For NYC Marathon

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When IMG and the New York Road Runners had to slash the broadcast budget for coverage of the 2009 New York City Marathon on Nov. 1, no one was pleased, but NEP Senior Project Engineer John Tomlinson saw an opportunity. NEP’s ESU truck is equipped to handle more than just transmission support, and, for Sunday’s race, ESU will house production of the world feed, which means that the truck will finally be used as Tomlinson intended.

“We had to cut almost a half million dollars from the budget, so eliminating a truck saved a good chunk of money,” says Lillian Cereghino, senior operations manager for NEP Broadcasting and senior operations director for the Marathon. “We pitched the world feed on putting them in ESU to help them save money. We will make it a back-bench split, and I’m confident it will work out great.”

Space To Maneuver
Previously, the world feed was produced from its own production truck, but ESU is so spacious — and versatile — that fitting the world-feed producer and director, along with their audio team, inside the truck is an easy fix for a reduced budget.

“Since we built this truck about 10 months ago,” Tomlinson says, “we’ve had transmission supervisors in here, we’ve had office space in here, but this is the first time that somebody’s actually going to use it for what I intended it to be used as!”

The old ESU truck, which supported the Marathon coverage last year, worked well but “was getting a little long in the tooth,” as Tomlinson says. The new ESU, however, has the space to accommodate not only the people necessary to produce the world feed but plenty of extra equipment as well. All of the fiber encoders and decoders for the Verizon circuits are housed in ESU.

“We have a lot of room,” Tomlinson says, “and this truck saves us a lot of work.”

Equipped for the World
ESU is equipped with a satellite panel for the Grass Valley Kalypso switcher, so the technical director (TD) for the world feed with have one M/E from the frame at his or her disposal. The TD for WNBC, which is producing five hours of live local coverage from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., will have access to M/Es 2 and 3 and the program preset bus, which Tomlinson equates to a third M/E. The WNBC crew will work out of NEP Supershooter 22, the fully equipped mobile-production unit supporting the production.

From 2 to 4 p.m., NBC will air a two-hour highlights show commemorating the 40th running of the race. That show will be cut from two Moxie edit trucks parked behind the NEP units along Central Park West.

Directors for the live WNBC show, world feed, and NBC highlights show will chose from 24 camera feeds: five at the start line, 10 along the course, five on motorcycles, three POV cameras at the finish line, and one on a helicopter. The online show, available on nbcnewyork.com, will have access to the WNBC program, the men’s lead camera, and the women’s lead camera.

“In the past, we’ve given NBC routing-switcher busses so that they can pick what they want,” Tomlinson says. “This year, they’re tied in with the EVS network so they’ll pull things over the EVS network. It is still an SD show, so we are operating at the slower EVS SDTI network speed.”

A Coordination Marathon
Coordinating the broadcast of the race is a marathon in itself. Cereghino began communicating with the New York Road Runners in August, involving entities ranging from IMG and NBC to the Parks Department and NYPD.

“All of the coordination with the parks, police, Road Runners, different agencies can be a challenge,” she says.

“The toughest part is, we’re spread over the entire city,” Tomlinson adds. “We have stuff at the start line over in Staten Island, and you’re dealing with so many entities to get from there to the finish line in Central Park.”

The Monday before the Sunday race, the first wave of the 150-person crew arrived in New York. By Friday, all hands will be on deck, split among the Staten Island start, Central Park finish, and rooftop operations in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan. Because of budget cuts, three cameras, one rooftop camera, and a small production truck were cut from the course this year, as well as two RF facilities, so the production team will lean heavily on the motorcycles and helicopter for those mid-course shots.

A Definitive Pre-Race Strategy
On Friday, the motorcycles will ride the course with a police escort, searching for dead zones in the RF transmission. Talent will join the bikes for a Saturday run-through.

“We will do the entire course slowly, stopping at points,” Tomlinson says. “If we run into a problem, we will try to adjust. We do the whole course from start to finish so that we’ve done one good rehearsal on it before the runners take the line early on Sunday morning.”

Tomlinson and Cereghino are involved with events as big as the Olympics, but, in terms of preparation, the New York City Marathon ranks among the biggest.

“It’s funny all of the effort that goes into a one-day show,” Cereghino says. “I do golf and Olympics, and, for a one-day show, this is a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. But it’s amazing to watch the runners come across. Most of them even have a smile on their face.”

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