Our Yellowstone Live team is making their way back home after a fantastic few days of live transmissions from the National Park and points beyond. You can read all about our contributions to the event on our website, but suffice it to say our whole company contributed to the success of this huge live event, and we are grateful for the opportunity to be a part of the magic. Great work by all!
More Big3 basketball this weekend, as we continue to follow the summer tour. Blake Blomstrom and Dennis Smith are at the Liacouras Center in Philadelphia, PA for Sunday’s games. With no fiber pathway available, we are providing primary and backup transmissions via C-band and Ku-band satellites.
Newly anointed Southerner Mike Howley’s down at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, NC for Saturday’s games. Mike’s there to handle the C-band transmission for the broadcast, and will also ensure a clean handoff to AT&T Global Video Services fiber for the second pathway out of the arena.
Big time racing this weekend, which is keeping our engineers at the tracks busy as well as our team at the PSSI International Teleport.
Rick Ball’s at Watkins Glen International Raceway in New York this week for WeatherTech Championship Qualifying Toga Downs Casino Resort 240 and Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen. Rick’s got the newly upgraded C12 truck – complete with a Media Links shelf – to provide extensive data, comms, and video transport services across the AT&T Global Video Services network from PIT to NASCAR headquarters in Charlotte. The large aperture C-band antenna is pointed at the satellite and ready to go as a backup path. Rick is multiplexing 30 video paths and over a hundred audios for NASCAR’s complex at-home production.
Ben Bradshaw, Jonathan Ayala and the C27 mobile teleport are at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, IL this week for the Bounty 150, Camping World Outdoors Truck Series 225, Camping World Xfinity Series 300 and, of course, the NASCAR Monster Energy Cup Series Camping World 400. Ben and Jonathan are the data and video transport hub for the entire compound, with services for NASCAR and Fox coming in and out of the truck, through PIT, and onto Charlotte and points beyond. This is big time TV, and we are the best in the business at providing multi-platform transmission and connectivity services.
We continued our weekly tech managing and transmission services from the brand new UFC Apex facility in Las Vegas. Tracy Michaels was there on Monday to oversee all technical aspects of the production for our friends at Concom, while Brian Blomstrom rolled in the CK35 mobile teleport on Tuesday to provide multiple transmission pathways for the Dana White Contender Series. We take a break next week as we lead up to UFC 239, but we’ll be back at it the following week!
Tracy continues his tech managing run with Concom this weekend at the Target Center in Minneapolis, MN. Mike Lemieux and Kevin Spangler will engineer the CK25 mobile teleport, while senior project manager, Keith Valeri, is on hand to manage the domestic and international distribution of UFC on ESPN 3. The main event will feature Francis Ngannou taking on Junior dos Santos in a Heavyweight bout, but before that we have Friday’s weigh-in and an afternoon full of exciting undercards on Saturday. The PSSI International Teleport is intimately involved, of course, with QC and international distribution services.
Nick Ray’s will be working on his French at the Stade Desjardins de Thetford in Thetford Mines, Quebec on Saturday night. Here Nick is providing transmission services for our friends at Aldea. Nurzat Sabirov takes on Laz in Thetford Mines, QC on Saturday for boxing where the Main Event will feature Nurzat Sabirov battling Laszlo Toth (no relation to PSSI engineer, Steve Toth) in the main event. Nick is breaking the ice on what’s shaping up to be a busy summer for us north of the Border.
More work with our partners at Aldea further south: Rick Varney’s in the C45 truck at Dunkin’ Donuts Center in Providence, RI. It’s a Homecoming fight for Demetrius Andrade as he takes on Maciej Sulecki live on DAZN Saturday night. Rick is testing Friday for all of Saturday’s action, which you can see only on DAZN.
