For Monday Night Football, ESPN's GREMI' Model Keeps Onsite Presence Sizable; Some Replay, Graphics Ops Shift to Bristol Week 3's marquee matchup of the Chiefs and Ravens follows a learn-as-you-go season start By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital
Monday, September 28, 2020 - 1:46 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
It has been a frenetic start to the NFL season for ESPN's Monday Night Football franchise.
First, an opening-night doubleheader spotlighted the debut of a new broadcast booth and a new front bench in the truck (with first-year producer Phil Dean joining second-year director Jimmy Platt). Then, it was the first NFL game ever played in Las Vegas as the Raiders christened their new $1.84 billion palace, Allegiant Stadium.
Now, tonight (8 p.m. ET, ESPN), it's the Game of the Year (on paper, at least) as defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs travel east to take on one of their greatest challengers for the crown: the Baltimore Ravens.
ESPN is deploying upwards of 50 cameras onsite for Monday Night Football coverage, including the return of its pylon cameras, on both the goal lines and the line-to-gain.
Behind the scenes, the Monday Night Football road show has been scaled down some, with about 130 people onsite each week. Even so, the production is as big as ever, with more than 200 professionals working on the marquee franchise.
To help meet the challenges of the COVID-restrained NFL season, ESPN is implementing the GREMI version of its at-home production workflow. What this model does is keep on-air talent and much of the production and operations team onsite (the show is still traveling its massive NEP EN1 truck package to each game site), with four EVS operators, a graphics operator, Viz Libero telestration, and the guts and operations of the in-game scorebug, which is being handled from a control room in ESPN's home facility in Bristol, CT.
With no NFL preseason, it was no small task to get this workflow up and running in time for opening kickoff this month.
It was very challenging, says Jim Munn, senior remote operations specialist, ESPN. A lot of these concepts [were developed] as sports started shutting down. We realized very quickly that we needed to do our job in a safe way, so we used7 technology that we had on hand. How could we repurpose what we had to do through remote work calls? That sort of led us to this whole project.
At ESPN, studio shows like The Jump and First Take are regularly referenced as the shows that got ESPN back on the air following the shutdown and started the evolution of its live-production workflows. For game productions, the network has learned from its bubble executions with the NBA and Major League Soccer. Despite those opportunities and the advantage of the NFL season's starting nearly six months after the shutdown, uncertain preparations for the NFL season and the loss of the preseason left the ESPN ops team with little opportunity to test-run its innovations in a live environment.
On Sept. 21, the new Monday Night Football team of (from left) analysts Louis Riddick and Brian Griese and play-by-play man Steve Levy donned the franchise's original, iconic yellow jackets to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its first broadcast.
In our normal year, we use the preseason to vet out technology, Munn points out. We do a lot of trials, some of which never make air, but we do a lot of testing on our preseason games. We did not have that opportunity. We also didn't have an opportunity even to get everyone together. We were always meeting on Zoom or [Microsoft] Teams. We never had a chance to get face-to-face and try things.
Obviously, he continues, we don't want to experiment with one of your properties. Everything has to work. There is no excuse if it doesn't. So we have to be very delicate in our testing and be very sure things are going to work. I think we did a very successful job bringing in a lot of new technologies and a lot of changes in a short window.
That hasn't kept ESPN from trying to innovate in a few key areas to bolster the GREMI workflow. The ops team worked with the replay giant EVS to implement the vendor's new LSM-VIA replay environment solution that enables an EVS operator to work from off site without the need for an advanced transport paths to support monitoring. All of the technological elements needed to effectively operate the replay device could be delivered to the operator's home (or wherever they are working from) over a single connection. In this case, the EVS operators are working out of ESPN's mothership in Bristol.
It's a huge leap forward for us, says Munn. We have experimented in the past with our replay [workflows] but the challenge with replay is that if you are running on a server that is distant [from the broadcast site], you can't have any latency in your monitoring or its really difficult to queue up mark-and-end points. With this new technology, it's really revolutionized how we're going to be able to do things now and in the future.
