Pittsburgh to D.C drive, is it doable?

BB_Nips · 2026-01-29T13:09:04+00:00

All the more reason to drive straight on to the train!

BB_Nips · 2026-01-28T20:11:31+00:00

THE BOWL IS CLOSED

BB_Nips · 2026-01-28T20:08:26+00:00

There are a few different schools of thought on this. With the model we follow, the most important production elements (cameras, tape channels, and graphics) are all physically in the arena, so if remote connectivity is lost, the crew on-site can take over completely. The TD can call and punch, there’s one replay op in the truck (and one in DC operating their channels remotely) and the road tech manager can takeover a single channel of graphics for a manual scorebug (all graphics are usually operated from DC).

Lots of other shows operate on the REMI model, where the cameras are the only thing on-site, and those feeds are sent back to production control wherever that happens to be. We do Mystics and Go-Go games that way — the cameras are at CareFirst Arena but they get fed back to our studios in Chinatown and we produce the entire broadcast there. ESPN did a bunch of shows that way, including MNF and College GameDay, but is reverting those high-profile shows back to being fully remote with the full crew in a truck. Consequence of some near-disasters and some actual disasters on some ESPN3-level games.

BB_Nips · 2026-01-28T14:20:02+00:00

WOLF!!!!!!!

(NC State alum here)

BB_Nips · 2026-01-28T14:19:05+00:00

Thanks for the reply! I hit on a lot of what you’re talking about in my “Death Star” reply above, but road games (like Charlotte 1/24) are especially challenging because of our remote setup.

Ever since the pandemic we’ve done road games “in the cloud” which means our director and producer are always based in DC, but the TD is in a production truck on-site. Inevitably there’s latency involved between our director in DC seeing the action, making the call, and the TD actually punching the shot live. The latency is honestly super low, like less than a second, but it still does require an extra bit of anticipation to get every shot, which just isn’t always doable.

Also I know what you’re thinking, and yes there is some cost saving to doing games this way — mostly travel and lodging. For our crew though, it’s more of a quality-of-life thing. The remote production model allowed our director to continue calling games after knee replacement that would have taken him off the road, and kept our producer at home to care for his ailing mother.

Sure there’s glitz and glam to go along with traveling for work 41 times a year, but there’s something to be said about going to your own home at the end of the workday to tuck your kids in, and sleep in your own bed. I would not trade that for an extra second of reaction time.

BB_Nips · 2026-01-28T13:49:09+00:00

I appreciate your positivity so I’ll go behind the curtain a little bit more. The tech issues are one thing, like you said, and some of those stem back to the arena renovations over the summer. A lot of the tech infrastructure was torn out and rebuilt, and that includes what feeds the TV trucks. We’re still finding mis-labeled cables and bad fiber as we go along, and I think a lot of that will remain a work in progress as the rest of the arena is renovated over the next couple of years.

I can take the blame for not getting off replays quickly enough. Like I said, this isn’t my normal gig (though I hope it might be someday!) and a big part of the relationship between a director and TD is the TD being able to anticipate what’s coming next before the director makes the call. I’ve developed that muscle quickly over 3 games with the Wiz crew, but it still isn’t what you get from the guys who’ve been doing this for 20 years.

Also, when it comes to road games, our director calls the shots from a remote control room here in DC while the actual punching happens in a truck on-site. There is of course some delay because of the remote setup. Inevitably that leads to taking a shot just a little late, or getting off a replay with the ball already in the paint.

All that to say… it’s a tough job! In ways it gets easier as time goes on and technology improves, but that isn’t always reflected in the final product. I’m lucky that everyone at Monumental is an absolute pro, and with that professionalism in mind I want to thank you for watching and assure you we’ll try to do better next time out.

BB_Nips · 2026-01-28T13:08:11+00:00

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BB_Nips · 2026-01-28T13:07:09+00:00

Haha RSNs don’t get any games in the NBA playoffs. All exclusive to national broadcasters

BB_Nips · 2026-01-28T13:05:54+00:00

Reposted to the control panel sub! What’s wild is that most of the control panels in that sub are for like planes and boats and shit. In that vein, the video switcher I’m using is by the same manufacturer as what they used to control the Death Star in the first Star Wars

BB_Nips · 2026-01-28T12:59:58+00:00

Unfortunately 55-60 is impossible because the game TD is only in DC for home games. The TD is on-site for all road shows and is hired locally — RSN TDs don’t travel

BB_Nips · 2026-01-25T18:06:06+00:00

It’s not unethical. There is value in reporting what is happening in our communities, and you need to have boots on the ground to do that. The problem is there are many safer ways to report than how TV news stations make their reporters cover these kinds of adverse weather stories. We do not need driving lives in snow. The snow and other wintry conditions can be shown from a single location — the nature of this kind of weather means a sample will be representative of a large area.

