Broadcast Systems

My involvement in broadcasting is from very early in my career, while working for BT we carried program feeds for both TV and Radio. I did some part time engineering work with a local radio station supporting remote operations and providing backup engineering coverage.

Joining ITN put me very much in the middle of live broadcasting. I was initially responsible for maintenance of RF equipment and ENG vehicles. Subsequently I became responsible for all projects related to RF systems, which ran the gamut from studio talkback systems, VHF/UHF Comms for live reporting, new ENG vehicles, upgrades to the OB Unit (Production Truck), mobile VTR Editing, through to the first fly-away SNG and first Newsgathering Helicopter in UK and Europe.

During this time I worked in close collaboration with the Radio Links team and spent much time in the Master Control Room implementing systems for the handling of remote feeds. I was also seconded to the EBU News Group to provide engineering support for the Reagan Gorbachev summit in Moscow, building out the technical core for all major European Broadcasters and operating the tape playout facility, which at its peak had five concurrent feed paths.

When the contract was awarded to provide a daily news program for a new national TV channel I was heavily involved with the design and buildout of the VTR Editing and Playout area.

When ITN relocated to its present facility in Grays Inn Rd, London I was responsible for the relocation of the MCR at a time when the facility was delivering approx 18Hrs of live programming daily to multiple networks.

After relocating to the US, I worked extensively with multiple EBU Members to commission their satellite facilities and then managed an SNG operation which provided pool coverage for many major events.

Joining Pathfire once again provided the opportunity to work with major broadcasters, firstly the affiliate news services of NBC, ABC and CNN where our systems were mission critical to their operations. Then with the move into syndication distribution I worked in partnership with CBS and Warner Bros to integrate store and forward program delivery into what have previously been a linear distribution model. As VP of Operations for Pathfire I had overall responsibility for managing the network which carried media delivery for all these broadcasters.

Subsequent to the acquisition of Pathfire by DG FastChannel, I became SVP of Technical and Satellite Operations and assumed responsibility for all the DG technical facilities that performed tape ingest and production services. This encompassed facilities in New York, Los Angeles, Burbank, Chicago, San Francisco and Dallas. In addition there was a large Dub and Ship facility in Louisville KY.

While the major DG business at the time was Ads delivery, Syndication Distribution was a growth area. The Oprah Winfrey Show was distributed via the DG Chicago facility and was probably the most complex live syndication show ever. Distributed with 5.1 audio it had a live voice-actor cast providing Spanish language, with Closed Captioning in both English and Spanish. A spin-off from Oprah was the Dr Oz Show which DG picked up the distribution for. This show was to be handled by the NY facility and I managed the buildout of the facility to originate that show with a live playout satellite feed in both SD and HD together with ingest for Pathfire store and forward delivery.

DG then acquired TreeHouse which had a large tape based facility in NY for the customization and distribution of Direct Response (Infomercials), that facility also became part of my responsibilities.

When the CALM Act was enacted in 2010 I was responsible for establishing policies and procedures to ensure material being handled was in compliance. Additionally I was responsible for the specification and implementation of systems to monitor manage loudness processing.

After various other acquisitions DG had multiple offices and facilities in NY. Consolidation into a single location was planned and the decision was made to take space in the Paramount Plaza building on Broadway. This was an 80,000 sqft lease and included a 9,000sqft technical facility. I co-managed the buildout of the entire space and had sole responsibility for the technical core.

This facility had to support Ads Ingest, Syndication Ingest, Direct Response Customization and Tape Dubbing, Production Services as well as live linear feeds for Syndication. This consolidation was a major reduction in tape operations and supported a push to more direct digital ingest. To maximize the flexibility of the facility and avoid creating Analog , SD and HD islands my design was around a single core HD-SDI router with legacy VTRs connected via A/D converters. This made any source available to any device in the facility. The router also had associated Timecode, RS422 VTR Control and Reference Signal levels for maximum flexibility.

The consolidated facility was critical to be overall DG business and was designed for maximum resilience with dual power feeds via different risers and even different building entrances. Fiber paths were also via diverse entries and conduits. The technical area was all on UPS power which proved to greatly enhance the reliability of much of the legacy equipment.

The Direct Response business was using an in-house solution for customization which could create SD files but any HD was being performed in Adobe Premiere and other NLEs. Having previously implemented Telestream Vantage to handle some file ingest and automate a lot of the Closed Caption insertion, I explored ways to leverage it for Direct Response customization.

The solution which I implemented leveraged a combination of Adobe Premiere to perform the initial formatting of the Generic Master and identifying the 'Call to Action' points for the 1-800 numbers and Vantage to create the files for Distribution. Metadata exports from Premiere, combined with a simple data file with a list the actual 1-800 numbers were used to drive a rendering engine workflow in Vantage that frame accurately created inserted the title overlays and overlaid the Voice Over reads for the phone numbers etc.

This solution not only replaced the legacy SD file based solution but also provided for rapid transition to HD which allowed for significant growth of the DR business. This was a high volume operation and on a busy night the facility could customize and distribute approx 300 HD half-hour infomercial shows.