College Football Preview: Fox Sports To Produce 13 Games in 4K
The baker’s dozen games follow Fox’s 4K NASCAR and college-hoops productions earlier this year
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Fox Sports is continuing down the 4K path this college-football season, producing and delivering one game a week in 4K for such providers as DirecTV. The 13-game effort, which marks Fox Sports’ first multigame 4K package to date, begins this weekend with Saturday’s matchup between the University of Maryland Terrapins and the University of Texas Longhorns. The weekly college-football game is Fox Sports Lab’s latest 4K effort, following NASCAR races and college-basketball games.
The first five 4K productions will be Maryland at Texas on Sept. 2, Minnesota at Oregon State on Sept. 9, Northern Illinois at Nebraska on Sept. 16, UCLA at Utah on Nov. 3, and Iowa at Nebraska on Nov. 24. The remainder of the schedule will be determined by college football’s regular six- or 12-day selection schedule.
Michael Davies, Fox Sports Media Group, SVP of Technical and Field Operations, says that Mobile TV Group’s 39FLEX production unit will be used for the 4K shows.
“It is the same truck that did the Notre Dame 4K coverage last year and it is a great truck and one of the more tested 4K trucks out there,” he says. There will not be a side-by-side production which will limit some of the bells and whistles in the HD show but will allow for a much more cost-effective production.
College football will be the latest property to join Fox Sports’ 4K portfolio. Also produced in 4K were the STP 500 at Martinsville Speedway in March and a pair of college-basketball games — California at Stanford University and Washington at UCLA — in February. This also marks the second college-football package to be delivered in 4K, following NBC Sports’ production of Notre Dame home games last season.
Fox Sports will distribute its full slate of college-football games in 4K via AT&T’s DirecTV. According to Multichannel News, Fox is also discussing 4K distribution of the games with other MVPDs, including Layer3 TV.
Look to Sportsvideo.org for more in-depth coverage of Fox Sports 4K college-football plans in the coming days.
