SEC on CBS Embraces New Workflows; F&F GTX-19 Is at Center of Production Efforts Golf, NFL coverage gives the team a leg up on the college football season By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Thursday, September 24, 2020 - 1:43 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
SEC on CBS has become a tradition for college-football fans, and it returns this week, with LSU hosting Mississippi State. CBS production, operations, and technical teams have overcome numerous challenges to get the network to this place.
CBS Sports' Steve Karasik says the work put in regarding COVID-19 earlier this summer will make a difference for the team working on SEC coverage.
The past few months have been challenging and a huge grind, says Steve Karasik, VP, remote production, CBS Sports, but it has been helpful as it gives us a sense about how to approach these productions. We got a jump-start in June with our golf coverage, and the first two weeks of the NFL and three weeks of college football have gone well.
The number-one priority since June has been the health and safety of the crew. To that end, CBS Sports has had some production and technical personnel working offsite. For SEC on CBS, that will mean one of the tape associate directors will be located at Freedom Studios in Clifton, NJ, and will be tied into the F&F Productions GTX19 production truck that will be onsite at the games. The truck features a Grass Valley Kayenne Elite K-Frame X switcher, Sony HDC-4300L cameras, Fujinon lenses, Evertz router, and Calrec Apollo audio console. The F&F Productions unit also has some safeguards: positions are distanced 6 ft. apart with plexiglass dividers.
One of our broadcast associates for graphics will be remote, Karasik adds, and the operator who keeps track of all the stats is also remote. We will have two Hawk-Eye replay operators working remotely from their homes. Comms and monitoring will be managed remotely.
One challenge with covering football on a weekly basis is that, every week, the broadcast booth is a different size. The good news this week: there is plenty of room in the LSU booth for announcers Brad Nessler and Gary Danielson to have many of the support staff onsite.
People will be more distanced than they are used to, and the stage manager will be virtually connected, cueing up cards for Nessler to read, says Karasik. That worked well all summer for [announcer] Jim Nantz with golf and has worked for the first two weeks of NFL and the three weeks of college football. The operations team, led by Coordinating Producer Craig Silver and Lead Director Steve Milton, is getting a sense of each booth; some of them are smaller and can't fit the entire support team.
Fingerworks has built a touchscreen spotting system tied into the stats program, allowing the spotter to be socially distanced and control a monitor that the announce team can use to see which player made the tackle, block, or catch.
We won't need that this week, says Karasik, but, in the future, it will definitely be in play.
F&F's GTX-19 production unit has been configured to allow social distancing, and plexiglass has also been added.
The SkyCam and Pylon Cams will be deployed for the game production, which overall will be robust.
One of the questions facing everyone with respect to new remote-production workflows was, Would the viewer at home notice the difference?
One of the people working at the studio asked me last week which game was being done with the crew remoted, Karasik notes. The fact that they couldn't tell which was being remoted and which had a producer and director onsite is a good sign that we've done our job well. The top priority is to keep the viewing experience the same at home and to cover football the way we have always done at CBS.
One notable aspect of this season is that the SEC requested that TV partners make game selections prior to the start of the season, when possible, to assist the conference and schools with planning and logistics. For any games not chosen before the start of the season, the normal 12- or six-day selection process will be followed. On Oct. 3, fans will see Texas A&M at Alabama. Also selected in advance of the season: Georgia at Alabama on Oct. 17, LSU at Auburn on Oct. 31, Florida vs. Georgia in Jacksonville on Nov. 7, and Alabama at LSU on Nov. 14. CBS will also televise the SEC Football Championship Game on Dec. 19.
I can't express my appreciation enough for what our technical team has done to pull off not just college football but sports in general, Karasik says. The group - led by [EVP, Operations and Engineering,] Patty Power, [VP, Remote Technical Operations,] Jason Cohen, and [VP, Remote Engineering and Planning,] Mike Francis - has literally worked every day and night to figure out not just the technology part of this but the health and safety part, which is our biggest priority.
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
20/11/2025
CINCINNATI Oklahoma Community Television (OCT) has selected GatesAir and Triveni Digital as key technology partners in an ATSC 3.0 deployment that establishes a...
20/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has opened a wide-ranging inquiry into the relations between broadcast networks and their affiliates that could...
20/11/2025
NEW YORK Ad spend in the creator economy has more than doubled since 2021 from $13.9B to $29.5B in 2024 and that amount is projected to reach $37 billion in 202...
20/11/2025
Graduate Spotlight: Krysta Mirsik DePuy The educator from Hackettstown, New Jersey, shares how it took her 11 years to find the right graduate program for her...
20/11/2025
LONDON The winners of the Rise Awards 2025, which recognize women and companies whose achievements have stood out in the media technology industry, have been an...
20/11/2025
SANTA MONICA & NEW YORK Lionsgate's Worldwide Television Distribution Group and Debmar-Mercury have launched MovieSphere Gold in more than 30 million homes....
20/11/2025
ALAMEDA, Calif. Clear-Com has introduced its four-channel HelixNet beltpack, a next-generation advancement of its widely used two-channel model, and anticipates...
20/11/2025
NEW PROVIDENCE, N.J. Streaming technology and services provider Kiswe has launched Kiswe Core, a next-generation cloud-based platform designed to simplify the s...
20/11/2025
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. Dolby Laboratories has signed on as an official signature partner of the Bay Area Host Committee (BAHC) for the 2026 Super Bowl and the we...
