SVG Year in Review: June

June served up plenty of Grand Slam tennis in France and England, SVG’s College Sports Video Summit, the NBA Finals, U.S. Open golf, EURO 2012 soccer, and X Games 18.

First up was the French Open at Roland Garros, where Tennis Channel, ESPN, and NBC Sports shared all their facilities under one roof. Meanwhile, France Télévisions provided domestic and host feeds from Roland Garros and Euro Media Group served up the 3D coverage.

Sports Video Group hosted more than 500 college sports video professionals at its fourth-annual College Sports Video Summit in Atlanta, which began with a keynote address from Pac-12 Enterprises president Gary Stevenson. Following Stevenson’s speech, the show kicked off with a panel of industry heavyweights discussing the rapidly changing college sports landscape’s impact on the production industry (and vice versa). For the university, a major component in keeping up with the marketplace is laying the technological foundation, and for many that includes constructing an advanced and efficient broadcast center. Still, there are many conferences and colleges that enjoy the freedom of taking their broadcast facilities on the road. Talk of the second screen was also everywhere at CSVS, from finding sponsorship dollars to determining how best to program the experience to devoting part of your broadcast facility to mobile platforms.

NBC thought it had a Triple Crown in play at the Belmont Stakes for the first time since Big Brown in 2008. That was until I’ll Have Another was scratched the day before the race. Nonetheless, NBC regrouped and rolled out two of NEP’s latest cutting-edge trucks – ND6 and Entourage – to produce a still compelling telecast.

After a lockout-shortened regular season, ESPN/ABC looked to cater to the informed and casual fan alike in its NBA Finals coverage, while also carrying its all-surround-sound philosophy into the Finals. Meanwhile, NBA TV and NBA Entertainment solely targeted the hardcore fan with in-depth shoulder programming surround the Finals. Both the Miami Heat and Oklahoma City Thunder’s local partners also got into the Finals action, as Fox Sports Oklahoma and Sun Sports (content produced by the HEAT Group) delivered on-site coverage of the Finals festivities.

ESPN’s EURO 2012 efforts featured a groundbreaking new production/transmission workflow that allowed a large percentage of operations — including studio, master control room, and editing — to be done from the ESPN Digital Center in Bristol, CT.

NBC and NEP got back in the U.S. Open groove at Olympic Club in San Francisco, delivering more than 60 hours of coverage. ESPN ITV once again powered DIRECTV’s  U.S. Open Mix Channel, while the USGA’s revamped USOpen.com provided exclusive live streaming of the tournament.

X Games has always been a breeding ground for new technologies and production workflows for ESPN, and the 18th installment of Summer X may have been the best example of this. With an expansion to six international events in 2013, ESPN was looking to revamp and scale down their production model. In addition, the 5D production model (a 2D-3D hybrid that shares resources) was in full swing with Cameron-Pace Group. The network’s Emerging Technology arm experimented with 4K and virtual graphics, a host of specialty cameras were on hand (ultra-mo, super-mo, robotic, GoPro, you name it), the audio side of things was booming, ESPN benefited from the techy fruits of James Cameron’s record-breaking deep-sea dive, and the network continued to push synergy between the first and second screens at youth-demo-focused event like the X Games. CLICK HERE for SVG’s full X Games 18 photo gallery.

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