HBCU Go Men's Hoops Coverage Embraced Bitfire XR Studio, Control Rooms for 2022-23 Season By Ken Kerschbaumer
Monday, April 10, 2023 - 9:00 am
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March Madness wraps up next Monday with the NCAA men's national championship game, putting an exclamation point on one of the more memorable seasons in NCAA men's hoops. And for the production team at Bitfire the 2023 season will be remembered for another reason: its role producing more than 70 men's basketball games for HBCU Go which is owned by the Byron Allen Media Group.
HBCU Go studio host John Kelly calls an XR studio at Bitfire in Phoenix home during the college hoops season.
The Weather Channel is a client of ours and Byron called Russ Aaron, the head of production for the Weather Channel [also owned by BAMG] and said, we need to up our game for basketball productions, says Bob Sullivan, Bitfire, president and CEO. He was looking for a single-house solution and Aaron mentioned us and that's how we landed a 70-game package plus a studio show.
The production efforts may not have spanned the globe like ABC's Wide World of Sports, but they did span the U.S. as Bitfire has two facilities that were involved. All transmission was done out of its Boston facility which is a master control facility but the two control rooms (featuring a lot of Ross gear), one for the games and then one for the studio show, were based in Phoenix.
Key to the project was that HBCU Go do not need to book satellite time, says Sullivan.
Bit fire's facilities offer a lot of flexibility and that means there is a chance to respond to client's needs in a very personalized way.
We pride ourselves on the fact that we listen first, we don't sell, says Sullivan. What's your challenge? What's your problem? Let's see if we can come up with a solution. And we really don't have a true competitor in terms of matching what we offer as we have proprietary software and servers that are part of the solution.
The Phoenix facility also has two edit rooms, video podcasting rooms, the control rooms, and two studios: a 2,000 sq. ft. stage that does a lot of commercial production and a 200 sq. ft. sound stage with Planar LED video walls (that is where HBCU Go produces complete with virtual cameras that can fly through virtual sets, offering up different looks that ultimately offer an end-product that looks like it was shot on a studio that is much larger than 200 sq. ft.
Adds Scott Smith: We can have all these different set looks and then once it's set up not only can I virtually zoom the cameras, but the actual camera operator gets involved in a more traditional way and can get a tighter shot. And then unlike green screens we don't have any green shine and can wear whatever we want.
It also allows for some cool effects. When the Phoenix Coyotes used the studio for their media day lightning strikes were built into the virtual set via Unreal Engine.
We programmed the DMX lighting system to go off of cues in the Unreal system so that when the lightning struck in the Unreal system for the background the lighting system flashed as well, adds Smith.
As for the future, with 3,000 sq. ft. of unused space Sullivan says there have been outside parties who have looked to join Bitfire and Do Not Peak Studios in the building. But Bitfire is in expansion mode.
We know we need more control rooms as business is exploding and getting bigger and bigger, he adds. We just hired another business development person, and we have a large development team for a small company.
The pandemic, and the move to remote workflows gave the company's Bitfire Transport Network an instant place in the market as it allowed for point-to-point delivery of broadcast-quality video from anywhere to anywhere. The full-service production facilities in Boston, including HD REMI control rooms, and a soundstage, found users as did the company's browser based FireBridge which allowed, for example, for on-air talent and guests to be integrated into a show without the need to launch an application like Zoom or Teams.
A perfect example of Bitfire (and FireBridge) in action was during the pandemic when Bitfire was at the center of producing 92 episodes of Judge Jerry for NBC Entertainment.
We ran it REMI style and, in those days, it was literally out of people's homes, says Sullivan. We had a soundstage in Phoenix, Minneapolis, and Atlanta for the plaintiffs and the cases, but Jerry Springer was in his living room in Boca Raton. And his bailiff was in a condo in New York. But we married it all together virtually and with zero latency so that the plaintiff, defendant, and Jerry could all react in real time.
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HBCU Go Men's Hoops Coverage Embraced Bitfire XR Studio, Control Rooms for 2022-23 Season By Ken Kerschbaumer 
