College Football Kickoff: Raycom's ACC Football Package Brings Big-League Audio to RSN Coverage Veteran A1 Jim Budka is deploying lots of mics, decades' worth of experience By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Thursday, August 30, 2018 - 10:33 am
Print This Story
Story Highlights
In his prime, Jim Budka was Turner Sports' go-to A1 for most of its major-league-sports broadcasts. Officially retiring in 2014, he spent much of the next couple of years happily driving the trolley that takes tourists around his current hometown of St. Augustine, FL, with occasional fill-in stints as an A1 or A2 for CBS and Turner on MLB and NBA games. More recently, though, Budka has found an opportunity to apply decades' worth of national-network broadcast-audio skills to the burgeoning RSN landscape. Specifically, he's now the A1 in charge of sound for Midsouth Regional Emmy Award-winning Raycom Sports' ACC football package, which hits the air on Sept. 1.
It's sports on television the way it used to be, he says, recalling that broadcast sports audio was often compelling a couple of decades ago, before 5.1 surround and hundreds of microphone inputs became the norm and when object-based audio would have been more science fiction than science.
A1 Jim Budka: Making sports on television exciting is still a matter of technique as much as technology.
For Raycom's ACC package, mostly Saturday-afternoon games broadcast on one of Fox's regional sports networks, such as FS1 or Fox Sports South, and the YES Network in New York, Budka will be working with a few dynamic crowd mics, two or three camera-mounted microphones, a pair of hard-wired parab mics, a couple of microphones to capture the college bands, one wireless reporter (Rebecca Kaple) with a handheld wireless mic, and headsets for the announcers, Wes Durham and James Bates.
It's not much compared to what we'd use for NFL games, but you'd be surprised how full the sound is if you mix it correctly, he says, by which he usually means mixing it fairly loudly. For instance, I really pump the bands going into and out of the breaks, because it gives the viewers a real sense of being right there in the stadium; the bands kind of define college football. And I tend to put a lot of high end into the parabs, which gives me a crisper-sounding line of contact when the [players'] pads slap.
[Director Lonnie] Dale doesn't give me much in the way of direction, and he and [producer] Dave [Barringer] pretty much give me free rein when it comes to the audio, he continues. Master control tries to tell me to pull the levels back some, but, a few games into the season, they realize that this is the kind of mix I'm doing, and it's working.
Budka is working out of Raycom's Phoenix remote-production truck; doubleheaders will also pull in Token Creek's Chippewa, which houses a Calrec Artemis console, Pesa router, and RTS intercom.
Although the technology complement is light compared with what the major networks deploy for college games, Budka says, it is combined with a wealth of experience - he has worked on the Super Bowl and other events and occasional A1 work for the NFL Jaguars; Durham headed up Georgia Tech's broadcast department and did radio for the Atlanta Falcons; Bates was a University of Florida linebacker; and Kaple hosts studio shows for Braves LIVE on Fox Sports South and Fox Sports Southeast - making the ACC shows more than competitive with SEC broadcasts.
Making sports on television exciting is still a matter of technique as much as technology, says Budka. Expertise matters, and sometimes what lots of microphones do is just overkill. It's amazing what you can do with a few microphones if you know what do with them.
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
13/05/2026
New Adobe Premiere Color Grading Mode Accelerated on NVIDIA GPUs
Joel Pennington May 13, 2026
0 Comments
New NVIDIA RTX-accelerated features streamlin...
13/05/2026
Grass Valley announced that dB Broadcast has delivered new IP-based outside broadcast (OB) trucks for Cloudbass, featuring Grass Valley LDX 100 Series cameras a...
13/05/2026
Ikegami will exhibit the latest additions to its wide range of broadcast production cameras, control units, viewfinders and monitors on stand 5D3-1 at Broadcast...
13/05/2026
FISE, working with the founding members of the XR Sports Alliance (XRSA), Accedo, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and HBS, have collaborated to develop an immersive...
13/05/2026
Canon Unveils New EOS R6 V Full-Frame EOS Camera and RF20-50mm F4 L IS USM PZ Bu...
13/05/2026
Boston Conservatory at Berklee Honors Beth Morrison and Moses Pendleton at Comme...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Creative software developer Foundry today announced the latest developments on Nuke Stage. A purpose-built application for end-to-end virtual production and in-...
13/05/2026
A definitive portrait of one of Ireland's most influential musicians
New TV documentary airs Monday 18 May on RT One and RT Player at 9.35pm
Watch the...
