Live From US Open 2022: Rightsholders' Needs, Team of Partners Drive USTA's Innovations New tech includes UHD on Arthur Ashe, 1080p on other show courts By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Tuesday, September 6, 2022 - 7:08 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
The 2022 US Open Tennis Championships at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, New York, have taken things to a new level. Record crowds are matched by record viewing audiences on ESPN, and the USTA is working to deliver in new ways for rightsholders and tennis fans around the globe. Over the past two years, the US Open production effort was reshaped by the pandemic, but this year's operation, masks aside, feels pretty much back to normal, and the team was able to embrace new technologies, including UHD on Arthur Ashe Stadium and 1080p on the remaining show courts.
USTA Managing Director, Broadcast Patti Fallick (and the USTA production team) have spent a large portion of their waking days in the USTA Broadcast Building, located across the road behind Arthur Ashe Stadium. And after two years of smaller representation by rightsholders due to COVID, both old and new rightsholders are onsite in force.
It has been great to have the broadcast building fully utilized with all of our broadcast partners onsite, she says. We also have a lot of new broadcast partners this year, like Nine in Australia, ECLAT/Spo-TV in Southeast Asia, Spark in New Zealand, and Sony in India. And everybody has sent crews, no matter where they are from in the world. Everybody was just happy to be back onsite, even before we knew about Serena Williams.
The big news this year is the leap to UHD and 1080p, both important moves to keep rightsholders around the world happy, especially because UHD deployment has become a reality in Europe, Japan, India, and China.
We were planning for 1080p and also for UHD for a while because, in a lot of instances, it's a contractual obligation with rightsholders, Fallick explains. COVID derailed those plans for a while, but we're happy to be able to offer 1080p to rightsholders. I think the improved quality of the feed is noticeable.
A Spidercam at Louis Armstrong court raises the production level and gives a new look to coverage.
Use of native UHD for matches in Arthur Ashe Stadium puts the USTA at the technology forefront. True native-UHD production is the exception in the U.S., even for content ultimately delivered to viewers in UHD.
We were considering UHD for Arthur Ashe and worked closely with our partners at ESPN, in their role as host for the US Open, to move in that direction, says Fallick. It was a challenge to figure out the workflow and kudos to the engineering team led by ESPN Senior Remote Operations Specialist Sam Olson and Senior Technical Specialist Steve Raymond, NEP Senior Project Manager Nick Romano, and Gravity Media Director, Special Projects, Hamish Harris and his team. Everybody worked together to figure out how we can do 1080p and native UHD.
Our goal, she continues, was to make sure that every entity that receives a video signal - whether that be SMT, Hawkeye, our in-house IPTV system, broadcasters, TOC, or other touchpoints - could get the signals in 1080p and would be able to receive it into their individual infrastructures. It took some doing to pull it off, and, candidly, I held my breath until we made the final switchover. But it worked out really well, thanks to the hard work and efforts by the ESPN host technical teams and all the communication and collaboration by the different vendors.
The move to UHD had a ripple effect on the USTA's world-feed graphics package as well as archiving and file distribution.
We hadn't updated our graphics package in a long time, notes Fallick. SMT designed a really modern look for our new UHD graphic package for the world feed. It's clean, bright, and modern and puts us one step ahead on that front, as we move towards more UHD coverage.
With respect to file distribution and archiving, she says the teams at Veritone and Thumbwar stepped up to the challenge in a big way: When we first started talking about UHD, our partners from Veritone, who handle that content, looked at me and said, That's going to be a lot of content.' But it turned out to be fortuitous because we now have Serena's last US Open run in UHD, including iso cams, and that is a win all around. But, yes, it is a lot more content for them to move into the cloud and archive.
A new addition to US Open coverage is the towel cam, a miniature camera mounted a few feet behind each towel bin at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
The USTA also pushed ESPN to create a new look with the addition of cameras behind the towel bins and the return of the Spidercam cabled aerial camera system to Louis Armstrong Stadium, the court located next to Arthur Ashe that hosts the second-most-important matches.
