WNBA Returns: ESPN Control Rooms in Bristol, Charlotte Power Production By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Monday, July 27, 2020 - 3:15 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
The 2020 WNBA season is underway and for ESPN and, for the next three months, the production team as well as the teams and league personnel will call Feld Entertainment Studios in Bradenton, FL, home. And for all involved that is just fine. Everybody is adjusting to the new reality and each of us have our own perspective and background to bring to the situation, says Jarrett Baker, ESPN, associate manager, remote operations. But so many folks are happy to be back on site and the team spirit and comradery minimize risks.
The WNBA returned this past weekend and hopes to be in action for the next three months.
COVID-19 protocols are important and there are two bubbles in place to minimize the risk of infection: a small one with the players, coaches, and select WNBA personnel and then a larger one with the broadcast staff and other support personnel. The Feld Studio houses two courts as well as a significant back-of-house infrastructure that provides ample room for everyone to get to work. Game Creek Video's Discovery production unit is on site for the ESPN and ABC Sports Broadcasts and Ross Production Services is on hand for the WNBA world feed which is fed to CBS Sports Net and selected RSNs.
We will continue to produce the WNBA games remotely as we have done previously, says Baker. But we will have talent in Bristol as opposed to on site, due to COVID-19.
ESPN is using Fletcher robotic cameras for WNBA coverage.
The two courts are 24 feet apart with a double curtain hanging in between. That gives about 12 feet of space courtside for the teams and scorer's table and everyone at courtside is spaced six feet apart. There are also plexiglass partitions courtside and those have an impact on production. Game coverage is being done with three manned hard cameras and three Fletcher robotic cameras with dedicated operators on each court as well as five Marshall fixed cameras that are replacing handheld cameras and slash position cameras.
We modified the layout for this season for social distancing, says Baker. And there is no good mid-court position so there is a robotic on a 10-foot piece of box truss off the court for the slash position and then the handheld was replaced with two robotic cameras. We can have one set of robotic operators who cover both courts as we can swap control from one court to the next.
All of the camera and audio signals will be sent to Bristol via satellite and, in a first for WNBA coverage, two different control rooms, one in Bristol and another at ESPN's facility in Charlotte, will be used.
Game Creek Discovery is being used to produce WNBA coverage on ESPN and ABC Sports.
Typically, we do everything out of Bristol but the large volume of sports being produced out of Bristol means we needed an alternative for a control room, says Baker. The video signals will be fed to Charlotte on our ESPN fiber network for the production and then sent back to Bristol.
Twenty-five people are on site for ESPN and one of the interesting challenges is that reporter Holly Rowe is actually inside the bubble with the players and coaches.
That adds a bit of a wrinkle on health and safety as we need to get her the equipment without popping the bubble, says Baker. We have a few boxes that are in a zone where the players can get access to them and we sanitize RF gear and put it in those boxes so that the players and coaches can take their mics. The jerseys have mics installed and those are sanitized with chemicals and then with UV before the bag that contains them is given a final wipe down.
How-to videos show the coaches how to clip on the lapel mics and then Facetime can also be used to help them with final prep.
A contactless interview room makes it easy for players and coaches to be interviewed without any human contact.
There is also a contactless interview room with teleconferencing, an ENG camera, and audio and for courtside interviews after the game the robotic cameras and a boom mic are used.
We're all curious to see what will hold for the long-term from this situation, says Baker. There is a feeling that the growth we have taken here would have taken three or even five years otherwise. It's been a paradigm shift.
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...
WNBA Returns: ESPN Control Rooms in Bristol, Charlotte Power Production By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director 