Says ESPN Senior Operations Manager Steve Carter. Jim is the one who designed our Grammy model. He laid out all the architecture and worked with the IT folks, and I've got to give him all the credit for building, designing, and implementing this. We came out of the gate and had zero time to implement parts of this. We just had to put it together and then hit our first game. And it worked, plain and simple.
As ESPN settles into a groove following the frenetic start, game broadcasts will start to feel more and more familiar to the operations and production teams. Camera totals continue to hover at an impressive 50 per week, all acquiring in 1080p or higher (Monday Night Football is one of the ESPN franchises broadcast entirely in 1080p), suppo
North America Stories
20/04/2024
As part of a push to improve the accessibility of its content, PBS Kids has announced that it has integrated American Sign Language (ASL) interpretations into m...
20/04/2024
SAN JOSE, Calif. Online security solution provider McAfee has released new research exploring the impact artificial intelligence (AI) and the rise of deepfakes ...
20/04/2024
The Federal Communications Commission has announced the agenda for an Open Meeting on Thursday, April 25, 2024 that will include votes on Net Neutrality Rules a...
20/04/2024
Virtual reality and its close relatives, such as extended reality, have been completely accepted into the workflow of high-end productions. Stepping into an LED...
20/04/2024
Video Games Round Out the Entertainment Package
Andy Marken April 19, 2024
0 Comments
By this, I take it you think everybody is who they say they are...
20/04/2024
With the Bears picking first, NBCUniversal Local's properties in Chicago plan extensive coverage of the NFL draft next week....
20/04/2024
Fox Sports said it hired two veteran advertising sales executives, with Jen Durda and Kathy Lydon both named VP....
20/04/2024
Daytime fans got a sneak peek at nominations for the 51st annual Daytime Emmys, with the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) announcing the...
20/04/2024
DAZN is launching its Run It Up, its first multi-sports original vodcast, or video podcast, and a set of micro-podcasts ahead of the Devin Haney-Ryan Garcia fig...
20/04/2024
David Zaslav, CEO of troubled Warner Bros. Discovery, got a 27% increase in total compensation for 2023....
20/04/2024
New copper-catalyzed C-H activation strategy from Scripps Research Two-mode reactions inspired by human detox enzymes offer powerful new tools for drug discover...
19/04/2024
PARK CITY, UTAH - JANUARY 18: (L-R) John Early and Theda Hammel attend the 2024 Sundance Film Festival Stress Positions premiere at Library Center Theatre on ...
19/04/2024
By Lucy Spicer
One of the most exciting things about the Sundance Film Festival...
19/04/2024
Pictured: Midnight Family
By Stephanie Ornelas
A great way to get to know a city as culturally unique and rich as Mexico City is to listen to the stories tol...
19/04/2024
St. Louis, MO - April 18, 2024 - Studio Network Solutions (SNS) announced today that MOD won three prestigious industry awards at NAB Show 2024 held this week i...
19/04/2024
MELBOURNE, Fla., April 19, 2024 - The Board of Directors of L3Harris Technologies (NYSE:LHX) declared a quarterly cash dividend of $1.16 per common share, payab...
19/04/2024
PARIS Intel has announced that its plans for the Olympic and Paralympic Games Paris 2024 will include using artificial intelligence technology powered by Intel ...
19/04/2024
LAS VEGAS Technologists working on all aspects of the 8K media production chain offered an optimistic update at the 2024 NAB Show on the state of 8K in video pr...
19/04/2024
OpenDrives New Software-Defined Platform Atlas Wins 2024 NAB Show Product of the...
19/04/2024
Grass Valley Showcases Next-Generation T3 Series 4K/HD Digital Recording and Pla...
19/04/2024
NiTRo's M-CUBE Studio Levels Up Esports Productions with AJA Gear
Brie Clayton April 19, 2024
0 Comments
Esports' rapid rise to popularity can...
19/04/2024
Blackmagic Design Announces DaVinci Resolve 19
Brie Clayton April 19, 2024
0 Comments
Major update adds new DaVinci Neural Engine AI tools, new color ...
19/04/2024
Sony Pictures Entertainment is reportedly in talks with Apollo Global Management to make a bid to acquire Paramount which itself is currently discussing a merge...
19/04/2024
CBS Stations has launched CBS News California Investigates , with Julie Watts named regional CBS California correspondent. She will uncover and raise awarenes...