It elevates the look and feel of coverage, and, at home, it feels bigger, says Fallick. Kudos to Jamie and the team.
Williams's announcement that the US Open would be her final event set off a chain reaction of not only ticket requests but also how to honor one of the greatest tennis players of all time.
The fact that Serena announced that she wanted to do it here was special, says Fallick. We wanted to find a unique, special way to honor her and do a special tribute. Our Managing Director, Marketing, Nicole Kankam; Director, Marketing, Nicole Munroe; and Executive Producer, US Open Productions, Michael Fiur; and ESPN, VP, Production, Jamie Reynolds spent a lot of time brainstorming, along with our Tournament Director Stacey Allaster. How can we do this and find the right tone? What's the right video, and what's the right presentation?
It was special and electric, Fallick continues, espe
Most recent headlines
04/08/2024
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, is excited to announce Santiago Solanas as its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO)....
03/06/2024
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, a...
30/04/2024
LOUISVILLE, Ky. In another sign that broadcasters are finally using NextGen TV broadcasts to offer viewers new features instead of simply simulcasting existing ...
30/04/2024
OKLAHOMA CITY The Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame will induct Blaise Labbe, a group news director for Sinclair Broadcast Group, May 2 at the 54th Anniversary I...
30/04/2024
ATLANTA and ENGLEWOOD, Colo. Cox Media Group and Dish have ended a dispute over retransmission fees that lasted nearly a year and a half with a new multi-year ...
30/04/2024
Video transport solution provider LTN has announced that it is working with TelevisaUnivision to help the Spanish-language media giant migrate to IP-based video...
30/04/2024
ALAMEDA, Calif. Clear-Com has released details about how it played a pivotal role in the seamless coverage of the recent solar eclipse on April 8, 2024 by NBC K...
30/04/2024
CINCINNATI The E.W. Scripps Company is adding Seth Walters to its sales leadership team as head of CTV sales, effective April 29....
30/04/2024
The force was strong at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park on Saturday night, April 27, 2024, as the night netted the ballpark's first official sellout crowd of...
30/04/2024
Revry, a network celebrating queer culture. said its second annual NewFront presentation will be a cabaret-type spectacle showcasing the spirit of the LGBTQ+ co...
30/04/2024
Family Entertainment Television (FETV) said that the Western series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp will be joining the network's afternoon lineup startin...
30/04/2024
Bob Bakish, president and CEO of Paramount Global, will depart the company as Paramount explores a merger, according to numerous published reports. The reports ...
30/04/2024
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Order intake: 5.0 billion, up 47% ( 46% on an organic basis1 )
Sales: 4.4 billion, up 9.8% ( 7.9% on an organic basis)
All f...
29/04/2024
(L-R) Mark Gatiss and Polly Walker on set
Monday 29 April 2024 Further casting is now confirmed for Bookish (6x70), a brand-new drama created by Emmy Award-wi...
29/04/2024
A groundbreaking initiative offering training and mentoring to 30 women journali...
29/04/2024
Even though we've been doing this for over 40 years, a spark of excitement r...
29/04/2024
L3Harris is delivering manpack radios to U.S. Army CH-47 Chinooks as part of the Air-to-Ground Networking Radio program, providing seamless, resilient communica...
29/04/2024
He writes in Defense One: Despite the near-universal acknowledgement throughout the U.S. government and defense industrial base of the criticality of resilient ...
29/04/2024
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
29/04/2024
Codemill aims to revolutionize media workflow efficiency at this years NAB Show by introducing Just-In-Time (JIT) playback technology in Accurate.Video Validate...
29/04/2024
April 29, 2024
-- TF1 Chooses Broadpeak to Power Targeted Advertising for New...
29/04/2024
LOS ANGELES Allen Media Group (AMG) has partnered with LG Electronics to bring 223 Local Now FAST channels to LG's free streaming service, LG Channels, avai...
29/04/2024
OTTAWA Ross Video has announced the introduction of Raiden, a data-driven weather graphics software that combines data gathering, processing, and visualization ...
