
NHL Puck Drop 2021: Turner Sports Celebrates Start of Hockey Deal With Flashy Studio at Atlanta HQ Built with Jack Morton Design, set features projection-mapping technology from Meptik By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital
Wednesday, October 13, 2021 - 2:26 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
When Turner Sports gets involved as a national broadcast-rights holder for a major sports property, the network tends to want to make a splash; especially when it comes to pre/postgame studio shows.
With TNT becoming one of the National Hockey League's new homes in the U.S. beginning tonight, much has been made of what the Atlanta-based media giant can bring to the sport of hockey - most notably, in the studio. Turner has a storied legacy of entertaining programming surrounding live game coverage; look no further than the iconic Inside the NBA.
The debut of NHL on TNT Wednesday night unveils a new studio set at Turner Sports' Atlanta-based Techwood facility. (Image: Turner Sports/Jeremy Freeman)
The team behind the scenes of Turner's NHL coverage believes it has made studio magic yet again, and, no, we're not just talking about the addition of The Great One Wayne Gretzky as an in-studio analyst behind the desk. We're talking about the desk itself, and everything surrounding it.
With the debut of NHL on TNT Wednesday evening will come the full unveiling of a brand-new, high-tech studio in its Techwood facility in Atlanta. Besides the usual bells and whistles - large and shiny anchor desk, LED screens, a collection of high-end cameras - this studio deploys some firsts in U.S. sports with the use of projection-mapping technology.
Eight 3D projectors from Barco turn the studio space into a 360-degree projection environment that ties directly into and displays graphics designed by the Turner Sports Creative team. According to Turner Sports, the NHL studio is the first of its kind to use all front-projection technology on every surface in the studio.
I didn't want to just roll out a standard set with LED walls., says Steve Fiorello, VP, coordinating director, Turner Sports. We did a lot of research around the NHL industry to see what other networks had done. We wanted to be unique. That's the approach we take.
First looks at the new #NHLonTNT studio
Take it away, @liam_mchugh & @TheNasher61! pic.twitter.com/uxyYE6JP0h
NHLonTNT (@NHL_On_TNT) October 11, 2021
With a tight timeline for creating the NHL property (Turner's deal with the NHL was officially announced in April), Turner Sports turned to a trusted partner in Jack Morton to design the space. The event-marketing agency has also built studios for Turner for the NBA and ELEAGUE.
The new studio features three primary shooting locations: the main anchor desk, a standup location (where throws can be done via an LED screen), and a demo area where analysts can break down plays.
The set features more than 1,000 sq. ft. of LED tiles, totaling more than 400 tiles at 13 ft. high. It includes an area with more than 50 ft. of curved LED tiles with stadium lighting above. The anchor desk also has LED tiles and a screen on its center front.
The new NHL on TNT studio set features projection-mapping technology, which uses LED projectors to display graphics and imagery onto hard surfaces of the set. The set was built by Jack Morton Design; projection mapping is handled by Meptik. (Image: Turner Sports/Jeremy Freeman)
It's the projection mapping that is the star, however, according to Fiorello. Turner worked with creative-services and virtual-production company Meptik (a fellow Atlantan) to provide the technical mapping of the space and the rendering of graphics displayed using projection.
In addition to the eight Barco projectors in the set, Meptik installed eight cameras in the ceiling. Their sole job is to take the geometry of the set and inject it into a 3D program by and map graphics to the three-dimensional world of the set. Meptik uses Unreal Engine and renders the imagery through a Disguise server to tie it all together.
The LED screens and the projection-mapped walls will actually work in symmetry, Fiorello says. For example, if the LED screens are displaying a match-up graphic, the colors of the two teams may spill out on the walls via the projectors. Also, in marketing photos of the new space, the projection mapping creates a cool look of authentic ice on the ground of the demo area to the left of the main anchor desk.
