SVG Sit-Down: Pac-12 Enterprises' Michael Molinari Says State-of-the-Art Production Facility Is Open for Business' Besides producing OSU and WSU athletics events, the facility is seeking third-party clients By Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S.
Thursday, September 19, 2024 - 3:21 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
In advance of the 2023-24 college sports season, Pac-12 Networks moved from its longtime home in downtown San Francisco to a new state-of-the-art production facility in nearby San Ramon, CA. The facility was planned prior to the shocking exodus that left just two schools in the Pac-12 Conference: Oregon State and Washington State. Today, the Pac-12 Enterprises operation in San Ramon is not only serving its two member schools (and potentially the four recently announced programs set to join in 2026) but is also seeking out third-party clients that can benefit from the robust production capabilities the fully SMPTE ST 2110 IP facility has to offer.
SVG sat down with Michael Molinari, who was named SVP of business development and studio operations for Pac-12 Enterprises in May, to get an idea of how the facility is being used today. Molinari also discusses potential production plans for additional Pac-12 Conference members, its partnership with The CW for OSU and WSU football, some of the common misconceptions around REMI production, how he's looking to grow the business beyond member-school productions, and what he's most excited about for the 2024-25 Pac-12 athletics season.
Pac-12 Enterprises' Michael Molinari: The charge for the past 12 years was to produce the 850 events for the conference network; now the charge is to create revenue for our schools. It's a more entrepreneurial model.
Let's start with this week's big news. With four schools joining the Pac-12 in 2026, will the Pac-12 Enterprises facility in San Ramon be handling those productions?
Future details will, of course, be determined by members of the Pac-12. What I can tell you is, after recently producing a Colorado State football game from our facilities in San Ramon, we are excited for the possibilities and confident that we can efficiently produce high-quality broadcasts from football to Olympic sports for our future new members.
How does the current Pac-12 Enterprises model differ from the previous Pac-12 Networks operation?
The biggest change is, we've switched from a 24/7 network model to a model where we produce programs for ourselves, our conference's schools, and [third-party clients]. The charge for the past 12 years was to produce the 850 events for the conference network; now the charge is to create revenue for our schools. It's a more entrepreneurial model.
I believe we can increase from those 850 annual events to closer to 2,000 events. First off, after the Pac-12 academic year, the building was closed during the summer for the most part. And the facility was not really operational on Monday and Tuesday because of the way the Pac-12 sports schedules were laid out.
During the pandemic, we had both FS1 and ESPN doing basketball out of our facility via a packager, so we've had a little bit of outside business prior to now. But, for the most part, we've produced our own events. That has all changed now, and we are officially open for business from anyone looking to produce live events efficiently and with high quality.
Pac-12 Enterprises' new San Remo, CA, facility produces traditional REMI shows, from five large-scale control rooms, and software-defined productions, from four SDP control rooms.
As of today, what events are being produced out of the facility?
Right now, we are scheduled to produce about 100 events each for Oregon State and Washington State this [academic] year. In addition, we are producing 11 of the Oregon State and Washington State home football games for CW. Nine of them will be REMI productions from our facility, and two of them will be full onsite-truck games: Purdue-Oregon State [on Sept. 21] and the Washington State-Oregon State matchup [on Nov. 23].
How does the San Ramon facility produce these events remotely?
We have two main types of productions: traditional REMIs, where we bring cameras and audio into a large control room to create the show, and software-defined productions [SDP], which have fewer cameras and use vMix [live-production] software to create the show. Approximately 25-30 of those 200 events for our schools will be full REMI, and the rest will be SDP.
In terms of REMI, we have five large-scale REMI control rooms that can do a production as small as a four-camera basketball game and as large as a 12-camera show with two SSMOs, which we did for the Pac-12 men's basketball tournament the last few years. In that case, we had another control room producing a three-person studio show so the entire event was taking place in Las Vegas with talent onsite, but the actual production was being done back here.
We have four SDP control rooms, and those shows typically have three or four cameras plus a lock off-camera onsite. We have a vMix operator doing the show in San Ramon plus a graphics person. The interesting thing is that the equipment, including the box that everything runs through, is actually onsite at the event. Essentially the entire operation is remoted in from San Ramon, and we get a full program signal from Oregon State and Washington State.
Four centralized control rooms are built around vMix, a software-based vision mixer. Shows run from these rooms can be produced by as few as two operators. (Photo: Pac-12 Networks)
You mentioned the Colorado State football-game production. Can you provide more detail on how that was handled?
Yes, that was really promising and exciting. We produced the Colorado State football game [against Northern Colorado on Sept. 7]
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
06/12/2025
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. A new survey from Pixitmedia by Datacore revealed a major shift in the Media & Entertainment industry in media archiving, with 85% of resp...
06/12/2025
HACKENSACK, N.J. LiveU has announced that the national public broadcaster Czech Television has completed one of the largest LiveU live production deployments fo...
06/12/2025
NEW YORK The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) presented the Excellence in Production Technology Emmy Award to NASA+ and Dr. Tom Leight...
05/12/2025
2025 Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame: Curt Gowdy Jr. - Master Storyteller, Nati...
05/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Veritone's Sean King on the Power of Mining Video, Audio DataThe company's Data Refinery offers users total control and governance over da...
05/12/2025
Platinum White Paper: Inside the Nashville Predators' Unified, Flexible, Sca...
05/12/2025
Netflix Reaches Agreement To Acquire Warner Bros. Following Planned WBD SplitThe deal does not include WBDs sports assets like TNT Sports (US, UK, LatAm), Euros...