19/04/2024
MediaCo Holding, which owns radio stations WQHT (Hot 97) and WBLS in New York, said it acquired Estrella Media's Spanish-language video, audio and digital c...
19/04/2024
Netflix has ordered season five of fantasy drama The Witcher, which will be the final season. Production has recently begun on season four, and the two remainin...
19/04/2024
DirecTV Stream said it added eight more The CW affiliates to its lineup on Thursday....
19/04/2024
CBS has renewed Elsbeth for the 2024-2025 season. The drama, with Carrie Preston in the lead role, debuted February 29....
19/04/2024
With the Bears picking first, NBCUniversal Local's properties in Chicago plan extensive coverage of the NFL draft next week....
19/04/2024
PHILADELPHIA As government subsidies for broadband services come to an end, Comcast has launched NOW, a new product portfolio of lower-cost Internet, mobile and...
19/04/2024
DirecTV Stream has added more local CW stations for its streaming customers in Boston, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Hartford-New Haven Conn., Phoenix, San ...
19/04/2024
NEW YORK & LOS ANGELES MediaCo Holding Inc. has announced that it has acquired all of Estrella Media's network, content, digital, and commercial operations....
19/04/2024
SAN JOSE, Calif. Adobe has announced that the all-new Adobe Express mobile app is available to all users, bringing features powered by Adobe Firefly generative ...
19/04/2024
LOS GATOS, Calif. Netflix reported another blockbuster quarter by adding 9.33 million new subscribers in Q1, 2024 as global paid memberships hit 269.6 million, ...
19/04/2024
The Current State of the Industry and the Future Impact of AI
Hillary Lewis April 18, 2024
0 Comments
The Entertainment Industry: How did we get here ...
19/04/2024
After Effects Tutorial Text Blur Reveal
Andy Ford April 18, 2024
0 Comments
Here's a way to do a quick blur reveal for your text layer. Start by...
19/04/2024
Hollyland Mars M1 Enhanced Wireless Transmitter / Receiver
Colin Smith April 18, 2024
0 Comments
This tutorial shows the new wireless transmitter rece...
19/04/2024
Resolve Fusion: Writing Expressions with Lua
Simon Ubsdell April 18, 2024
0 Comments
The answer to the very frequently-asked question: what is the pro...
19/04/2024
B+C and Next TV have announced the winners of Best of Show Awards for the 2024 NAB Show. The awards were judged by a panel of industry experts at the convention...
19/04/2024
Cate Blanchett narrates the Netflix series Our Living World, which premieres April 17. The four-part series looks at the extraordinary creatures around the glob...
19/04/2024
Apple TV Plus has a spinoff of For All Mankind in the works. It is called Star City and details the cosmonauts, engineers and intelligence officers working behi...
19/04/2024
Jacquie Walker, longtime anchor at WIVB Buffalo, will step down from the anchor desk. She has spent over 40 years at WIVB and her last day as an anchor is May 2...
19/04/2024
Bob Hearts Abishola will premiere in broadcast syndication this fall on such station groups as Nexstar Media Group, Sinclair, Hearst Television, Tegna, E.W. Scr...
19/04/2024
Live With Kelly and Mark remains TV's top entertainment talk show as Kelly Ripa and her co-host and husband Mark Consuelo celebrate their one-year anniversa...
19/04/2024
Sean McLaughlin has been named VP of news for Graham Media Group. He had been senior VP of local news at E.W. Scripps. He will will be responsible for developi...
19/04/2024
Netflix has shared the first trailer from One Hundred Years of Solitude, a series based on the esteemed novel by Gabriel Garc a M rquez. The streamer is on boar...
19/04/2024
NAB 2024 in Review: West Hall - SportsTech Buzz From AWS, Appear, Ateme, The Swi...
19/04/2024
NAB 2024 Draws 61,000+ Attendees With More Than Half Attending the Show for the ...
For Monday Night Football, ESPN's GREMI' Model Keeps Onsite Presence Sizable; Some Replay, Graphics Ops Shift to Bristol Week 3's marquee matchup of the Chiefs and Ravens follows a learn-as-you-go season start By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital 
