In the Face of the Pandemic, ESPN Relocates Australian Open Production Ops to Bristol 40 paths, nearly 100 sources come from Melbourne for massive REMI effort By Jason Dachman Wednesday, February 10, 2021 - 11:57 am
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The ongoing global pandemic rendered the annual pilgrimage of ESPN's production and remote-operations teams to Melbourne for the Australian Open unrealistic, if not impossible, this year. However, not to be deterred, ESPN has shifted its sizable production operations more than 10,000 miles away to its Bristol, CT, headquarters, where it is remotely producing 110 hours of live Aussie Open TV coverage (plus another 1,000 hours of live-streamed content).
Everything is different and unique for us this year, being in Bristol, says ESPN VP, Production, Jamie Reynolds. I think that has been incentivizing for a lot of people to try to reinvent the way we cover Grand Slam tennis. The excitement of having all the technology and toys to play with in Bristol is attractive. So I think it has rejuvenated the way we tell stories and approach how we handle a world feed like this. That has been an exciting, inspirational way to approach it.
In Melbourne: Limited Onsite Presence, Reliance on the World Feed Because of travel restrictions and safety precautions, ESPN has a minimal presence onsite in Melbourne, with only analysts Darren Cahill and Rennae Stubbs reporting live from the grounds (both are Australian natives and are also serving as coaches at the tournament). In terms of match coverage, ESPN is relying even more heavily than usual on the world feed provided by host broadcaster Tennis Australia and its technical partner, Gravity Media.
When Bristol meets Melbourne. Hello ESPN team Welcome to the @AustralianOpen pic.twitter.com/dtE4VX5QRL
Darren Cahill (@darren_cahill) February 7, 2021
In addition, ESPN is sending 40 paths from Melbourne to Bristol via a 1.5-Gbps fiber link provided by The Switch (with access to nearly 100 video sources in total). ESPN is also receiving clean and dirty feeds of the linear program produced by Tennis Australia. ESPN-owned encoders are deployed in Melbourne, are managed onsite by Gravity Media, and can also be controlled from Bristol.
Historically, says Reynolds, we would send only three lines back from Melbourne with our switched feed, so we did all the work onsite. This year, we have 40 [to Bristol], so it becomes a lot more complicated.
The backbone of ESPN's Australian Open broadcasts are the clean and dirty feeds from all 16 broadcast courts (eight produced with traditional manned cameras, eight with automated robotic camera systems). On Center Court at Rod Laver Arena, ESPN is taking the line cut from Tennis Australia and five additional camera feeds that the ESPN production team can intercut at its discretion.
look at old school pic they have of me at espn i think either 83 or 84 indoors in australia the bandanna i guess for fashion back in the day pic.twitter.com/KFkFdRsDXF
Brad Gilbert (@bgtennisnation) February 9, 2021
We wanted to be able to give our production counterparts the flexibility to go to individual courts and not have to rely entirely on the produced world feed from Tennis Australia, says ESPN Associate Director, Operations, Larry Wilson. We have 16 dirty feeds and 16 clean feeds coming back so that they can create their own ESPN production by going court to court based on their editorial discretion.
Associate Director, Operations, Larry Wilson is working from home in Connecticut.
ESPN must also account for frame-rate conversion since the Tennis Channel Australia host broadcast is a PAL 50-Hz feed. To convert the 40 paths to NTSC 60-Hz signals, ESPN is using 20 frame-rate converters in Bristol and another 20 on the West Coast at Tennis Channel. ESPN and Tennis Channel then exchange paths as needed.
All these signals are integrated not only into the ESPN Domestic broadcast but also into Tennis Channel's coverage, by ESPN International clients, and into ESPN Interactive TV's multiscreen mosaic on AT&T DirecTV, which is also being produced in Bristol.
Senior Operations Producer Joa O'Connor is located in Wisconsin.
The complex transcontinental remote operations are overseen by Wilson in Connecticut, Senior Operations Producer Joa O'Connor in Wisconsin, and Technical Manager Sam Olsen in London - all from their respective homes. To manage the 40 paths running between Melbourne and Bristol, they are using a mix of Unity comms software, Gravity Media Kits that allow them to view the routers in Melbourne, email, cellphone, Zoom, and WhatsApp.
We're learning as we go because we have never really done this workflow before, says Wilson. It's not extremely complicated in theory, but the execution is unique because it's just three of us managing it from our homes. We've lost that ability to walk around and get a sense of how things are going. That's what complicates the management part of it.
I'm immensely proud of the team and how we were able to visualize a workflow that we can't really put our hands on, he continues. We haven't seen each other in person to do any planning either, so everything has been remote. It's quite a challenge to try to visualize the plan over Zoom calls and line drawings and emails, but we're very happy with how it has turned out.
In Bristol: Control Rooms, Studios, Commentary In November, ESPN's tennis team took Bristol's studios for a test drive, as Reynolds calls it, during coverage of the ATP championship.
What? Miss a #BartyParty? @espn @AustralianOpen live from Bristol studio. #upallnight
My proof. pic.twitter.com/7xZoIgSGEc
Chris McKendry (@ChrisMcKendry) February 9, 2021
It was only one match in a two-hour win
