Coastal Media Group Brings Fans Street-side for Lakers Title Parade

By Carolyn Braff

When the Los Angeles Lakers won their 15th NBA title last week, the city came out to celebrate, and Coastal Media Group ensured that fans at home had a street-side view of the party. Thousands of fans converged on downtown L.A. for the victory parade and celebration, which concluded at the L.A. Coliseum, where more than 80,000 supporters cheered their team.

Coastal Media Group, working with the local RTNA, coordinated all six parade feeds and provided the HD transmission for local and national broadcasters, as well as the pool transmission of the victory celebration from the Coliseum.

“We did HD satellite transmission for both Fox SportsNet and the pool feed for all of the L.A. press, which could be picked up by anybody,” explains Bob Adler, president/CEO of Coastal Media Group. “In addition to transmission of the switched pool feed, we coordinated and managed the parade-route pool feed.”

Six cameras followed the parade as it meandered through the streets from the Staples Center to the Coliseum, several miles away. In addition to a feed from the Staples Center, local TV stations provided three terrestrial ground feeds, and two RF cameras were placed on open-top buses.

“All of those ultimately ended up on satellite so that they could be downlinked at the Coliseum and then switched into the pool feed,” Adler explains. “The feeds could also be used individually by the stations, however they wanted to integrate those into their individual shows.”

All together, Coastal Media Group’s Truck One provided the transmission and transmission management for two HD satellite feeds, as well as the parade-route feeds.

The nature of the event made the planning of it extremely last-minute, so, while it was no more challenging than any other event CMG has worked on, it had a unique set of complications.

“The only challenging part would be waiting for everybody to come together and get the right things in place,” Adler says. “When we do a typical Fox SportsNet show, they hire us, they book satellite space, and they’re done. With this one, we were providing the satellite truck for Fox SportsNet, ESPN bought the satellite space for the pool feed, and, all together, there were seven satellite windows. It was a matter of waiting to get everything together and coordinated in a 24-hour period prior to the event.”