Live From the Ryder Cup: NEP Americas CTO Dan Turk on How IP Makes a Difference

The Ryder Cup may not have as many golfers as a traditional stroke play tournament but that certainly doesn’t mean it doesn’t require nearly the same amount of technical and production resources. And this year NEP Group is playing a big role, supplying the core production trucks and trailers that will power the NBC Sports domestic feed as well as the world feed. A team of 20 engineers are on site to make sure all systems are working properly.

Dan Turn, NEP Americas, CTO, says IP and TFC have allowed for much easier and quicker compound interconnectivity.

To provide the facilities for this major event, NEP is taking advantage of our scalable TFC IP facilities to build up to this world class event. NEP Supershooter-10 will be the core for the World feed. We are adding Supershooter-Tour Production Control Room and Supershooter-Tour REC Flex, to build a large 4 truck system big enough for an event this size. These trailers were picked to allows the NBC Golf Production team to sit in the same Production control room they use all year.” says Dan Turk, NEP Americas, CTO. “We also have Supershooter 54 A, B, D, and E doing the NBC domestic show and TS2 is doing the ‘Breakfast at Bethpage’ show for Omaha Productions.”

Turk says the ability to take Supershooter 10 and tie it into the two TOUR units shows the power of IP.

“IP is all about being scalable. Once you have the architecture in place you can scale it to fit the needs of the production,” says Turk.

The TOUR PCR truck, which houses the main production area, was designed with golf in mind as it handles all of the PGA TOUR events during the PGA TOUR season. NBC Sports Golf Lead Producer Tommy Roy will be producing the world feed (for the first time ever) from the front bench of SS – Tour PCR, and that bench even has a piece that is removed when Roy is working as he likes to get as close as possible to the monitor wall.

“Tommy is comfortable and familiar with that truck so this is very much like a PGA TOUR week, which is a major advantage to have that familiarity,” adds Turk. “He can walk in; he doesn’t have to know that there is a completely different core of equipment. And then the FLEX truck gives us space to have more replay operations compared to our other units.”

NEP’s TFC (Total Facility Control) scalable IP infrastructure is also playing a big part, tying all of the production trailers in the compound together like at other big-time events like The Masters or the Super Bowl.

“This event is made for IP, and our TFC broadcast orchestration platform is made for events like this because we have the ability to take all of the resources and tie them together in a timely and seamless fashion, rather than having to permanently build dedicated facilities for a show this size,” adds Turk. “We can build a big facility for a big event, or build a small facility when we need a small event.”

The use of IP and fiber has also shaved about two days off of the time it takes to connect all of the trucks in the compound.

“The units arrived last Thursday and set up time was the normal week and a half, including getting the generators up and cabling the course,” adds Turk. “It used to take a few days to cable all of the trucks together, and now we just need to connect to the 100 Gbps core and do some configuration work.”