Matt Adams, a video technology innovator who touched many lives in the industry, died of cancer August 18, 2023. He was 65.
“Anyone who had the good fortune to know Matt will tell you that he was a selfless genius – a truly extraordinary, unique individual,” said Larry Kaplan, President and CEO of SDVI.
Adams was a video pioneer. In 1976, he utilized Ku-band satellite for telemedicine and distance learning—before he’d even turned twenty. In 1984, he built and deployed transportable satellite services to televise the Olympics. In 1989, he designed and implemented the first all-serial digital television facility, for The Christian Science Monitor. He led a team that designed the technical architecture of the first Direct TV plant in Castle Rock, CO in 1993. He developed a file-based remote workflow for NBC Olympics in 2002, which over the next couple of decades blossomed into a full-fledged remote digital asset management system. In 2009, while working for Harmonic Inc, he developed a similar system that served as CNN’s production backbone.
“All those accomplishments aren’t what people who knew Matt are going to reminisce about,” said Chris Lee, a longtime friend who worked with Adams on the Direct TV and CNN projects. Lee remembers Adams as a great and compassionate listener. “We’d be on some project, I’d be buried in deadline details, and here Matt would be having this long conversation with someone that to me seemed unrelated. But time and time again, that deep connection he made with people would turn out to be helpful both to that person and if not to this project, the next one.”
Chris Worth, an Adams colleague at Direct TV and NBC Olympics, remembers how much Matt appreciated people. “Matt had a sincere and far-reaching appreciation for the uniqueness of each person he met, often connecting with colorful people on the fringes as well as heads of many small and large companies and also the every day people he met at the parts stores, the restaurants, the gas stations.” Worth added, “He was the least judgmental person I have ever met. In Matt's view, everyone had something to contribute to the world they lived in and something special to offer.”
Adams was awarded seven Emmys and a patent. The Emmys were all related to technical innovation for NBC Olympics, where he worked with David Mazza, the recently retired Senior VP and CTO. “Matt did not let norms or ‘never been done before’ slow him down,” Mazza said. “His influence helped us innovate and implement most of our best ideas. We truly could not have done all that we did without Matt’s amazing unbridled imagination.”
In aggregate, these innovations for NBC Olympics changed the economics of remote broadcasting and have since been adopted by many other productions. Adams’ led an effort to incorporate racks and studio equipment into shipping containers to reduce set-up and transportation costs. By the 2008 games, the remote file-based systems he helped develop enabled NBC to employ 600 people at its New York headquarters editing Beijing clips and highlights.
Prior to working for NBC and Omneon/Harmonic, Adams ran his own consultancy for 15 years, with clients that included CBS, ABC, PBS, TV Global, The Christian Science Monitor, Kodak, Netcom, HP, Sony, Tektronic and Apple. The common thread in all of these engagements was Adam’s ability to see problems from different angles.
Colleague Brian Chavez remembers this from his work with Adams at Harmonic. “Whenever Matt would enter a room for a meeting with colleagues or customers, he would often sit to the side and simply listen to the discussion, occasionally nodding in agreement or gazing at each person or at nothing,” Chavez recalled. “Only after things came to an impasse would he clear his throat and quietly propose an idea, a solution or an angle to solve a problem that all of the smart people in the room hadn’t even considered. He had a gift looking at things from a different plane of thought and contributed to many solutions, projects and successes.”
Adams was born and raised in Redwood City, California and lived, at various times, in the Bay Area, Boston, New York and finally, San Diego. His final days were spent saying goodbye to old friends and family in a comfortable, home setting. He is succeeded by his daughter Elle, now a young lawyer, and his two sisters Kristin and Lisa. A memorial is online at https://memorialsource.com/memorial/matthew-adams. That site will have details of informal in-person gatherings planned for October in the Bay Area and New York.
If you’d like to make a gift in his name, Matt Adam’s favorite charities are https://youthcare.org/donate/ and https://www.aimatmelanoma.org/.