13/05/2026
Agentic AI is changing the way users get work done. Following the success of OpenClaw, the community is embracing new open source agentic frameworks. The latest...
13/05/2026
Reinforcement-learning agents - AI systems that learn by trial and error - can c...
12/05/2026
Beyond the Hype: A Strategic Post-Hoc Analysis of NAB 2026 If NAB Show 2026 had an underlying theme, it was a quiet, industry-wide pivot from the high-energy sp...
12/05/2026
Guntermann and Drunck (G&D), a Panoptec Technologies Group company, and CT Square, led by Chandresh Shah, have announced a joint venture to distribute G&D and V...
12/05/2026
With 30 days until the start of the FIFA World Cup 2026, Telemundo, the exclusive Spanish-language home of the tournament in the United States, has announced th...
12/05/2026
The NHL has announced the return of Stanley Pup for its third consecutive year, a 90-minute special featuring adoptable rescue dogs competing on a miniature rin...
12/05/2026
NBCUniversal presented its 2026 Upfront to advertisers at Radio City Music Hall, detailing upcoming programming across NBC, Peacock, Bravo, and Versant properti...
12/05/2026
FOX Sports has announced funding for the Fandom and Social Connection Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Publ...
12/05/2026
TNDV and Live Media, both divisions of Live Media Group, supported live broadcast coverage around NCAA Final Four weekend in Indianapolis, including the March M...
12/05/2026
The European Football Alliance (EFA) has announced a content distribution agreement with Fubo Sports Network, the free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channel ...
12/05/2026
For the first time, Spanish-speaking fans in the U.S. will have two separate tel...
12/05/2026
CP Communications led a comprehensive spectrum management initiative on behalf of Churchill Downs during Kentucky Derby week, coordinating RF assets across the ...
12/05/2026
LiveU has announced a strategic partnership with DRONERESPONDERS, a 501(c)3 non-...
12/05/2026
Open Broadcast Systems has announced that BMC TV, a specialist in IP transport of broadcast content, has selected the Open Broadcast Systems 5G Flyaway solution...
12/05/2026
NEP Europe, part of NEP Group, has announced it will deliver broadcast solutions...
12/05/2026
Grass Valley has announced continued collaboration with Ravensbourne University ...
12/05/2026
Stats Perform has announced the launch of Opta Pulse, an AI-assisted video creation and distribution platform for leagues, rights holders, and broadcasters. The...
12/05/2026
FOX Sports has announced a collaboration with Sesame Workshop to integrate Sesame Street characters into FOX Sports' FIFA World Cup 2026 programming. Conten...
12/05/2026
To date, NHL Productions has produced 19 broadcasts with commentary in American Sign Language
NHL in ASL (American Sign Language) may be just one show, but the...
12/05/2026
Google's Brian Albert: creators, athletes, highlights, nostalgia, second-scr...
12/05/2026
A still from Past Lives by Celine Song, an official selection of the Premieres program at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. (Courtesy of Sundance Institute | p...
12/05/2026
Spotify is where fans and artists come together, turning discovery into somethin...
12/05/2026
Features patented Marco-MMC clocking technology
Black Lion Audio's latest release combines the company's expertise in clocking with their renowned p...
12/05/2026
New Track Panel, sequencer upgrades & more
Following their recent public beta release, Reason Studios have announced the full release of Reason 14. With the...
12/05/2026
One month to go! SBS reveals expansive FIFA World Cup 2026 lineup beyond the pi...
12/05/2026
Rohde & Schwarz presents its advanced solutions for power electronics testing at...
12/05/2026
aconnic AG (ISIN: DE000A0LBKW6), Munich, has developed a modified fund raising p...
12/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/05/2026
Tyrell Corporation, specialists in high-end live sports and entertainment broadcasts, was tasked with delivering compelling broadcast coverage of premier equest...
12/05/2026
Registration is now open for IBC2026 as the global media, entertainment and technology community prepares to converge on the RAI Amsterdam from 11 14 September ...
12/05/2026
Ross Video, a global leader in live video production technology, will present its latest innovations and integrated production workflows at BroadcastAsia 2026, ...
12/05/2026
500 selected leaders from around the world across start-ups, corporates, and venture capital. Over 50bn in assets under management among attending investors, a...
College Football Kickoff: Raycom's ACC Football Package Brings Big-League Audio to RSN Coverage Veteran A1 Jim Budka is deploying lots of mics, decades' worth of experience By Dan Daley, Audio Editor 