29/04/2024
Panalux, a leading rental provider of lighting and power solutions for the motion-picture industry and part of Panavision's end-to-end service offerings for...
29/04/2024
Cobalt Iron Inc., a leading provider of SaaS-based enterprise data protection, today announced that it has received a patent on its technology for dynamic autho...
29/04/2024
SDVI, the leading platform provider for cloud-native media supply chains, today announced that Rally Access Workstation, a fully managed solution for editing in...
29/04/2024
Premier Sports, a premium sports broadcaster, has selected QuickLink's Remote Commentary solution for introducing professional, high-quality remote commenta...
29/04/2024
Glookast has chosen Jigsaw24 Media as the only UK channel partner to represent their portfolio of ingest and workflow optimisation products. The agreement, sign...
29/04/2024
Clear-Com played a pivotal role in the seamless coverage of the recent solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. Leveraging its cutting-edge Eclipse HX Digital Matrix i...
29/04/2024
PlayBox Neo will promote its complete range of television channel management, graphic branding and playout solutions to EMEA region media content owners and bro...
29/04/2024
Lingo, RuPaul's word-twisting game show, returns for season two on CBS Friday, May 24. Two episodes air that night, and stream on Paramount Plus, too....
29/04/2024
ESPN and Amazon Prime Video are reportedly close to scoring television rights to the National Basketball Association, according to published reports....
29/04/2024
Judge Judy and Hot Bench, CBS Media Ventures' genre-leading court shows, have been renewed through the 2025-26 TV season in more than 95% of the country, Gr...
29/04/2024
Premier Sports, an Irish-based premium sports broadcaster, has selected QuickLink's Remote Commentary solution for introducing professional, high-quality re...
29/04/2024
The awards celebrate the craft of behind-the-scenes TV talent and the best programmes of 2023
By Matthew Corrigan
Published: April 29, 2024
The awards cel...
29/04/2024
The team at Milk had to create and deliver the VFX and environment work for the royal residences featured in the drama from scratch
By Jenny Priestley
Publis...
29/04/2024
CEO Bob Bakish is expected to leave the company as early as today, with a new leadership committee likely to run the company on an interim basis
By Jenny Pries...
29/04/2024
Albena Ivanova, director, media and entertainment and strategic products at CHAOS talks to TVBEurope about her route into the industry
By TVBEurope Staff
Pub...
29/04/2024
The acquisition gives Grand Technix the opportunity to expand its footprint in the audio visual and broadcast technology sectors
By Jenny Priestley
Published...
29/04/2024
29 04 2024 - Media release Screen Australia announces James J. Robinson's debut feature First Light
First Light
Principal Photography is underway on Firs...
29/04/2024
Capitol Broadcasting recently became the inaugural company honored with inductio...
29/04/2024
Tonight on House of Zwide: Zanele tells a surprised Zola that Faith fully suppor...
29/04/2024
Tonight on Scandal: A line is crossed and a mother starts to lose focusDon't miss Friday, 26 April's riveting episode of South African soapie Scandal! o...
29/04/2024
Tonight on Skeem Saam: Evelyn puts measures in place to protect her sonDon't miss Monday, 29 April's riveting episode of South African soapie Skeem Saam...
29/04/2024
April 29th, 2024 UNINTERRUPTED AND TRIBECA ENTERPRISES PARTNER FOR SECOND-ANNUA...
29/04/2024
Rebrand and refresh: SailGP talks bringing its graphics operations inhouse for a...
29/04/2024
Reflecting on a Storied Career: Sean McManus Looks Back While Keeping an Eye on ...
29/04/2024
Drones Take Flight Inside MSG: How Sky Candy Studios is Upping the Excitement fo...
29/04/2024
Back to All News
Netflix Announces a Diverse Lineup of Polish Titles to Debut i...
Live From US Open 2022: Rightsholders' Needs, Team of Partners Drive USTA's Innovations New tech includes UHD on Arthur Ashe, 1080p on other show courts By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director 
