Tech Focus: Training, Part 1 - As Broadcast Sports' A1 Cohort Ages Out, Audio Looks for Solutions Few intermediate steps are available, but mid-career changers might offer a fix By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Wednesday, September 11, 2024 - 7:00 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
September may be back-to-school time, but higher education may not offer the panacea to offset the looming shortage of A1s for broadcast sports. The current cadre of veteran mixers are retiring, and the flow of new technical talent to replace them is only a trickle.
Vince Lepore, director, global training, Audinate, which created Dante AoIP, and former course director at technical academy Full Sail University for 18 years, says the A1 crunch has been in the making for as long as he has been an educator. It's not that people didn't see it coming years ago; rather, no one took action swiftly enough.
Audinate Vince Lepore: The solution is going to be multipart. Automation will certainly be a part of it, as likely will AI, but we're not going to see the Olympics being mixed by AI in our lifetimes.
He worked with other educators and with product manufacturers and broadcasters to encourage broadcast-audio mixing as a career path for students at the school, scheduling visits by working A1s to provide a realistic picture of the profession. But it's not enough, he says, to snare the attention of most college-age youth.
It helps, he explains, but the solution is going to be multipart, including more effort by broadcasters themselves to make the position less arduous, in terms of travel and technical responsibilities. Automation will certainly be a part of it, as likely will AI, and workflows like [REMI] also help. But we're not going to see the Olympics being mixed by AI in our lifetimes. We need to solve the personnel problem in the meantime.
A Gap Year, or Three Tom Sahara, SVP, Quintar, which creates interactive spatial-XR experiences for verticals, including sports, and former VP, operations and technology, Turner Sports, has become a kind of evangelist for replenishing the ranks of broadcast A1s. The Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer has conducted seminars on how schools can help meet the challenge. For instance, his presentations at Full Sail University focus on explaining the various technical roles - audio and such functions as replay editing and graphics - involved in sports productions.
Quintar's Tom Sahara: It's that next three years [after formal education], when they're learning it in the real world, that's missing. [Broadcasters] don't necessarily want to or can't provide apprenticeship opportunities. That gap is the big problem.
He has found that college curricula have improved at teaching at least the rudiments of broadcast audio. Schools have done a really good job of modernizing those courses, he says, and of leveraging new cost-effective technology. That lets those same schools do more of their own broadcast production for their own sports teams and leagues, which creates more opportunities for students to do hands-on learning.
The speed bump in getting those better-prepared students into A1 seats, however, remains the same, he says: a reluctance on the part of broadcasters to hire them out of school, regardless of how much football they may have mixed there. There are very few accessible intermediary roles in which they can showcase their capabilities to national and regional broadcasters, who are understandably cautious about who gets to do the live mix of a game watched by potentially millions of viewers.
They can learn a lot in the two to four years they spend at [higher education], Sahara says, but it's that next three years, when they're learning it in the real world, that's missing. The schools can't teach that, and the [broadcasters] don't necessarily want to or can't provide apprenticeship opportunities. That gap is the big problem.
Middle Age, Big Opportunity? There may be another gap worth exploring. A familiar narrative is that broadcast A1s begin their career in music engineering and production in their 20s and extend it for a decade or so; however, a relentless focus on youth affects the music business's technical side, and music-engineering career arcs often falter as middle age approaches. It's a point at which some current A1s successfully moved to broadcast in search of more financial security and career longevity.
Recently retired A1 Phil Adler, who mixed NFL and other sports for CBS for more than 30 years, says he transitioned from music to broadcasting in his mid thirties. It was tough making a full-time living as [a music] engineer in Boston unless you owned a studio. A TV station with a truck offered me a job because they needed an audio guy' and taught me television sports. He adds that his wife's reluctance to move to the Los Angeles music scene sealed the decision to trade music for broadcast.
Chris Davie, managing partner, Sonority Group, an education-marketing and consulting firm in Franklin, TN, and a former VP, operations, at the School of Audio Engineering's North America locations, points out that that's an optimal point for schools and broadcasters to reach out to the cohort. They are the career changers and the career advancers, he says. Moving [from music production] to broadcast audio could be the career change they need right then.
It would make more sense, he agrees, than trying to persuade a 21-year-old college student seeking to start a career in music to look at broadcasting instead.
However, finding the music-production folks would be a challenge. That environment has largely moved from commercial facilities to private spaces, which limits the communal osmosis that has comprised a lot of professional audio'
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Tech Focus: Training, Part 1 - As Broadcast Sports' A1 Cohort Ages Out, Audio Looks for Solutions Few intermediate steps are available, but mid-career changers might offer a fix By Dan Daley, Audio Editor 
