Portable rack for Atlanta Hawk's games

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Inside to outside

Once the booth was built, the concentration turned to the interior from a technical and an aesthetic standpoint. As luck would have it, a local company called Fanmats was discovered that made carpet tiles with the logos for the Hawks and the Thrashers, as well as other sports franchises, using a special chromojet process that embeds the color into the fiber. The studio furniture, including a SportsCenter-style desk, as well as the producer position and rack, was designed and fabricated by Omnirax. Four 42" Philips BDL4251V LCD monitors were set up for an array behind the talent inside the booth. In addition to this, a 1' × 8' array of these monitors was set up, crossing the entire 25' span above the escalators heading upstairs to the area where the studio resides. These provide an effective way to draw attention to the broadcast as well as a way to promote sponsors.

There is no doubt that the studio is fully functional and ready to go when the talent sits down behind the ever ubiquitous Electro-Voice RE-27 microphones on 309A mounts combined with Sony MDR-7505 headphones. The gathering crowd outside is treated to a live broadcast via a pair of JBL Control 28 speakers. All the mixing is performed on a Mackie 1642-VLZ3 at the producer position. Multiple audio buses allow a customized mix for the crowd and for bidirectional producer talkback to the talent in the facility as well as the broadcast studio back at WCNN.

The broadcasting setup for the Atlanta Thrashers hockey team

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Pro Co Sound Short Stops were modified to create a cough box complete with headphone volume control and custom labeling. The inputs to the Wheatstone blade are protected by an Aphex Compellor 320D while the final feed is delivered to the broadcast facility at The Fan via the Oslo system.

It was an exciting yet challenging opportunity to build an audio-over-IP network inside one of the busiest concert and sporting venues in the country. The benefit of having full-time connectivity to the broadcast facility is great with the guys able to come in and start working without calling the station to coordinate dialing in on an ISDN line. The design and build teams of Dickey Broadcasting and Cumulus Media had a lot of fun on this project and the engineering team takes pride in being a part of a project that can be seen and heard by a plethora of people who pass through the arena each year.

Gay is a project manager for Cumulus.
Thanks to Liz Haddon for assistance in preparing this article.

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