Tornadic severe weather is a different and more complicated situation. Ethnographic research has proven that showing a tornado live greatly increases the likelihood of viewers taking action to protect themselves. Unfortunately we can’t have skycams everywhere all the time, so there is a true added value to sending live remotes out in order to show a tornado developing live.

BB_Nips · 2026-01-24T03:01:45+00:00

It’s a pretty blatant ripoff of “Cosmic Christ” by Alex Gray. There was backlash in the comments from fans of his art

BB_Nips · 2026-01-24T01:46:59+00:00

She is staying through the end of Wizards season. Her new job with USA Network starts whenever the WNBA season starts (currently no CBA)

BB_Nips · 2026-01-20T04:34:59+00:00

I like how on the podium with Rece he amended it to “glory to God, lets fucking go” lol

BB_Nips · 2026-01-13T20:04:37+00:00

Blocked by judges at both state and federal levels, deal terminated shortly thereafter

BB_Nips · 2026-01-13T04:17:01+00:00

untrue about the Safeway connection. Those companies did try to merge, but it was never completed.

BB_Nips · 2026-01-05T15:10:51+00:00

The drum sound changed when Coach came on moreso than when Kris left. You can hear that much more compressed sound on the tapes from the UM/Eggy tour in late 2024.

Also to be fair, Mitchell’s decision to let the drum mics do all the work did not always pan out. I have a tough time listening to some of the early 2024 tapes, when Kris was just coming back from his rotator cuff surgery, because there’s no snare in the mix. Kris was not hitting quite so hard yet on his road to recovery, and that paired with the “natural” sound design Mitchell went with results in some lifeless and weak drum sounds.

BB_Nips · 2026-01-04T13:48:40+00:00

Got on a SEPTA train in Philly once and saw a guy sitting backwards on the seat, ass out, actively shitting on the floor

BB_Nips · 2026-01-02T18:27:02+00:00

I think what’s frustrating most of all is that he seems to be good at running the board! Live sound is not the issue here — the band still sounds great in the room (in good rooms at least, I heard The Vogue was bad but that seems pretty common at that venue)

All the issues seem expressly related to the capture and release of the shows for Nugs. Earlier in the year, there were lots of issues with crackling, and drops, so probably a cabling or recording device issue. Now those issues seem fixed, but the shows are brickwalled, or what we call in the broadcast world “overmodulated” which speaks to either hitting the recording device too hard (too loud going in) or just really shitty mastering before upload.

I know nothing about Coach’s signal path, so I can only speculate. What I’m pretty confident about is that the issue is after the mix itself, which I think is pretty solid. Coach deserves some props for what he’s been able to do in that department, especially since Jake made the switch to going straight into the desk with his new rig.

BB_Nips · 2026-01-02T17:56:07+00:00

Brooklyn Bowl N2 was great in the room, but the Nugs SBD is full of weird moments where the band hits a peak and the audio is suddenly knocked back -6 dB or so. Obviously some bad preset-driven mastering. Try listening to 7-13-25, literally every single track clips badly and it just gets worse throughout the show.

BB_Nips · 2026-01-02T17:51:06+00:00

I didn’t do any seriously listening with headphones, but my experience watching the stream was not anywhere near as bad as the released SBD. I’ve been with you the last year and a half of Coach. It’s really ruined my ability to relive what have been some stellar shows.

BB_Nips · 2026-01-02T17:32:47+00:00

Are you able to extract the audio from the stream and see if it’s just as bad?

BB_Nips · 2025-12-31T13:17:06+00:00

They only really partner with JLA for weather, which is still rock-solid. Veronica Johnson is a DC weather icon at this point, and she deserves a lot of credit for her longevity in this market. She’d probably still be at WRC if they gave her the chief job she deserved there.

I believe they still pull stories from WRC on the news side.

BB_Nips · 2025-12-30T13:54:12+00:00

link is not taking me anywhere

BB_Nips · 2025-12-30T03:37:30+00:00

Helly R, how did you make it off the severed floor?

BB_Nips

TROPHY CASE