Hofstra University's New Centralized Broadcast-Control Room a Credit to Cross-Campus Collaboration Facility enhances live production while giving sports-media students hands-on experience By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital Wednesday, November 20, 2024 - 12:36 pm
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On-campus centralized video-control rooms for live college-sports production are common these days, but one thing is not a given: cooperation between the athletic and academic sides of the university on design, construction, and ultimate use of those facilities.
Hofstra University's new sports control room bucks that trend, having brought together key parties from across the Long Island university: athletics, The Lawrence Herbert School of Communication, and the IT department. As a result, the Pride have notably increased the quality of their live game broadcasts while laying the foundation of a long-term education and training ground for sports production.
Hofstra University opened a new centralized video production control room this fall to stream live sports. The school plans to broadcast all home men's and women's basketball games. (Photos Courtesy: Alexis Friedman, Hofstra Athletics)
This is a win for Hofstra, says Rick Cole Jr., VP/director of athletics, Hofstra. Anytime you start a project or an initiative, there's a real desire to get it right. I think we are getting this very right. One of the things I found that was really important was how Hofstra Athletics serves Hofstra University. I don't know many places that would collaborate like this.
Collaboration Drives Success Located in the Herbert School, Hofstra's control room is the product of more than 18 months of work by the three parties. It's both a megaphone for Hofstra's athletic programs and student-athletes and a state-of-the-art educational facility.
In addition, the interdisciplinary nature of the project is a hallmark of Hofstra President Susan Poser's mission to foster collaboration across departments. Herbert School Dean Mark Lukasiewicz emphasizes the unique opportunity this initiative provides: The idea of taking two large parts of this university that typically wouldn't have all that much to do with each other and having them work hand-in-glove to create something entirely new that will benefit all our student-athletes, our students, and the university as a whole was something that she embraced because of that interdisciplinary aspect.
We said, Let's create something big, he continues. Let's leverage the huge broadcasting infrastructure we already have [in the School of Communication]. Then we have a win-win because the athletics department gets high-quality streams of the games and we have an experiential learning opportunity for our students.
Hofstra's control room was built in The Lawrence Herbert School of Communication.
Cole echoes this sentiment, highlighting the benefits for the athletic programs, especially for student-athletes from other parts of the country or the world. This new setup showcases the talent of our student-athletes and elevates the viewing experience for fans, alumni, and recruits.
From a recruiting perspective, he continues, we have plenty of international students whose families, friends, and supporters can't get to our campus. This is their pathway, their front door to our institution. That matters. The feedback from our student-athletes has been exemplary. Our coaches love it. I think we're going to be as good as anyone in the country, and I'm looking forward to the creative strategy sessions.
Student and Alumni Integration The control room is expected to become a magnet for student involvement in the School of Communication. A team of fifteen students are already participating, and there are plans to expand that.
Over the past year, the School of Communication has started a sports-media degree, which has quickly become a popular path of study on campus. The hope is that the new control room and the live productions that emanate from it will continue to draw students who want to get involved and even pursue live sports production as a career.
In news, sports, and entertainment, live multicamera production is the growth area, notes Lukasiewicz, who arrived at Hofstra six years ago following a career in television news that included 17 years at NBC News overseeing live special-event productions, such as presidential debates, elections, and natural disasters. We're just at the first stages of this, but students can get literally thousands of hours of experiential opportunity, and our sports-media students will [leave] here not just knowing the theory of a seven-camera production of a basketball game but having done hours of instant replay or graphics or directing or technical-directing a live broadcast. That's something, honestly, you can't get too many places.
Hofstra Athletics expects to produce north of 130 live sporting events from the control room this academic year.
Says Kevin Dexter, assistant director of athletics, broadcast productions, Hofstra Athletics, who joined full-time in August after having worked in a part-time capacity for some sports streams. This is, first and foremost, a university, and we're here for the students. That's part of what attracted me to the job: the ability to get in on the ground floor and build something that I think could be awesome for the students. It is a no-brainer for me [after teaching here as an adjunct for the last couple of years]. It's an opportunity to service athletics, service the School of Communication, and service students. And if there are more students, we can keep expanding this.
Additionally, freelancers - many of whom are Hofstra alums - lend their expertise to enhance broadcasts, filling