05/12/2025
FOX Sports Returns to Indianapolis for Primetime Broadcast of Big Ten Championsh...
05/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Digital Engagement & Monetization Workshop Tackles the ...
05/12/2025
Atlanta United Lights Up New Emory Healthcare Studio With First Live Broadcast f...
05/12/2025
As Messi Takes the Pitch, MLS, Apple, NEP Roll Out Largest MLS Cup Production Ev...
05/12/2025
ESPN Enters College Football's Most Intense Month With Elevated Workflows fo...
05/12/2025
It's about that time! Awards season is in full swing, and the Film Independe...
05/12/2025
Every year, Spotify Wrapped offers a personalized look back at the audio that defined your year. It's a snapshot of your listening habits, designed to tell ...
05/12/2025
In 2025, Spotify's EQUAL, GLOW, and RADAR programs celebrated women, LGBTQIA , and emerging artists who turned moments into milestones. From breaking record...
05/12/2025
In our latest blog, we explain how Wi-Fi 7 rollouts can drive consumer loyalty with value-add services such as consumer cybersecurity. We also explore how this ...
05/12/2025
LOS ANGELES Netflix announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion....
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Nielsens Gracenote has launched Gracenote Content Connect, a new ad platform that provides agencies, brands, supply-side platforms (SSPs) and demand-si...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK In an most important update to the workings of deal-based programmatic advertising, IAB Tech Lab has released version 1.0 of its Deals API for public c...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Pass the turkey. Pass the stuffing. Pass the cranberry sauce. All are common requests of Americans celebrating Thanksgiving Day with family and f...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Iris, the new cloud-connected camera control platform, has officially launched with features that turn virtually any PTZ camera into a software-connect...
05/12/2025
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. Netflix announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion....
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Iris, the new cloud-connected camera control platform, has officially launched with features that turn virtually any PTZ camera into a software-connect...
05/12/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has approved AT&T's $1.02 billion acquisition of spectrum from UScellular in a decision that was issued sho...
05/12/2025
The Best Coldplay Songs: 21 Tracks That Shoot for the Stars From Yellow to Viva La Vida, Fix You to Paradise, this playlist goes back to the start.
December ...
05/12/2025
Zafris Lecture Series Brings Nabil Ayers to Berklee The 32nd annual James G. Zafris Distinguished Lecture series was held on Thursday, November 13, with guest...
05/12/2025
Friday 5 December 2025
A new Game of Thrones Tale: Official trailer for Sky Exc...
05/12/2025
Back to All News
Don Lee, Lee Jin-uk, and Lalisa Manobal to Star in Netflix Act...
05/12/2025
Tis the season of giving once again and this year we've taken our Give Back Fridays' concept and turned it on its head.
In the autumn we were approach...
05/12/2025
Brayden Gogis doesn't remember a time when he wasn't completely fixated on games in all forms. In preschool, when they asked us to dress up as what we ...
05/12/2025
The Grinch steals the spotlight as the theme for The Late Late Toy Show 2025
Tune in tonight at 9:35pm on RT One and worldwide on RT Player
#LateLateToyShow...
05/12/2025
RT Announces New Presenters of Flagship News Programmes
New RT Six One News co-presenter Tommy Meskill
Sarah McInerney & Justin McCarthy join Morning Ir...
04/12/2025
ToolsOnAir Blackmagic Design HyperDeck Event Presets for just:in mac pro 2025 & ...
04/12/2025
ToolsOnAir AJA Ki Pro Event Presets for just:in mac pro 2025 & just:in linux
More Details:Starting with version 5.5, both just:in mac pro and just:in linux sol...
04/12/2025
Wangu Kanuri from Kenya and Godwin Asediba from Ghana are two of this years finalists for Thomsons Young Journalist of the Year Award. The pair are runners-up i...
04/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: ProximaVision's Claudio Lisman on Why Tethered Drones Could Be...
04/12/2025
SVG Campus Shot Callers: Imry Halevi, Senior Associate Director of Athletics, Co...
04/12/2025
Platinum White Paper: LiveU Lightweight Sports Production: A Step Change in Spor...
04/12/2025
London to Riyadh: DAZN brings the boxing glamour to new production levels for Be...
04/12/2025
Analysis: Paramount bets on the battering ram' with Champions League play By Callum McCarthy, Editor-at-Large
Tuesday, December 2, 2025 - 10:12
Print ...
04/12/2025
Space City Home Network Launches SCHN DTC App for Astros and RocketsThe Rockets and Astros were previously the lone NBA and MLB teams without a DTC appBy Jason...
04/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Content Workflows Workshop Spotlights Evolution of Spor...
04/12/2025
New Sponsor Spotlight: Geotech's Patrick Wambold On the Unreal Engine Revolu...
04/12/2025
Curt Gowdy Jr. - Master Storyteller, Nationally and RegionallyBy Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S.
Thursday, December 4, 2025 - 1:52 pm
Print This Sto...
04/12/2025
(L-R) Rebecca Lichtenfeld, Mohammadreza Eyni, Sara Khaki, and Judith Helfand att...
04/12/2025
SBS launches Future Frames initiative to support emerging First Nations video ed...
04/12/2025
Coronal mass ejections caused by eruptions on the surface of the sun can have fa...
04/12/2025
Gracenote Content Connect enables media ecosystem to precisely align ad campaigns and programming based on rich content signals
NEW YORK - December 4, 2025 - N...
SVG Sit-Down: Pac-12 Enterprises' Michael Molinari Says State-of-the-Art Production Facility Is Open for Business' Besides producing OSU and WSU athletics events, the facility is seeking third-party clients By Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S. 
