PITTSBURGH —Feb. 24 will mark the official opening of the NASCAR racing season with the Daytona 500, and Pittsburgh-based NEP Supershooters is gearing up for its 13th year as mobile broadcasting provider for NASCAR Productions. In addition to providing the industry’s most innovative HD mobile production capabilities, NEP Supershooters has designed and built the fiber infrastructure for each venue, including racetracks that require over 150,000 feet of fiber.
“We’re honored to be able to provide technical management, engineering and facilities for one of the most complex sports broadcasts in the U.S.,” said NEP CEO Kevin Rabbitt. “NASCAR Productions trusts us to work with its rights holders and other vendors to deliver a flawless show every week, and our 12-year track record is a testament to the engineering excellence, innovation and expertise that we bring to every race.”
NEP’s technical expertise and depth of resources have enabled the company to handle complex events. The Daytona 500 is the biggest race of the year, comparable to the Super Bowl in production complexity, and its placement at the beginning of the season means NEP must have a large-scale, reliable and tested system in place from day one.
During the 2012 season, NASCAR Productions deployed NEP Supershooters’ SS29 mobile HD A and B units to produce the 38 events in NASCAR’s premier Sprint Cup Series. These units produced its tier 2 programming in partnership with SPEED, including a two-hour pre-race show featuring coverage of drivers and cars and four roving announcers. Its NCP11 and ST1 units produced the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series in 2012 for live broadcast on SPEED, and the company has also provided several other broadcasters with customized mobile production vehicles for their coverage of the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Serieses, with NASCAR Productions providing logistics and infrastructure support.
NEP Supershooters also provided its SRT mobile unit to serve as a shared resources truck providing camera feeds and signal distribution. Via the fiber network, SRT distributed feeds from nearly 100 robotic, in-car, roof, stage and studio cameras for the Daytona 500, and other Sprint Cup Series races used data and audio feeds from up to 70 cameras. By integrating multiple production facilities for all networks, SRT served as the hub for the Sprint Cup Series broadcasting compound. The custom-designed “condo” unit ST37 provided production space for several smaller productions and video services, and from this unit NASCAR Productions also produced ancillary programs distributed to 125 countries outside the U.S., in addition to Sprint Vision and FanVision content.
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