Above is a jpg of the TV truck bay. This is where the mobile TV production trucks pull in and park. This is where the TV production trucks plug into our broadcast infrastructure. Its located under the Coke bottle and the little ballpark in the left field area. The visiting TV mobile unit parks on the right side of the truck bay and the home TV goes in the left side. The doorway at the rear of the truck bay is my office. This is where all the sparks fly and some of the magic happens. The truck bay is 52 feet wide and 58 feet long. Most production trucks are 16 feet wide and 53 feet long so as you can tell, it gets cozy in the truck bay. The big black area in the middle of the jpeg is the main patch panel. Check out the jpg below for a close up of our main patch panel. This panel ties the production trucks to the announcers, to the cameras and audio inside the ballpark. The production trucks also feed program to this patch panel which ties into our infrastructure. We monitor the program feed and transmit it to Comcast Sports, FOX Sports, ESPN or whoever is airing the game. I have spent many hours on this patch panel troubleshooting signal flow, hum, voltage, terminations and so on.
How fast can you lay grass? Check it out! last week dirt, today grass. The greens crew is amazing. Hey, where the infield go?
Director, Broadcast and Transmission Operations
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Who knew – The Coke bottle at AT&T Park gets a face lift. In all the time I spend at AT&T Park, I was unaware the Coke bottle gets an annual refurbish. The crew working on the bottle install new letters and make sure all the lights work, patch it up and paint it for the upcoming season. BTW, the Coke bottle is 80 feet long with playground slides that will blow bubbles and light up with every Giants home run.
The field now has no grass, its all sand. The greens crew has about 3 weeks to get the grass in place for it to be ready for pre-season. FYI… under the sand, the field sits on a rock bed that sits on a grated steel floor. This provides sufficient water drainage. Under this grated steel floor airflow is provided by an massive engine located under the left field bleachers to provide quicker drainage.
Next week, I will start removing some of our older equipment in our TX facility to make room for our new infrastructure. Will keep you posted.
Director, Broadcast and Transmission Operations
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The grass is being bulldozed out at AT&T Park to make room for new sod. The new field needs to be in place by March 17th as AT&T Park will be hosting a soccer double header. First up will be the San Jose Earthquakes vs Houston Dynamo, shortly after, Mexico vs Senegal will play an international friendly.
There are several projects happening at AT&T Park and one in particular that involves MediaOne. The Giants are considering expanding the broadcast infrastructure out to Willie Mays Plaza (WMP). This area is often used by broadcasters for pre & post game shows. The project asks for two 3 inch conduits to be buried under the plaza so broadcast cable can be installed into a new tie box @ WMP. The cable includes 12 single mode fiber, 6 video and 16 audio all of which are 1300 feet in length. This cable will be pulled all the way back to the truck dock and engineered into our existing infrastructure. This project will make broadcasting from WMP more efficient.
At the same time, I am in the planning phases of upgrading our transmission facility at AT&T Park. The installation will include a new Utah 400 HD-SDI/3G router along with Bright Eye DA’s, Evertz and Aja components.
The home opener is on April 13th vs the Pittsburg Pirates.
Quiet everybody! We have an announcement to make!
MediaOne Services, San Francisco’s leading digital media production company, announced today the signing of a new four- year contract with the San Francisco Giants. MediaOne will continue to manage and operate all broadcasts services for the San Francisco Giants as well as AT&T Park.
MediaOne Services offers a broad range of services including broadcast engineering, transmission, webcast, video production, web and mobile integration as well as full-service studio and post-production rentals.
“It was only natural for us to renew our partnership with MediaOne as they have a successful track record in providing live HDTV transmission and production services for our local and national broadcast rights holders and continue to be a trusted partner here at AT&T Park,” said Mario Alioto, senior vice president of the San Francisco Giants. “We look forward to continuing this effective broadcast collaboration, serving both the Giants and AT&T Park.”
“We’ve deeply enjoyed working with the San Francisco Giants and AT&T Park for the past 11 years, and during this time, we’ve had the great pleasure of capturing several monumental, live sporting events,” said Ben Schick, chief executive officer of MediaOne. “In particular, MediaOne was fortunate to have managed the transmission and broadcast services for the 2010 World Series, 2011 Cal Football and 2007 All-Star Game.
The San Francisco Giants are one of the oldest franchises in Major League Baseball They have won the most games of any North American professional sports team and in 2010 won their first World Series Championship since moving to San Francisco from New York in 1958
MediaOne Services is a global video production company headquartered in San Francisco, providing strategies, studios and services to enterprises, broadcasters, webcasters, and NGOs. Customers include NBC, Electronic Arts, HP, Climate Reality, Ustream, ESPN, McKesson, BBC, Girl Scouts and more.
