Live From 2020 Winter Classic: NEP Combats Logistical Issues With Thorough Planning The vendor's ability to adapt to the aged confines was a stressful task By Kristian Hernandez, Associate Editor
Thursday, January 2, 2020 - 8:00 am
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The Winter Classic is always a massive undertaking for NBC Sports. With rotating venues that change every New Year's Day, a sense of familiarity and normalcy isn't obtainable. For the 2020 edition, the network relied on NEP Group to handle the logistical needs before and during one of their biggest festivities of the year.
Grgurich helped coordinate the delivery of the four onsite mobile units, including ND4's A unit.
It's a big and challenging show, said Jim Grgurich, technical manager, NEP Group. There's a lot to do and there's not a lot of downtime, but it wasn't compounded and made more difficult by five-degree weather and snow or rain.
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Bringing the Cotton Bowl Up to Speed: NEP Lays Down Fiber in the Dated Facility
Like many venues developed before the turn of the 21st century, a modern-day infrastructure is impossible to come by. While the Cotton Bowl is a timeless classic in every sense of the word, the 90-year-old stadium presented a challenge that many other locales haven't in previous years.
Most of the time, we're at baseball stadiums or other football stadiums. [In those locations], there's infrastructure, transmission, Triax [cable], fiber, and all the things you need for a TV show, he said. Here, there was absolutely zero. Not one piece of fiber or copper.
Through a subsidiary of NEP, the NHL and host broadcaster needed to do the heavy lifting by installing the necessary connectivity to produce the game.
Bexel, a part of NEP, was hired by the league to go into the stadium ahead of time, go through all the cable and fiber, label it, and figure out where it all. If something was broken and needed repair, they would try to fix what they could, said Grgurich. Their job was to divvy up the resources that the stadium has to all the various broadcasters.
Bexel had their hands full when it came to this hefty installation process. In the case of NBC Sports, the company conjured up a detailed system that would allow the network to know where their equipment was in the midst of extensive cabling that belonged to other outlets that were in attendance.
[For example], NBC put in a request for 20 Triaxes, so Bexel sat and broke down what they had to work with, he continued. They went around and color-coded all the JBT boxes. Then when we actually got here, NBC knew their specific colors so if you went to any JBT box in the stadium, they knew not to plug it into anything that wasn't their color.
Out of the 16,000 to 17,000 feet of fiber that was used, the bulk of the amount equaled to 12,000 or 13,000 feet of 72 strands. Despite having up to 10 72 strands that ran across the field, concourse, and fairgrounds, the process was quite simple.
We had to run fiber to our outdoor host position, so we just dropped [the signal] off the edge of the stadium. It didn't take too long, said Grgurich. We had pretty much maxed out the field.
From the network's perspective, the organizational skills of those that worked on connectivity provided a much-needed hand during inclement weather over the weekend before puck drop.
We arrived here on Sunday morning and [although] it wasn't as heavy as it was on Saturday, it was still raining. At the end of the day, I asked one of our technicians, How are we? Are we behind? Are we going to come in early tomorrow? and he said we were in a good spot, said James Stuart, senior director, operations, NBC Sports Group. When you have an older venue, getting the infrastructure in early and giving the broadcaster a head start is key. Bexel did a great job.
The other main mobile unit, ND4's B unit, took up a good chunk of the television compound.
A Need to Roam: BSI Deploys RF Services for Mobile Camera Shots
Along with supplying the three main mobile units for NBC Sports' production, ND4's A and B units plus their F4 truck for delivery purposes, another NEP subsidiary was in charge of all RF technology at the Cotton Bowl.
BSI had three RF cameras of a different variety, said Grgurich. We had a standard RF handheld with a Sony HDC-2500, a M VI RF, and a Steadicam. The M VI and Steadicam were both Sony HDC-P1s.
Before the Cotton Bowl was overwhelmed by over 85,000 fans, and the additional RF congestion that came with them via cellular use, working out the RF signals to withstand a barrage of interference needed to be done.
BSI did all of the frequency testing for it, he said. They generated a list of frequencies, but between airports, Downtown Dallas, and the television channels, it was a very tight RF band
Leading the Way: NEP Succeeds on a Busy New Year's Day
To put on a holiday tradition that is viewed by millions at home, it takes an insane amount of preparation. In addition to the diligent work of installing the infrastructure, NEP and NBC went through a hearty rehearsal the day before to make sure that everything was running as efficiently as possible.
We're starting around two o'clock and it'll go until around six or seven at night, said Grugirch on the day of the rehearsals. Then, the NHL starts their rehearsal for introductions of the teams. [Sometimes], we've done four hours and other times, we've done an hour.
On the same day as the Winter Classic, the company pla
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Live From 2020 Winter Classic: NEP Combats Logistical Issues With Thorough Planning The vendor's ability to adapt to the aged confines was a stressful task By Kristian Hernandez, Associate Editor 
