BILLERICA, MASS. – KBVO, the MyNetworkTV affiliate serving Austin, Texas, is using a Broadcast Pix Granite 1000 Video Control Center to produce local high school football and basketball games. The Granite is key because its built-in Fluent workflow tools allow a two-person team to produce a broadcast in its 20-foot box trailer.
Owned by LIN Television Corp., KBVO is co-located with KXAN, the local NBC affiliate, and KNVA, the CW affiliate with which LIN has a local marketing agreement. Last year, station officials decided to rebrand KBVO as a local sports station through a new on-air look, broadcasting San Antonio Spurs basketball and Texas Rangers baseball, expanding coverage of Big 12 college basketball and SEC college football and producing coverage of local high school football and basketball.
The HD production trailer is being used for its third season of high school football. KXAN has also used the production trailer for town hall events and will use it for Formula 1 racing events.
During high school football season, the station produces a Thursday night game broadcast live and a Friday night live-to-tape game. Games are also available online at www.kxan.com.
“We wouldn’t be doing this the old conventional way – it costs too much,” said Korey Wisland, KBVO production manager, who directs almost every local sports program. “The Granite makes it possible. With a larger production crew, the numbers don’t work.”
Fluent-View provides multiview capabilities for the four 20-inch LCD monitors, and Wisland has created customized layouts for football, basketball and news coverage. Fluent Clip Store is used for commercials and sponsor billboards, as well as promos and show opens. The graphics department also creates backgrounds and lower-third graphics, and Granite’s Inscriber CG is used to add text.
A typical setup includes two high cameras and two field cameras, plus one robotic camera in the booth controlled through the Granite. One crew member is responsible for video replay and audio, while the second handles directing, graphics and clips.
With a skeleton crew in the trailer, Wisland said Fluent Rapid CG 2 is a “critical” tool. “We have to use it for sports, especially ‘down and distance’ stats,” he explained. “It’s the only way we could keep up with the score.”
Fluent Rapid CG 2, an option for Granite and Mica systems, streamlines graphics creation by automatically integrating databases, RSS feeds, and actions like scorekeeping into templates. The result is customized graphics with less manual effort. Fluent Rapid CG 2 also supports Daktronics scoreboards, which saves an additional camera.