Fiorello was inspired to try projection mapping in the studio when he witnessed Volkswagen's unveiling of a new electric car. At the debut event, the car drove up a ramp and then, though sitting still, appeared to be driving quickly down a road that was projected onto the scene via a similar style of image projection.
He cites the challenges that arise in trying to pull off this execution in a television-studio environment. Notable among them is lighting: TV studios are covered in light fixtures, and errant light sources can impair the quality of the projection. Using l-shaped mirrors to reflect the projection and a strategic design from Jack Morton, the space is said to be ready to roll beginning Wednesday night.
Says Fiorello, We feel like we've got something.
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
18/11/2025
During October, streaming's share of TV viewing in Mexico settled at 23.7%, a marginal shift of -0.8 share points from the previous month.
Disclaimer: YUMI...
18/11/2025
Broadcast Builds On Lead Over Cable, Driven by Football and Drama Programming Ga...
18/11/2025
CINCINNATI E.W. Scripps has issued a statement responding to news that Sinclair has acquired approximately 8.2% of the outstanding class A (non-voting) shares o...
18/11/2025
TYSONS, Va. Tegna has announced that its shareholders have voted overwhelmingly to approve the proposed $6.2 billion merger with Nexstar Media....
18/11/2025
NEW YORK Short-form vertical video has exploded across platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, but a new survey commissioned by Media.net, a provider of ...
18/11/2025
SHENZHEN, China DJI today unveiled the Osmo Action 6, an all-in-one action camera featuring a variable aperture with a range from f/2.0 to f/4.0, the company...
18/11/2025
In the high-stakes world of film sound, there's no room for second chances. When an actor whispers a line with the weight of an entire scene, or lets loose ...
18/11/2025
Sonnet Technologies is having a sale on a selection of popular products, including a Thunderbolt 4 dock, an eGPU chassis, SATA and M.2 SSD PCIe cards, and mor...
18/11/2025
Amagi, a cloud-based SaaS technology solutions provider for broadcast and streaming TV, today announced the launch of 4Fangs, a new Free Ad-Supported Streaming ...
18/11/2025
Women In Media (WiM) announces its honorees for the 2025 Holiday Toast. The annual celebration recognizes legendary creatives whose work uplifts and inspires th...
18/11/2025
Cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra ( Good Fortune , The Bear , Euphoria ) emerged from the 2025 Emmy season with a statuette celebrating his Outstanding Cinem...
18/11/2025
Atlanta-based gaffer and lighting programmer Quinton Thomas brings the same practical, problem-solving instinct of a board op to every set he walks onto. With a...
18/11/2025
Suitelife Systems, a division of NFB Consulting Group, headquartered in California, has announced the appointments of Charles Sotto as Director of Media Technol...
18/11/2025
Sound Director and Audio Product Manager Scott Kramer has built a career around shaping stories through audio, guiding projects across film, television and stre...
18/11/2025
iWedia, a global leader in software solutions for connected TV devices, announces its participation at the APAC TV Summit 2025, taking place November 18 20 in B...
18/11/2025
Mark Roberts Motion Control (MRMC) is proud to announce the launch of Flair Bridge, a groundbreaking solution that redefines how operators control MRMC's in...
18/11/2025
Over the summer, world famous musician and rapper Drake continued the rollout of his new album Iceman, by live streaming the second and third episodes of a seri...
18/11/2025
KEIZER, Ore. Municipal broadcaster Keizer City Television, K23 TV, has deployed four Telycam PTZ cameras to upgrade the visual quality of its live meeting cover...
18/11/2025
STAMFORD, Conn. NBC Sports and Peacock have announced that they are working for the second consecutive year with the National Football League, EA Sports and Gen...
18/11/2025
LONDON A new Ampere Analysis study finds that familiar franchises are successfully driving kids' TV consumption on Netflix and that the streamers big bet on...
18/11/2025
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. TV viewers continue to find it challenging to find relevant programs in the fragmented universe of streaming content, according to new findings...
