CitrusTV Blog

Dear station members,

Hope you’ve all had a great semester. Just a quick note to share my excitement to serve the station as our general manager for the next two semesters.

If you haven’t already had a chance, please join me in congratulating the other nine newly elected exec staff members who Jaime mentioned in an email last month. We are all looking forward to working together to move CitrusTV forward.

Please also be sure to pat everyone on the back who has served on exec staff for the past few years and will be graduating. We are extremely lucky for their service and the level of excellence they have brought to the station. Please echo my huge thank you to Jaime, Wes, Resnick, Spencer, Jon, Audra, Sheetal, Annalisa and Jaclyn for everything they have accomplished.

It’s now our turn to work together to pick up where they have left off. Among our goals as a station, moving forward we will work on:

• Furthering our campaign to upgrade our facilities to high definition (HD) technology
• Maintaining an organized and efficient station
• Improving our visibility and credibility on campus, in the community, and around the world

With your help, we can meet these goals. We can, in the words of the Athenian Oath (which is inscribed behind the statue of George Washington in the lobby of Maxwell) – ever seek to “transmit this city, not less, but greater and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.”

If you ever need anything or have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Email is always the best way to reach me as I get it on my phone, and in an emergency you can feel free to call or text me at (646) 265-2620.

Good luck with finals. And thanks for everything you do for CitrusTV-

Ryan

SUper Sports stopped by the Carrier Dome today for some good ol’ SU Woman’s basketball. SUper Sports is the television play-by-play production by CitrusTV and OTN. Our four camera set up (plus replay) was enough for a pretty good simulation of a network broadcast. I directed the show. That means I was repsponsible for calling which camera is on air, when to insert graphics and when to play replays among other things.

It’s a pretty sweet set up. CitrusTV provides the crew while OTN takes care of the equipment. We use a Sony AnyCast to cut the show. For replays, we use a Buff. The thing is a basically a poor man’s EVS. The Buff is better than a tape deck because you can instanly play clips instead of rewinding like you’d have to do with a tape deck. Playlists can be created to string clips together to make neat bumps into and out of breaks.

We spent most of the day setting up. Most of us where in the dome not 18 hours after Saturday’s football game. Already the place had been outfitted for basketball. The eastern bleachers where rolled over to Jim Boeheim Court. (That reminds me, should we call this place “Jim Boeheim Court on Ernie Davis Legends Field at the Carrier Dome?”)

It’s not easy setting up a show like this. We don’t have a TV Truck. Instead, all of our equipment is packed into a “Fly Pack” or several big, black, heavy cases. We have to lug them wherever we go and set everything up from scratch every time. There’s a ton of cable to be run. From cameras to control room, audio from talent, video back to the talent and more.

After a while of setting up, EIC Ryan Balton and I got to thinking. Union! Here’s a pic demonstrating how we are over-worked. After talking with the crew we decided something needed to be done.

Notice the two IATSE logos…