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A SHORE THING America’s Cup coverage was executed from remote cities
NEAL ROMANEK: How might remote production actually affect how – and where – people work?
ROBERT ERICKSON: There’s been technology in our industry for the past five or ten years that has allowed us to do remote productions efficiently. But the way we’ve been doing production for eternity has worked – and a lot of the broadcasters were quite reticent to make the change.You’ve always had engineers in the background that want to improve things, but someone at the network was likely to say: “I get that, but this is how we’ve done things.This is a premier event and we’re not going to risk messing up our cash cow.” Covid-19 opened up the door. Engineers could say: “Let’s try it this way.We’ve never done it, but the risk is actually pretty low.” It introduced the idea of innovation to senior management, raising the industry’s tolerance for failure – it’s never been a big fan of failure. But true innovation comes with the idea that you learn from possible failure and move forward. TIM PUSCHKEIT: I think big events, like the Super Bowl, Olympic Games or theWorld Cup – where you have a production of four weeks – will remain on-site. Maybe you can share
synergies, using already established remote production units as well, but a lot of things will still be happening on-site. For the events that come back on a weekly, monthly or annual period, with a more or less standardised set-up, I definitely see remote production as the future. STEVEN DARGHAM: Before Covid-19, it was something broadcasters wanted to do.We would come in and do workshops, as well as a trial.They would go and discuss it, and it never got to the working stage. But now, it’s a necessity. It’s going to stay with us and change things for the positive.Take, for example, the upcomingTokyo Olympics. It is going to be completely different from the way it was done. Every single broadcaster I’m involved with will do everything from back at home, with nothing at the International Broadcast Centre.They’re changing the way they do the workflow. And keep in mind, we would not be able to do that without the advancement in the underlying technology and telco infrastructure.
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