Big fight down in Texas, so we brought a big truck. John May drive the CK48 mobile teleport down to NRG Arena in Houston, TX on Friday to meet up with Zane Michaels and project manager Victor Verno for Showtime boxing this weekend. Both C-band and Ku-band antennas will be humming on Saturday night when Jermall Charlo defens his Middleweight World Title against challenger Brandon Adams. There will be two feeds coming out of the Ku-band antenna, one of which will come down at the PSSI International Teleport for international distribution to boxing fans worldwide.
From Houston, Zane hustles up to Dallas to meet up with the CK30 mobile teleport – expertly driven halfway across the country by Joe Kelderhouse and Devon Porter – for WWE’s Monday Night RAW show at the American Airlines Center. Then the team heads to San Antonio for Tuesday night’s Smackdown show. Nice tour of Texas for our team!
Still more fighting! Larry Sheets has the C43 at Pechanga Entertainment Center in Temecula, CA for some Friday night boxing. It’s Top Rank on ESPN+, featuring Richard Commey defending his IBF Lightweight Title against Ray Beltran. Larry’s providing a 4-channel mux for our friends at ESPN so they can distribute different feeds to multiple outlets domestically and worldwide.
Fresh off a great run in Yellowstone, Seattle-based engineer David Meyer is back at home and will be doing a series of WNBA games just a few miles from his house. The Seattle Storm have an nice homestand at Alaska Airlines Arena, and David will be providing the transmission for four games in 7 days. Another nice run!
How about Ron “Roadrunner” Ford joining our elite Golf Channel engineering rotation? Ron has the C21 truck running smoothly at Pinnacle Country Club in Rogers, AR this week. He’s providing multi-path transmission services for our friends at Golf Channel who are there for the Walmart Northwest Arkansas Championship. Nice work, Ron!
Salt Lake City-based engineer Todd Harvey is pretty close to home this week at the Oakridge Country Club in Farmington, UT. Golf Channel’s there for the 2019 Utah Championship, and anywhere Golf Channel goes, we go!
It’s a busy weekend in Utah! Brian Blomstrom and Joe Cox are in Salt Lake City at the USANA Amphitheater for the 2019 LoveLoud Festival, hosted by AT&T. This weekend concert event features Kesha, Dan Reynolds from Imagine Dragons, Tegan & Sara, and much more. Proceeds from ticket sales will benefit local and national LGBTQ+ charities, and we are proud to be a part of the fun!
Keeping out West, Steve Chaisson is handling a complex transmission for our Swedish friends at Mobile Links. It’s the 2019 Nike Prefontaine Classic, a track and field event live from Stanford University’s Cobb Track. This is the only US tournament of the IAAF Diamond League this year, and we’re going to provide a mux of multiple, simultaneous events for European track and field fans.
It seems like most everyone saw the Democratic debates in Miami, FL this week. Chances are you were looking at the video coming out of Max Lewis’s News Group truck. Lorenzo Dottori was in town to work with Max on CNN’s wire-to-wire coverage of both nights’ debates and all the surrounding hoopla. The PSSI News Group team is going to be mighty busy over the next year and a half as we enter into an election season that will no doubt have some exciting twists and turns. Buckle up, fellas!
Things were a little quieter for Dave Buckman and Dennis Smith, who handle some corporate downlinks at luxury resorts in Upstate New York and rural Vermont earlier this week. It’s not often that our guys in the field get to stay in 4-star accommodations while on the road, so it was a well-deserved change of pace for Dennis and Dave.
Speaking of changes of pace, UFC regular Jim Flowers traveled from Portland, Maine to La Serena, Chile over the past 36 hours or so. Jim is handling the remote transmission of the upcoming solar eclipse, for which La Serena is the perfect viewing location. Paul Blomstrom and David Brin are setting up the CK35 mobile teleport just outside San Francisco’s Exploratorium, as they will ingest remote feeds from Jim and other locations and provide the primary transmission pathway for the Exploratorium’s live broadcast of the eclipse on July 2. We are so grateful for the opportunity to support these kinds of unique events, and proud to be the first call for projects that go well beyond the standard satellite uplink. Check it out next week!