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
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
When Canada qualified for the FIFA World Cup 2026, OneSoccer knew this wasn'...
04/07/2026
Celebrates company's 80th anniversary
Rhodes have recently revealed that they will be producing a limited run of electric pianos in celebration of their...
04/07/2026
Blackmagic Design Cameras Empower Youth Broadcasting Program
Brie Clayton July 3, 2026
0 Comments
Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro and Blackmagi...
04/07/2026
iZotope Joins Boris FX
Boris Yamnitsky July 3, 2026
0 Comments
iZotope, the team behind RX and Ozone, is joining Boris FX. A letter from founder Boris...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
03/07/2026
New bundle & three Single Packs
Continuing to expand their already sizeable orchestral collection, VSL's latest release introduces three new Single Pack...
03/07/2026
Venue installs new ATC-equipped control room
LSO St Luke's, a unique music venue that also serves as the home of the London Symphony Orchestra, have rec...
03/07/2026
Caden Pearson appointed new Commissioning Editor for NITV
3 July, 2026
Media releases
National Indigenous Television (NITV) has strengthened its commitment...
03/07/2026
1 February 2023
SHARE Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email
Munich, Germany, 1st February 2023: Cinegy GmbH, the premier provider of software technology for digit...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Death Star
Andy Marken July 2, 2026
0 Comments
Look, I can't get involved. I've got work to do. It's not that I like the Empire; I hate i...
03/07/2026
Berklee's New Visual Identity: Honoring Our History, Building for What's...
03/07/2026
Scripps Research scientists awarded $2M to advance global disease surveillance Two Gates Foundation grants will expand wastewater surveillance and AI-driven dis...
03/07/2026
Joan Pulupa joins Scripps Research faculty to study the organization of DNA in brain cells and its links to neurodegeneration Using smell-sensing neurons and ad...
02/07/2026
Entering her senior year, this hometown girl is paving a career in live sports production gaining experience in replay and audio and as a TD
In the live-sports...
02/07/2026
In-venue and creative video staffers at the professional and collegiate level ha...
02/07/2026
BLAST, a competitive entertainment company focused on esports, has announced more than $133 million in revenue for 2025, representing more than 40% year-over-ye...
02/07/2026
Riedel Communications has announced official SKAARHOJ panel support for SimplyLive production workflows, enabled through the SimplyLive 2.1 release. The integra...
02/07/2026
The Fire Rescue Service of the Czech Republic has deployed LiveU video-over-bond...
02/07/2026
Gravity Media USA has announced the appointment of Brittney Boston as Head of Business Development, effective July 1, 2026. Based in Nashville, Tennessee, Bosto...
02/07/2026
TwelveLabs, a video intelligence company, has announced $100 million in Series B funding co-led by NEA and NAVER Ventures, with participation from Amazon, Radic...
02/07/2026
The Pro Padel League (PPL) has announced a broadcast partnership with USA Sports that will air five PPL championship matches on CNBC during the 2026 season, the...
02/07/2026
LiveLike, a digital fan engagement platform, has announced eight confirmed FIFA ...
02/07/2026
Cobalt Digital has received Future's Best of Show Award, presented by AV Technology at InfoComm 2026, for its blueCORE family of standalone signal processor...
02/07/2026
Synamedia has announced the appointment of Dr. Tzvi Gerstl as Chief Executive Officer. Paul Segre, who has served as CEO for the past six years, will transition...
02/07/2026
The Esports Foundation (EF) and Sony Group Corporation have announced an expanded collaboration for the Esports World Cup 2026 (EWC), taking place in Paris, Fra...
02/07/2026
Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. ( Z') has announced exclusive broadcast and digital rights for the Bundesliga in India for five years, beginning with the...
02/07/2026
An effort uniting News, Sports, Local, and Telemundo, the 50+-camera live produc...
02/07/2026
Zoey Deutch, John Slattery, Ken Marino, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, and Ben Wang appe...
02/07/2026
Stammering, stuttering, strangulated tones
The Crow Hill Company's latest creation promises to be the most original sound set they've produced to d...
02/07/2026
A new era in unmixing and spectral editing
The latest version of Steinberg's spectral audio-editing software has just arrived, building on the strength...
02/07/2026
Aims to simplify additive synthesis
Sine Machine is the debut launch from Melatonin, a Vienna-based developer who have spent the past six years creating wha...
02/07/2026
Products to remain fully active & supported
Following the news of Native Instruments joining the inMusic brand line-up, Academy and Emmy Award-winning visua...
02/07/2026
What you missed!
Last weekend, Saturday 27 June 2026, saw the debut of Sound On Sounds new GearExpo UK event, the largest dedicated pro-audio event to take ...
02/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/07/2026
Following the successful launch of its inaugural APAC Mentoring Programme last month, the Rise AV APAC Regional Council will bring the conversation around mento...
02/07/2026
Blackmagic PYXIS 6K Used to Shoot Director Takahisa Zeze's Cry Out
Brie Clayton July 2, 2026
0 Comments
Highly mobile camera supports tense and de...
02/07/2026
Broadcast Solutions acquires BFE, expanding its lead in European broadcast, medi...
02/07/2026
Berklee Alum and Faculty Perform at Boston Public Library's 250th Anniversar...
02/07/2026
Broadcast Solutions GmbH, a leading systems integrator and provider of innovative solutions for the broadcast media industry, is acquiring BFE Studio und Medien...
02/07/2026
Cinegy GmbH, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has extended the ingest facility at leading Brazilian sports company LiveMode, work...
02/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/07/2026
Standalone processors acknowledged for the innovation and value they bring to Pro AV
Cobalt Digital, a leading designer and manufacturer of signal processing ...
02/07/2026
Synamedia announced today the appointment of Dr Tzvi Gerstl as Chief Executive Officer. Paul Segre, who has served as CEO for the past six years, will transitio...
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 