20/11/2025
STUTTGART, Germany 3 Screen Solutions (3SS) has announced that the Canadian multiservice operator Telus has launched its Telus TV+ entertainment platform on Sam...
20/11/2025
Major League Baseball has announced deals with ESPN, NBCUniversal and Netflix covering 2026-2028 that make ESPN the exclusive distributor for MLB.TV, put regula...
20/11/2025
Berklee Presents Holiday Extravaganza: Duke Ellingtons The Nutcracker Suite and ...
20/11/2025
It's the Late Late Toy Show BIG BIG Ticket Giveaway day!
It's the Late ...
20/11/2025
Editor's note: This post is part of Into the Omniverse, a series focused on how developers, 3D practitioners and enterprises can transform their workflows u...
20/11/2025
The How To Gael pocast gals, comedian Chris Kent and quizzer Darragh Ennis drop by for the fifth episode of The 2 Johnnies Late Night Lock In
In the penultimat...
20/11/2025
Tonight on RT Prime Time, Marie Crowe on how a Reading School changed her son&#...
20/11/2025
The NVIDIA Blackwell RTX upgrade is nearing the finish line, letting GeForce NOW Ultimate members across the globe experience true next-generation cloud gaming ...
20/11/2025
Tanya Berger-Wolf's first computational biology project started as a bet wit...
19/11/2025
Sphere Sound Kicks Up Its Heels at Radio City Music HallUltra-immersive system from the singular Las Vegas venue is also ready for sportsBy Dan Daley, Audio Edi...
19/11/2025
The Future of Stadium and Arena Video Control Rooms: Tech Leaders Talk 4K, IP, a...
19/11/2025
One Year at Intuit Dome: Walking Through the Stunning Arena's Advanced Video...
19/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: IMG's Francois Westcombe Goes Inside IMG's Annual Digital ...
19/11/2025
Inside Brighton & Hove Albion's fan-first media machine By George Bevir
Tuesday, November 18, 2025 - 10:10
Print This Story
Brighton & Hove Albion'...
19/11/2025
Rock Chalk Rebuild, Part 1: Kansas Athletics Brings New Production Power to Rebu...
19/11/2025
Rock Chalk Rebuild, Part 2: A Pro's Guide to Kansas Athletics' New Video...
19/11/2025
MLB Media Rights Shakeup: NBC Inks Three-Year Deal for Sunday Night Baseball, Pe...
19/11/2025
Rohan Parashuram Kanawade attends the premiere of Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears) at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival at Egyptian Theatre on January 26, 2025, in Pa...
19/11/2025
Awards season is heating up, and the International Documentary Association just ...
19/11/2025
Aerojet Rocketdyne President Ken Bedingfield and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders were joined by state and local officials to celebrate the groundbreaking o...
19/11/2025
L3Harris and PentenAmio formalise their teaming agreement at MilCIS 2025, streng...
19/11/2025
Calrec gives Phoenix Broadcast Solutions its full support in strategic multi-year enterprise partnership New Singapore OB company invests in Calrec technology f...
19/11/2025
October brings a larger audience in front of TV screens. The cooler autumn weather and the continuation of new programming schedules brought increases in both t...
19/11/2025
IRVING, Texas Nexstar Media Group and Tegna filed applications on Nov. 18 with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeking its consent to transfer broad...
19/11/2025
Vitec has acquired Datapath, a developer of real-time video processing for large-scale video walls, AVoIP content distribution and KVM control in mission-critic...
19/11/2025
NEVADA CITY, Calif. Telestream has introduced ARGUS Version 2.3, which introduces Live Look, a feature that lets operators inspect live and on-demand streams vi...
19/11/2025
STAMFORD, Conn. and NEW YORK Charter Communications, Inc. has announced a major deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) that establishes AWS as one of Charters stra...
19/11/2025
TOKYO Atomos has announced a major firmware update that brings integrated camera control to the Ninja TX GO and Ninja TX its new CFexpress-based monitor-recor...
19/11/2025
Berklee's Signature Series Reimagines the Musical and Visual Artistry of Col...
19/11/2025
PlayBox Neo departed the NAB Show New York 2025 on a high note. The company's all-new PlayBox Neo Suite made a splash on the show floor, drawing strong inte...
19/11/2025
AAVBR (American Audio Visual Baton Rouge), a leading full-service event production company serving Louisiana and the Gulf Coast region, has enhanced its product...
19/11/2025
In its mission to deliver live event services combining advanced engineering with a creative approach to captivating live sports and entertainment experiences, ...
19/11/2025
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 c...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK YES Network, the regional sports network home of the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Nets, and CAMB.AI have struck a partnership they said will leverage ...
19/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has issued detailed guidance on filings that were disrupted by the government shutdown. While many of those fil...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK The popularity of NFL games is largely responsible for continued seasonal momentum in TV viewership into October (measured Sept. 29-Oct. 26), according...
19/11/2025
DirecTV has announced that its MyFree DirecTV streaming service has added seven new channels. Those include four sports services, NBA FAST, Red Bull TV, DAZN Ri...
19/11/2025
SURREY, U.K. Mark Roberts Motion Control (MRMC) has launched Flair Bridge, a compact device that transforms how operators control the company's motion-contr...
19/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission, which is continuing to rapidly ramp up its operations after the end of the federal government shutdown, has se...
SEC on CBS Embraces New Workflows; F&F GTX-19 Is at Center of Production Efforts Golf, NFL coverage gives the team a leg up on the college football season By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director 