18/11/2025
20 Bob Dylan Songs That Reflect a Legacy of A-Changin On the heels of Bob Dylan receiving a Berklee honorary doctorate, we take stock of one of the most singu...
18/11/2025
Today, Microsoft, NVIDIA and Anthropic announced new strategic partnerships. Anthropic is scaling its rapidly growing Claude AI model on Microsoft Azure, powere...
18/11/2025
AI agents have the potential to become indispensable tools for automating complex tasks. But bringing agents to production remains challenging.
According to Ga...
18/11/2025
DJ Carey: The Dodger starts Monday 24th November at 9.35pm on RT One and RT Pl...
17/11/2025
EA SPORTS Madden NFL Cast to Return Thanksgiving Night With Immersive, Data-Driv...
17/11/2025
Behind the Broadcast Booth: Impact Ventures' Greer Christian on Building Her...
17/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Sportradar's Brian Josephs Talks Peacock's Powerful Perfor...
17/11/2025
2025 Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame: Greg Gumbel, Iconic Voice and Comforting ...
17/11/2025
ESPN, Pixar, the NFL, and Beyond Sports Team Up for ESPN's Dec. 8 Monsters,...
17/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: EA SPORTS' Evan Dexter on How the EA SPORTS Madden NFL Cast...
17/11/2025
Cast your votes and sail into 2026 with the return of SBS's the Chillest 100
17 November, 2025
Media releases
Voting is now open for Australia's ul...
17/11/2025
When VSI Group, one of the world's leading localisation providers, set out to modernise its complex, multi-site operations built through years of acquisitio...
17/11/2025
Dealmaking for broadcast stations continues to heat up, with Sinclair reporting it has built up a 8.2% stake in E.W. Scripps and has been talking with Scripps f...
17/11/2025
The worlds online population grew by more than 240 million people in 2025, according to Facts and Figures 2025 released today by the International Telecommunica...
17/11/2025
ASB GlassFloor, the leading provider in LED sports flooring, today announced the opening of Athletes Lab 2.0, a premier athletic training facility designed to e...
17/11/2025
SmallHD today announced the release of its popular Camera Control for Canon cinema cameras. This new integration enables filmmakers to adjust critical camera se...
17/11/2025
Luxury is in the details, and no one captures that better than the creative team at Samuel & Sons. As the visionaries behind iconic photography and advertising ...
17/11/2025
NVIDIA Apollo - a family of open models for accelerating industrial and computat...
17/11/2025
To power future technologies including liquid-cooled data centers, high-resoluti...
17/11/2025
At SC25, NVIDIA unveiled advances across NVIDIA BlueField DPUs, next-generation networking, quantum computing, national research, AI physics and more - as accel...
17/11/2025
Across quantum physics, digital biology and climate research, the world's researchers are harnessing a universal scientific instrument to chart new frontier...
17/11/2025
It used to be that computing power trickled down from hulking supercomputers to ...
17/11/2025
17 Nov 2025
VEON Commences USD 100 million Buyback Program Dubai, November 17, 2025: VEON Ltd. (Nasdaq: VEON), a global digital operator ( VEON or the Compan...
17/11/2025
Monday 17 November 2025
Sky brings top comedy talent to screens with new stand-up specials
Sky and streaming service NOW are bringing audiences a fresh dose o...
16/11/2025
L3Harris to deliver advanced electronic warfare systems quickly for worldwide F-16 programs...
16/11/2025
Upgrading your Apogee Symphony MKII from TB2 to TB3: Need to Knows Upgrading your Apogee interface to Thunderbolt 3 isn't difficult - but it's not a cas...
16/11/2025
Apogee Electronics Acquired by Dirk Ulrich's Rockforce Tech Holding, Parent ...
15/11/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The Walt Disney Company and YouTube TV have reached a new multi-year distribution agreement, ending a carriage dispute that had blacked out ABC,...