ESPN Streamlines Operations in Covering NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament For the first time, there are just two Regional Sites for the Sweet Sixteen and Elite 8 By Brandon Costa
Friday, March 24, 2023 - 1:14 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
The NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament rolls into the Sweet Sixteen beginning today. For the production team at ESPN, in its 28th year broadcasting the entire tournament, it has already been one of the maddest of Marches.
For the first time in a quarter century, only two No. 1 seeds advanced to the Sweet 16: one, South Carolina, is gunning for a perfect season; the other, Virginia Tech, is looking to advance to the Final Four for the first time in program history. Sprinkle in megastars like Iowa's Caitlin Clark, South Carolina's Aliyah Boston, and UConn's Azzi Fudd (yes, the always dangerous Huskies are still lurking), and the race to Dallas for the Final Four is shaping up as an entertaining one.
For this year's NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament, ESPN has two studios and two control rooms providing shoulder programming around game coverage. From left: Carolyn Peck, Andraya Carter, Rebecca Lobo, and Elle Duncan host coverage of the NCAA Women's Selection Special from Studio E on ESPN's Bristol, CT, campus. (All photos: Kelly Anne Backus/ESPN Images)
To meet the demands of this year's tourney, ESPN made some adjustments to its operational plans to ensure topflight coverage for every game. That included tapping into multiple flavors of production workflow to cover games from 16 sites and deploying two studios and two control rooms to keep its Bristol, CT-based shoulder programming humming.
It has been just a lot of fun, says Pat Lowry, VP, production, ESPN, and one of the leads on the NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament project. Watching that Stanford-Ole Miss game and seeing the [upset] there, I was tired [the next day] because it got me all amped up and then it's time to go to sleep and do another day tomorrow.
For the busy opening weekend, there were many moving pieces for ESPN. The multiple production workflows were used to produce live games, and the multiple studios and control rooms in Bristol met the event's pregame, halftime, and between-game needs.
Analyst and Bracketologist Charlie Creme provided a breakdown of the Women's Bracket on the set of the NCAA Women's Selection Special.
For game production, six sites were produced as onsite truck shows, while four used REMI workflows. ESPN also enlisted two school control rooms - at Virginia Tech and Notre Dame - to handle game production at those campuses.
The opening week of the tournament was a logistical and operational marvel. Unlike the men's tournament, where First and Second Rounds occur at preselected neutral venues, the women's tournament plays games on the campuses of the top four seeds. Additionally, the site of the First Four in the Women's Tournament isn't determined until Selection Sunday; on the men's side, the University of Dayton has hosted the First Four since its inception in 2011 (the one exception was in 2021, when the entire NCAA Men's Tournament took place in the state of Indiana).
A streamlined operations workflow - spearheaded by Remote Operations Supervisor Catherine Carroon, Remote Operations Producer Traci Flohr, Tech Operations Manager Jim Birch, and Coordinating Producers Beth Chappell and Matt Leach - has the ESPN team in cruise control entering the Regional Round in anticipation of a big blowout at next weekend's Final Four.
We've added outdoor sets and new things [at Final Four] , says Lowry, so [the team has] had to continue to jump through hoops and make adjustments. It's terrific to work with people like them.
The lead producer/director team of Kerry Callahan and Jimmy Platt didn't work any games of the First and Second Round. Lowry says the goal was to allow them to sit back and take in the full tournament field and absorb the emerging storylines and stars. They will be working the Seattle regional site this weekend before advancing to work the Final Four in Dallas. Having Callahan and Platt focus on the big picture of the tournament and its higher-pressure later rounds allowed Lowry, as well as Chappell and Leach, to focus on executing the large scale of the overall field, especially those First and Second Round games.
ESPN's Bristol campus has been home to two separate studio shows for coverage of the NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament. ESPN also used REMI workflows to support game production from four sites during the First and Second Rounds.
