It’s getting to be the dog days of summer, and our engineers, project managers, and trucks in the field are doing everything they can to keep cool while maintaining a busy schedule of live events!
John Bright’s at TPC Southwind in Memphis, TN wrapping up a strong week at the World Golf Championship FedEx St Jude Invitational. This stop on the PGA Tour offers a prize pool of $10.25 million, so there’s a lot riding on Sunday’s final round. John’ll be there for all the action on Golf Channel!
Steve Chaisson’s at the beautiful Montreux Golf & Country Club in Reno, NV this week for the Barracuda Open, with final round play on Sunday, as well.
Earlier in the week, Blake Blomstrom and the C45 truck were at Home Team Sports in Rochester, NY on Thursday for World Long Drive Rochester. The top three finishers qualified for the Volvik World Long Drive Championship at the Windstar Resort and Casino in Thackerville, OK later this year. Of course we’ll be there, too!
Blake’s continuing his busy week at Royal Farms Arena in Baltimore, MD this weekend for Showtime Fight Nights Boxing. Two-time undefeated champion Gervonta “Tank” Davis defends his super Featherweight title against challenger Ricardo “Cientifico” Nunes in the main event. Blake’s testing the C-band pathway today out of the CK25 mobile teleport, and Saturday he’ll be joined by Steve Toth, who will handle the Ku-band path and the international origination. Strategic Television project manager Victor Verno is also on hand to ensure smooth sailing for our friends at Showtime.
We’re pleased to have yet another successful PFL under our belts! Nick Ray and Mati Kerpen were at the Ocean Resort Casino in Atlantic City for Professional Fighters League 5, which featured local fighter Chris Wade beating Akhmed Aliev and whole lot of undercard fights leading up to the main event. Mati and Nick provided the origination feeds for a smorgasbord of streaming and international outlets, all of which was handled expertly by our team at the PSSI International Teleport. Great job, guys!
And there’s fighting down in Texas this weekend. Ron Ford and John May are in the CK48 mobile teleport outside the College Park Center in Arlington, TX for Saturday’s DAZN boxing event. WBO Champion Maurice Hooker battles WBC Champion Jose Ramirez in a World Super-Lightweight Unification clash. Audio guru Mark Huss is also in town to provide ringside commentary services to international broadcasters.
Following successful RAW and Smackdown shows in Tampa and Miami, our WWE tag team of Zane Michaels and driver Joe Kelderhouse will make their way to Nashville for a special added show: Smackville, featuring Kofi Kingston, Dolph Ziggler, and Samoa Joe. From there the CK30 mobile teleport heads to Little Rock and Memphis for more RAW and Smackdown. The WWE train keeps on rolling!
Still more recurring shows on our schedule – we love these! Tracy Michaels was once again Concom’s tech manager for the Dana White Contender Series on Tuesday at UFC’s beautiful new Apex Studios. Brian Blomstrom was back in the CK35 mobile teleport to provide multiple transmission pathways for the show.
In LA, Chris Hovden had the C43 parked outside a sound stage at LA Center Studios for the first live rehearsal of “Chasing the Cure,” a new live, weekly show featuring Ann Curry that will air on TBS and TNT every Thursday starting August 8th. This heart-wrenching and uplifting show will investigate rare illnesses and compile viewer data to help find cures for diseases that have eluded medical explanations.
Also in Los Angeles this weekend: some lighter fare. John Jennings and Chris Hovden will be parking two trucks at Warner Bros Ranch Studios on Sunday to get ready for the Bachelorette Finale and the After the Final Rose show on ABC! John and Chris can hardly contain their anticipation as Hannah Brown will make her final decision LIVE on Monday night!
Plenty more World Team Tennis keeping us on our toes.
Dennis Smith has back-to-back events at St. Joe’s Hagan Arena in Philadelphia. The first one’s on Thursday, where the Freedom will host the Washington Kastles. Then on Sunday, the Springfield Lasers are in town.
