As the weather cools off even more and everyone looks forward to the holidays, PSSI Global Services is keeping busy for sure!
Chris Golden is heading south to the Tiburón Golf Club in Naples, Florida, for the QBE Shootout — a PGA event that takes place during the wraparound season’s December break and is comprised of 12 two-man teams of some of the best golfers in the world competing for a purse of $3.3 million — the last golf event of the 2017 season. Jennifer Hyder-Michaels, project manager extraordinaire for all things Golf Channel, pulled together a remarkable season of no fewer than 133 golf events! Big thanks and congratulations to Jenn, Golf Channel engineer in charge (EIC) Tracy Michaels and all of the engineers who worked their tails off on these golf courses all year. We can’t wait to start it all up again in 2018 as we continue to be the exclusive transmission provider for Golf Channel.
While golf comes to a (brief) hiatus, there is plenty of basketball to keep us on our toes. Thursday brought us two great NBA matchups on the Turner networks. Rick Ball was in C42 at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, where the LA Lakers took on the Philadelphia 76ers. That same night we had Todd Harvey in the Atlas truck at the Vivint Smart Home Arena in Salt Lake City, where the Houston Rockets faced the Utah Jazz.
Mr. Harvey has a little more basketball in Las Vegas on Saturday night, as he will be at the MGM Grand Garden Arena for UNLV vs. Illinois, one of several college basketball games on our schedule. Meanwhile, Dennis Smith and K44 will be on-site at the Bob Carpenter Center in Newark, Delaware, where the Notre Dame Fighting Irish take on University of Delaware Fightin’ Blue Hens. Also on Saturday, Dave Buckman will be at the Liacouras Center at Temple University in North Philadelphia as the Saint Joseph’s Hawks take on the Temple Owls.
On Sunday, John Poss will steer the Alabama truck to the H-E-B Center in Cedar Park, Texas, where the Santa Cruz Warriors face the Austin Spurs in some NBA G League basketball action.
Steve Chaisson is on his way to the McKale Center in Tucson, Arizona, where the Alabama Crimson Tide face the Arizona Wildcats. Steve will be doing a seven-channel at-home transmission for ESPN, the first of many at-home transmissions for all of the ESPN networks’ coverage of college hoops all over the country. We will be doing these complex transmissions via multiple platforms: C-band, Ku-band and fiber.
Two of the fiber transmissions are happening this weekend. Chris Hovden will be at Staples Center on Friday night for a doubleheader at the second annual Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Classic. The night kicks off with the Oklahoma Sooners taking on the USC Trojans, followed by the Nevada Wolf Pack vs. the TCU Horned Frogs. Chris is there with one of our state-of-the-art encoding kits.
Nick Ray and Rick Varney are working with another kit altogether at the Petersen Events Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where the West Virginia Mountaineers take on the Pittsburgh Panthers in more NCAA action. Rick took full advantage of the trip to Pittsburgh, as he visited our colleagues at the PSSI International Teleport. Rick got a first-hand look at all the exciting upgrades happening at the facility. More and more of PSSI Global Services’ remote transmissions are running through our teleport for quality control monitoring, streaming services and international distributions.
The guys in the teleport’s TOC will be watching Larry Sheet’s feed from Morley Field Sports Complex at Balboa Park in San Diego, California. Larry’s there for the 2017 Foot Locker Cross Country National Championships. This competition brings 40 of the best high school girls and 40 of the best high school boys together to compete against one another to be crowned national champion. Our teleport will downlink Larry’s signal and use our streaming encoders to push the content to Foot Locker’s server so that cross country fans around the world can watch live.
Then, Larry heads to Newport Beach on Sunday to cover the Lott awards. Named after hall of famer Ronnie Lott, the Lott IMPACT Trophy honors college football’s best in character and performance. This is the first award of its kind to give equal weight to character performance and athletic performance.
It’s the calm before the storm that always comes after the college football regular season and before the bowl season kicks off. There’s only one football game this weekend, and it’s a big one: Army vs. Navy. The Midshipmen are dressed in Blue Angels uniforms as a tribute to the Naval Flight team. The Black Knights will be wearing all white to pay tribute to the 10th Mountain Division, originally called the 10th Light Alpine Division, formed in 1943. Rick Ball and Mike Howley are going to be wearing their PSSI Global Services shirts as they provide extensive transmission services for CBS and CBS Sports Network, live from Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. PSSI News Group’s Chris Stewart is on hand, as well, for CNN’s coverage of all the excitement surrounding the big game.
Up the road in NYC we are back at Madison Square Garden yet again. This time we’re setting up at the Madison Square Garden theater, where Vasyl Lomachenko takes on Guillermo Rigondeaux for the WBO super featherweight title and Casey Ramos takes on Christopher Diaz in a 10-round super featherweight match co-feature. Long Island native and Madison Square Garden regular Mati Kerpen will be there for all the action alongside project manager David Gallardo, who will oversee the international distribution of the fight to fans around the world.
More boxing in Las Vegas at Mandalay Bay. We have quite a lineup of trucks, engineers, project managers and services for Saturday night’s main event: Orlando Salido vs. Miguel Berchelt in 12 rounds for the WBC super featherweight title. Let’s start with our HBO crew. EIC Paul Blomstrom and project manager Eric Hall are monitoring the primary and backup transmission paths uplinked by John Jennings and Ray Loyko. Joe Cox is parking a Ku-band truck nearby to provide Japanese broadcaster Wowow and British Sky Broadcasting with an international feed on Saturday night. Project manager Michael Hollander will be right there alongside Joe to help ensure a flawless transmission. Also, in the compound we will be providing a unilateral production and C-band transmission for a Mexican broadcaster. John Bright, Mark Alston, Nathan Holsey, Brian Blomstrom and project manager Dan Patin will be there with our K34 production/uplink hybrid to provide extensive production and satellite services for our friends at TV Azteca. It’s going to be a busy night for our team in Vegas!
One would think that having a truck in Canada in December would mean we’re covering a hockey game. But Steve Hagerty is at BMO Field in Toronto with C43 for the 2017 Audi Major League Soccer Cup! The Seattle Sounders take on the Toronto FC in a rematch of last year’s MLS Cup game, and Steve’s providing a multiplexed transmission for the game’s broadcast on ESPN.
Rick Kolinek’s the one uplinking the hockey, as he will be at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio, this weekend when the Chicago Wolves face the Cleveland Monsters on the ice in an AHL doubleheader.
Our CK30/WWE truck was at Staples Center in LA on Monday for Raw. Tuesday, the team headed south to Valley View Casino Center in San Diego for SmackDown. Jim Flowers was at the helm while Zane took some well-deserved time off.
Jim then spent a few minutes at home before he headed to Save Mart Center in Fresno, California, to meet up with Dave Brin and project manager Keith Valeri for UFC Fight Night 123. The main event will be Cub Swanson taking on Brian Ortega, and Jason Knight will face Gabriel Benitez in the featherweight bout. We have multiple outbound and inbound paths for the CK35 mobile teleport, and our guys will make sure the signals get to viewers in the states and around the world.
Last, but certainly not least, we would like to send our deepest condolences to all of those in Southern California who have suffered from the week’s devastating fires. While our offices in Van Nuys were safe from the flames, the smoke was overpowering. Our News Group team has been pulling long shifts to provide CNN (and the world) with some of these harrowing stories and images. Big thanks to David Conwell, Bob Tweed, Al Meshberg and Bill O’Toole for their round-the-clock work in extremely challenging conditions. As too many of our guys know, the smell of that smoke lingers in our trucks, clothes and memories for quite a long time. Here’s hoping the winds die down and the rains come!