With this weekend's games, the logistics are a bit simpler for ESPN. For the first time in the tournament's history, there are just two regional sites: Greenville, SC, and Seattle.
According to Lowry, Platt and Callahan will be experimenting with some new lenses and specialty cameras in Seattle to see if those units will make their way to the Final Four in Dallas.
If I could handpick anybody in the country to direct the Final Four, I would handpick Jimmy Platt, says Lowry, because of his complete understanding of technology, his ability to work with the NCAA, and his ability to just direct the hell out of a show.
Although the Regionals are condensed into two sites, ESPN is still crewing out from the perspective of four regionals. There are four producers, four graphics producers, and four sets of talent splitting up the games at both Seattle and Greenville. There will be two sets of directors and assistant directors because those positions will work every game at their geographic site.
From a crewing perspective, it's kind of a split version of what we would normally do, says Lowry. It's our first time, so I guess we're going to see how e
Most recent headlines
04/08/2024
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, is excited to announce Santiago Solanas as its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO)....
03/06/2024
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, a...
29/04/2024
29 04 2024 - Media release Screen Australia announces James J. Robinson's debut feature First Light
First Light
Principal Photography is underway on Firs...
29/04/2024
Capitol Broadcasting recently became the inaugural company honored with inductio...
28/04/2024
Mediahaus delivers the first SRT live-streaming sports production over 5G with U...
27/04/2024
On April 26, L3Harris Chair and CEO Christopher E. Kubasik joined CNBC's Mor...
27/04/2024
PORTLAND, Oregon Audinate Group Limited, the developer of the Dante AV-over-IP solution, announced significant new additions to Dante Connect, its cloud-based D...
27/04/2024
TORONTO Bell Media has launched 10 English and French-language FAST channels featuring entertainment, factual, news, and sports programming. The new free stream...
27/04/2024
An extensive new analysis of the news segments in the broadcast evening news programs of ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS has found that broadcasters devoted most of their...
27/04/2024
GERMANTOWN, Md. EchoStar's Hughes Network Systems has opened a new manufacturing facility and private 5G incubation center in Germantown, Maryland....
27/04/2024
Harry Pappas, one of three brothers who founded Pappas Telecasting Companies in 1971, died April 24. He was 78 years old....
27/04/2024
ATLANTA and LONDON Mexican telecommunications and broadcast company Televisa has selected Synamedia for an overhaul of its broadcast distribution....
27/04/2024
Participate in the Survey - The Impact of AI on Media and the Creative Industry
Pascal Wagner April 26, 2024
0 Comments
By participating in this surve...
27/04/2024
SDVI Rally Access Workstation Earns Two Top Awards at 2024 NAB Show
Brie Clayton April 26, 2024
0 Comments
SDVI, the leading platform provider for clo...
27/04/2024
Berklee's Music and Health Institute Launches Community Health Musician Cert...
27/04/2024
Charter Communications reported higher first-quarter profits despite continued cord-cutting and competition for broadband customers....
27/04/2024
Two environmentally-focused groups are partnering to engage the unscripted TV world in finding better ways to address climate change. Reality of Change is an ec...
27/04/2024
Sarah Garcia has been promoted to weekend anchor at KTLM McAllen, Texas, known as Telemundo 40. Starting April 27, she will anchor Noticias Telemundo 40 weekend...
27/04/2024
CBS Sports said it launched a new 24-hour free, ad supported streaming television (FAST) channel devoted to the UEFA Champions League....
27/04/2024
Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts received $35.4 million in compensation in 2023, up 11% from the previous year, according to a proxy statement filed by th...
27/04/2024
Art Happens Here With John Lithgow, which sees the actor study dance, ceramics, silk-screen printing and vocal jazz with students in Los Angeles, debuts on PBS ...
27/04/2024
Remember Leave It to Beaver? Bewitched? Dragnet? When cable ratings were rising?...
27/04/2024
Next up for the weekend binge at Catchy Comedy is Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. Every weekend, Catchy Comedy features The Catchy Binge, a marathon of a classic sitcom....
