After the Fire: PBR Production Team Shines Following Loss of B Unit to Blaze Multipronged effort to rebuild operations saves last week's event in Greensboro, NC By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director Thursday, September 26, 2024 - 8:53 am
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Early last Wednesday morning, the Professional Bull Riders (PBR) production team experienced everyone's nightmare when its production truck B unit caught fire in Nashville while traveling from Anaheim, CA, to Greensboro, NC, for the next PBR event. Thankfully, no one was hurt, and, just as incredibly, the PBR team was able to pivot quickly with the help of staff and partners to get the 10th PBR Camping World Series this season on-air Friday night live from Greensboro Coliseum.
PBR improvised an audio submix area this past weekend following the loss of its B unit to a fire.
PBR Director, Remote Production, Jim Palermo says his phone rang around 1:30 a.m. with the news that the truck, while still being driven down the highway, caught fire (a cause has still not been determined). That call kicked off a furious effort of travel, ship-in equipment, and more to ensure not merely that the TV production could happen but that the actual PBR event could happen.
We're one of the few sports that I know of where we own the sport, we own the production, and we own the equipment, he says. We don't have resources to pull another TV truck, so we rely on both our trucks to do the TV show as well as the event.
The B unit plays a big role in the show, housing the equipment and workplaces for PBR's entire timing and scoring operation, television-audio submix, and pre/post-show graphics workstations. It also serves as the central hub for communications, IT network distribution, and many other critical functions. The B unit also hauls all the cables and fiber-optic equipment that connects all cameras, microphones, and other gear in the venue to the compound as well as connecting all the trucks.
My immediate thought, knowing the crew that we have, was that we'll get it done, says Palermo. But the question was how?
Palermo, PBR Director, Live Event Presentation, Luke Kaufman, and Josh DeGrado of the PBR road-crew-operations team texted out a plan before jumping on planes to Nashville, where they could assess the damage and whether anything was usable.
After losing the B unit to a fire, the PBR production team worked in a hallway for last week's event in Greensboro, NC.
Luckily, says Palermo, a computer for our SkyStart system didn't have any smoke damage, but everything TV-related was pretty much not usable or, by the time it got to Greensboro, failed or had issues.
With an understanding of what was needed equipment-wise, Palermo and the team contacted rental houses to see who could provide what (Ross Video helped by renting PBR cabling and a new Ross Xpression). Audio was the biggest challenge, but a local audio-rental house stepped in with everything from beltpacks to RF gear, IFB, and microphones.
Hats off to PRG, Bexel, Ross Video, and IMG for stepping up and helping us, adds Palermo. It was a team effort.
With equipment on the way, the next challenge was figuring out where the team that called the B unit home would work. The TV-audio team of Mark Harrier, Jared King, and Rusty Steving arrived early in Greensboro and built a makeshift audio room in the hallway of the venue, using a mismatched assortment of rental equipment. And PBR's graphics operators had to rebuild the entire pre/post show from scratch on a new machine.
Meanwhile, the IT team of Matt Hancock, Ryan Aker, and Thomas Forbes were hard at work getting the organization's data network and timing/scoring systems back online. They also ensured that the AI-powered SkyStart system, which uses visual images to ensure that each out in a sport based on eight-second bull rides and sometimes scoring down to a hundredth of a second, was up and running and timed to precision.
Key partners helped in a big way. The Pendleton Whisky Velocity Tour team, for example, shipped in proprietary scoring and timing gear. Also lending a hand were the sport's risk and insurance partners at Endeavor. Software developers created an entirely new scoring system on the fly.
It was a nonstop effort by the team to get this done, says Palermo. Of all the shows we've ever done, this is the one where I am most proud of the crew. Many of them have been with us for up to 12 years, and their loyalty and work ethic and knowledge came through.
With two more shows left in the season, the next step is figuring out a new B unit, and Palermo says a truck used for a preshow stage will be home to some of the equipment.
PBR Chief Production Officer Dan Hickman applauds the extraordinary efforts of PBR sponsors, broadcast partners, production team, and the riders themselves for the flawless delivery of the scheduled events to the arena and television audiences. And viewers were none the wiser: last Sunday's show on CBS averaged more than 1.7 million people and peaked at 2.1 million.
This may have happened off the dirt, he says, but I believe it's one of the greatest moments in PBR history.
