College Sports Television (CSTV) is a brand new cable/satellite service that was launched in April 2003. Located at Chelsea Piers on Manhattan's west side, the facility is actually built on Pier 62 out over the Hudson River. With a variety of existing soundstages located in the Chelsea Piers facility, CSTV chose Stage F for its studio set and an adjacent retail store to renovate and house its production and support spaces. Built in 1910 and renovated in 1992, Pier 62 remains an active docking facility for commercial ships and is part of the 30-acre entertainment complex.
CSTV's mission is to be "the place to go for college sports." CSTV produces eight hours of original programming per night between 4 p.m. and midnight (EST). This programming material is then repeated for the following two 8-hour blocks. The control rooms are located directly adjacent to the 4,000-square- foot studio, and this area contains the production control room, audio control room, video/tape and lighting control, main equipment room and master control. Unlike the typical windowless control room environment, CSTV has taken advantage of the waterfront environment and opened up the control room and master control room for passersby to see.
Architecturally, the sound stage required alterations to make it suitable for television production. Excessive ductwork and air conditioning noise was remedied by replacing existing ductwork with larger cross sections. This reduced the air velocities, while the addition of duct silencers reduced the amount of noise generated from the actual air conditioning unit. The connecting stage doors of an adjacent sound stage were sealed off to prevent noise leakage during taping (or filming), and the inside of the stage was treated with acoustic absorption to control sound decay rates. The retail space was altered to accommodate the production control rooms, as well. CSTV is operating in a networked environment for ingest, logging, editing, playout and archive. It uses DV25 as the in-house tape format with the ability to playback all 1/2-inch tape formats.
Post-production consists of four nonlinear edit bays with room for a total of six, each with local DV25 record/playback decks and 1/2-inch J series players. In addition, four non-linear "highlight" edit rooms are used for nightly highlight packages. The systems are networked with shared storage, and all of the rooms are connected to the facility routing switcher.
Graphics are made up of several PC and MAC-based workstations. Quantel Paintbox Q Pro, which is linked to production and post-production via gigabit Ethernet, and a wideband routing switcher also are key equipment.
Design Team
Patricia Power, CSTV vp-ops.
Jim Parkinson, broadcast sys. consultant
Janson Design Group
Francisco Tsai, proj. mgr.
Karen Singh, sr. designer
Mike Braito, const. coord.
Chelsea Piers, const. coord.
Gary Backman, Sony proj. mgr.
Dave Linick, AFA proj. mgr.
Tim Hunter, set design
Equipment List
Sony BVP-E1 triax studio cameras
DSR-2000 DVCAM VTRs
DSDR-1000 DDRs
96¡¿96 SDI, 64¡¿64 video, 128¡¿12 audio, 32¡¿32 and 32-port RS-422 router
BVM, PVM series monitors
Vinten pedestals
Jimmy Jib
Pinnacle FX Deko II and Deko 1000
character generators
Thunder XL DDR
Telex Adam CS matrix intercom
Soundcraft Series V audio console
Sennheiser wireless microphones
Leitch terminal gear
Tektronix test and measurement
Venaca S3 archive system
TBC consoles