26/04/2024
Sundance Film Festival CDMX 2024 kicks-off today with screenings in 5 theaters in Mexico City and the opening-night film, FRIDA, directed by Carla Guti rrez...
26/04/2024
[Editor's Note: This interview is part of a larger feature about the women d...
26/04/2024
Once again this year, SGL Carbon opened its doors to interested children and young people. On the occasion of the German Girls and Boys Day, which took place on...
26/04/2024
Orders1 of $5.5 billion; book-to-bill of 1.06x
Revenue of $5.2 billion, up 17%,...
26/04/2024
Five Considerations For Communications Modernization In The 21st Century
In the digital-enabled battlespace, the Joint Force needs to shoot, move and communica...
26/04/2024
CBS Sports has launched Champions League as a new, 24-hour streaming channel that will serve as the year-round destination for nonstop highlights of the UEFA ...
26/04/2024
Despite tough competition in the streaming space, Roku reported solid results in Q1 2024, beating revenue expectations, with total net revenue up 19% YoY to $88...
26/04/2024
LONDON AND TORONTO Pinewood Toronto Studios has appointed Sarah Farrell as general manager of the Studios in downtown Toronto....
26/04/2024
Quantum to Offer Advanced Filesharing Technology and Performance in StorNext and...
26/04/2024
FilmLight Colour Awards welcomes 2024 entries and introduces new Emerging Talen...
26/04/2024
Picture Shop Announces Chris Evans as Head of Unscripted
Brie Clayton April 26, 2024
0 Comments
Picture Shop announced Chris Evans will lead Unscripte...
26/04/2024
Participate in a Survey - The Impact of AI on Media and the Creative Industry
Pascal Wagner April 26, 2024
0 Comments
By participating in this survey,...
26/04/2024
Toy maker Mattel said it is working with Samsung to launch its first free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels later this year....
26/04/2024
Trusted Media Brands (TMB) said it named Marty Moe as president....
26/04/2024
Ron Howard is the director on Jim Henson Idea Man, a documentary that premieres on Disney Plus May 31. Henson of course created Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Big...
26/04/2024
The ice continues to melt under the regional sports network business as the Seattle Kraken of the National Hockey League have made a long-term deal to broadcast...
26/04/2024
Heading into the upfronts, Warner Bros. Discovery said it launched Olli, a first-party data platform advertiser can use for converged, targeted advertising camp...
26/04/2024
CBS has renewed the drama The Equalizer, which will see season five on in 2024-2025. Queen Latifah stars....
26/04/2024
The CW has entered into an exclusive multiyear broadcast partnership for the Miss USA Pageant and the Miss Teen USA Pageant. The 73rd Miss USA Pageant will air ...
26/04/2024
Fuse Media isn't mincing words in a campaign urging its young viewers to register and participate in the 2024 elections....
26/04/2024
Dead Boy Detectives, a series from Neil Gaiman about a detective agency staffed by ghosts, debuts on Netflix April 25. George Rexstrew and Jayden Revri are in t...
26/04/2024
The Story Collective has gradually repurposed the former Mortlake Brewery to include production offices, workshops and sound stages
By Matthew Corrigan
Publi...
26/04/2024
Perkett joins the company following a 25 year career in product management, product marketing, engineering and user experience (UX) across multiple industries
...
26/04/2024
Teradek, the industry leader in wireless video transmitters and receivers, announced today the launch of new Bolt 6 LT 750 and Bolt 6 Monitor Module 750 RX with...
26/04/2024
NEW YORK Amagi has appointed Richard Perkett chief product officer (CPO)....
26/04/2024
WASHINGTON, D.C. The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has announced the results of the 2024 NAB Radio and Television Board of Directors elections. The...
ESPN Streamlines Operations in Covering NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament For the first time, there are just two Regional Sites for the Sweet Sixteen and Elite 8 By Brandon Costa 
