorfront.com), the multi-awa...
07/05/2026
April 1, 2025
CINEMACON, APRIL 1, 2025 - Colorfront (colorfront.com), the multi-award-winning developer of high-performance dailies/transcoding/streaming syste...
07/05/2026
June 15, 2025
Colorfront (colorfront.com), an Academy and Emmy Award-winning de...
07/05/2026
June 15, 2025
Colorfront participated in the ICTA Barcelona Cinema Technology Summit on Sunday, June 15, 2025. Held at The Phenomena Experience, the event feat...
07/05/2026
July 1, 2025
Colorfront (colorfront.com), the multi-award-winning developer of high-performance dailies/transcoding/streaming systems for motion pictures, OTT,...
07/05/2026
July 1, 2025
Passion and dedication will take you places. Come with us on a short trip to the heart of India, where Annapurna Studios is living-up to the inspi...
07/05/2026
July 3, 2025
Colorfront (colorfront.com), the multi-award-winning developer of high-performance dailies/transcoding/streaming systems for motion pictures, OTT,...
07/05/2026
September 1, 2025
IBC 2025, Amsterdam - Colorfront (colorfront.com) - the Acade...
07/05/2026
April 17, 2026
LOS ANGELES - April 17, 2026 - Colorfront today announced Colorf...
07/05/2026
April 23, 2026
NAB 2026, Las Vegas - the Academy and Emmy Award-winning develop...
07/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
07/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
07/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
07/05/2026
Recreating the 1974 Doctor Who Time Tunnel in After Effects
Graham Quince May 6, 2026
0 Comments
The Time Tunnel from Doctor Who titles is one of th...
07/05/2026
Well known Irish faces pushed to the edge in new series of
Uncharted with Ray G...
07/05/2026
RT will premiere A Traveller Family, a compelling new documentary exploring the...
07/05/2026
Less typing, more tanking.
Faster logins mean more time in the gaming action - and this week provides GeForce NOW members with a smoother path straight into th...
06/05/2026
Gravity Media Chief RF Communications Engineer Glenn Willems uses Wisycom RF over Fiber and wireless solutions across major cycling events and international mar...
06/05/2026
A Sennheiser Spectera module is now available in Bitfocus Companion and Buttons, enabling direct integration of Spectera with the two software platforms. The mo...
06/05/2026
Ted Turner, the visionary media entrepreneur whose appetite for disruption helpe...
06/05/2026
Peacock is going all-in on the beautiful game - streaming all 104 FIFA World Cup...
06/05/2026
New pricing tiers for vocal/dialogue restoration tool
NoiseWorks Audio's AI-powered vocal and dialogue processing plug-in is now available in three diff...
06/05/2026
Popular mixing & routing software overhauled
Following a recent public beta test, RME have launched the final release version of the powerful mixing and rou...
06/05/2026
New SOS Video Feature
Focusrites ISA C8X is a milestone product that brings together the companys analogue heritage and their expertise in digital audio. Yo...
06/05/2026
Polands Miecznik-class frigates are part of the largest contract in Polish shipbuilding history. (Image Credit: PGZ Stocznia Wojenna)...
06/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
06/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
06/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...