In between these matches, Dave Buckman’s headed back to Kastles Stadium in Washington, DC, where the Kastles host the Lasers! Lots of traveling for the WTT players as well as our uplink engineers!
Mati Kerpen’s also getting in the tennis mix in the Bronx on Monday. He’ll have the NT34 Sprinter setup at the Cary Leeds Center for Tennis & Learning for Monday evening’s match featuring none other than the well-traveled Springfield Lasers.
Big racing weekend for PSSI Global Services.
Justin Roszak has the Media Links-equipped C12 truck at Iowa Speedway in Newton this weekend for the Gander Outdoors Truck Series, the 2nd round of the Triple Truck Challenge, and the M&M’s 200. Justin has 28 video paths and hundreds of audios running through his truck (plus a couple of return paths) through PSSI International Teleport via satellite and AT&T fiber. NASCAR and PSSI Global Services have truly elevated the concept of at-home productions to a new level, and we do it week in and week out.
Rick Ball had a lot to do with pushing that envelope with NASCAR, but this weekend he’s spending his time and expertise with our friends at NHRA. It’s the Sonoma Nationals, and Rick has the newly-equipped K33 truck at Sonoma Raceway in California for some serious drag racing. The K33’s state-of-the-art Media Links shelf provides NHRA’s production team with instant connectivity to AT&T’s vast Global Video Services network, which includes video transport as well as on track data services. This weekend Rick will pop up the truck’s antenna to provide Fox with a secondary transmission path. One engineer, one vehicle, and a host of top shelf transmission services.
It’s much the same situation in the C27 mobile teleport this weekend, which is parked next to the Pocono Raceway in Long Pond, PA for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Gander RV 400. Senior engineer Mike Lemieux joins NASCAR regular Jonathan Ayala this week to provide NASCAR with satellite, fiber, and data services with some help from our friends at Eutelsat and AT&T Global Video Services.
Big news in the telecom world, as the T-Mobile merger with Sprint looks imminent. David Meyer has been at T-Mobile corporate headquarters in Bellevue, WA for all of the big news as well as an earnings report.
More corporate work earlier this week: Dave Brin was back at ServiceNow headquarters in Silicon Valley for a live announcement on CNBC on Wednesday.
And Larry Sheets, Alex Mestizo, and Jose Sanchez pulled out all the stops at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego earlier this week. We were able to provide a last-minute satellite downlink solution for a corporate customer who had an important meeting to deliver to stakeholders. All it took was a 1.8m antenna on a balcony, great teamwork, and some quick thinking to make the event look easy.
And early next week, Mike Howley is back on the live surgery tour. Mike’s going to the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis to help the Switch deliver a live surgical procedure to research scientists at other universities.
And how about some summer basketball?
The Atlas truck and Todd Harvey will be at Vivan Smart Home Arena in Salt Lake City, UT on Sunday for more Big 3 hoops.
Paul Blomstrom, Joe Cox and the K19 truck will be at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, NV on Saturday for NBATV’s coverage of the WNBA All Star Game.
We’ll finish north of the border, where our UFC team is gearing up for the UFC 240 PPV, live from Rogers Place in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Project manager (and birthday boy) Garrett Hunt is alongside fellow Strategic Television PM, Keith Valeri, while senior engineers Jim Flowers and Tracy Michaels will handle multiple inbound and outbound transmission pathways as they usually do. What’s unique about this pay-per-view is the fact that we don’t have any uplink trucks there! Due to line of sight and parking issues at the venue, our team worked with Concom and UFC to book and manage multiple, redundant fiber circuits out of the venue. Of course satellite will come into play downstream for domestic and international distribution, with PIT playing a key role in QC and turnaround services. PSSI Global Services is a transmission services provider. We’re known for our beautiful satellite trucks, and they remain a key part of our service offerings, but the World’s Transmission Experts can and will use all platforms – from fiber to satellite to IP and more – in order to provide the industry-leading transport solutions our customers have come to expect.