Kurt
Heitmann and the good people at CP Communications have established a
memorial trust fund in honor of ESPN and sports industry audio
legend Ron Scalise that will be used for the college education of his
three children: Rosario, 16, RJ, 11, and his daughter Brenna, 10. At
the request of the family this will be the only fund established to
limit confusion. For more information on donating to the fund please
click on this story.
All donations should be made out to the fund and should be sent to:
Kurt G. Heitmann
CP Communications, Inc.
200 Clearbrook Road
Elmsford, NY 10523
Third Annual Sports & Technology Research Study
The Sports Video Group and the Consumer Electronics Association has released the
third-annual “Sports & Technology Research Survey, highlighting the power
that sports content has as both a driver of HD set sales as well as other new
technologies. The survey includes our exclusive 2008 Super Bowl Briefing as
well as new data about consumer online sports viewing behavior.
After Wednesday’s power outage during the Germany/Turkey match UEFA Media Technologies says the International Broadcasting Centre (IBC) will switch immediately to generator power to prevent a repeat of the power-cuts that left many of the world’s soccer fans in the dark for about 18 minutes during the match.
Alexandre Fourtoy, CEO of UEFA Media Technologies, said three microcuts of less than one millisecond were enough to cause the master control room to reboot. “This takes several minutes and this is why the signal was affected. The protection system has been defective in detecting cuts and in switching to the back-up power," he explained.
Speaking to the media, Fourtoy added that the power was fully tested according to industry procedures before the event and was working perfectly well until yesterday.
For today’s semi-final between Spain and Russia in the Ernst Happel stadium in Vienna UEFA will switch entirely to internal diesel generators to prevent any further outages. "To prevent any repeat, we want to avoid any external factors that could affect the power, so for tonight and for the final we have switched the power in the IBC to the three redundant generators," said Fourtoy.
Fourtoy said that some countries suffered no loss of signal, including Swiss television, as they had opted for a direct uplink from the St Jakob Park stadium in Basel, where the game took place, rather than taking the signal from UEFA's transmission centre in the IBC in Vienna. Other broadcasters including Germany's ZDF, used the Swiss pictures with their own commentators, slightly off the pace, tagged on.
Although apologizing for the loss of signal, UEFA defended its coverage of the event, saying it had selected Host Broadcasting Services (HBS) as contractor, the same company used by FIFA for the 2006 World Cup in Germany.
“The issue yesterday was purely linked to electricity, nothing to do with transmission or our partners, and what I'd like to add is that we're extremely sorry to everyone for the minutes which were missed,” says Fourtoy. “We re-fed them to broadcasters afterwards but of course are sorry to those who were watching at the time.”
