Between March and May, Red House Streaming produced five rowing competitions that were streamed live on RHStv—Red House Streaming’s FAST (free ad supported television) streaming network—from Nathan Benderson Park in Sarasota, FL, with nearly 600,000 unique viewers tuning in for the five events.
These five events represent the first in a series planned for 2024 and beyond at Nathan Benderson Park, with Red House Streaming serving as the venue’s exclusive provider of live production and technical support services for high school and collegiate rowing events. The rowing events produced and live streamed on RHStv this spring included FIRA State Championships, FSRA Sweep Championships, Big Ten Women’s Rowing Invitational Regatta, and FSRA State Sculling Championships. Red House Streaming also produced and broadcast the US Rowing Southeast Youth Championships in late May.
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As part of the agreement, Red House Streaming supplied turnkey REMI production flypacks with five video camera packages to acquire live content, IP networking and transmission systems, EFX (effects) shotgun microphones for field audio capture, and remote commentator kits for three announcers. The latter includes headsets and microphones for on-air talent broadcasting live from the fourth floor of the Benderson Finish Tower, which overlooks the finish line on the 309-acre Nathan Benderson Park Lake.
A total of six camera feeds are transmitted back to St. Petersburg, including two RHS CamSTREAM robotic PTZ cameras (featuring I/O inputs for EFX microphones), two broadcast cameras, one drone for aerial coverage, and one RF cart camera for roaming coverage. The RHS CamSTREAM systems, developed in-house by CP Communications, are found at the starting alignment position and at the midway point of the course, along with two broadcast cameras. One broadcast camera was located on the second floor of the Benderson Finish Tower and another plus the drone pilot were stationed on the rooftop two floors above the indoor announcer’s booth at the finish line. Red House Streaming provide a Glensound Paradiso booth kit with headsets and talent microphones for up to three announcers, along with Seetec video monitors with multi-view and program feeds at all three announcer positions.
Haivision Makito X4 encoders and decoders provided ultra-low-latency, broadcast-quality content transmission back to St. Petersburg so that viewers witnessed the action in real-time. That was especially important for these events as RHStv launched an interactive chat room on its app and website in time for the first event. The live chat appears to the right of the live competition, allowing viewers to engagement with other fans as well as the commentators as the races progressed. The RF camera cart was also new this year, which was essentially a golf cart with an integrated camera positioned on a robotic arm and stabilizer.
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“Everything we added this year has been about raising visibility and fan engagement for these rowing competitions, from attracting more spectators to the venue to building viewership online,” said Kurt Heitmann, CEO, CP Communications and Red House Streaming/RHStv. “In addition to driving viewer interaction through our new chat room, we have elevated our content acquisition strategy, incorporated more B-Roll video, and inserted more sponsorship video analogous to what sports viewers see on broadcast and cable networks. Our announcers were also equipped with enhance audio packages, which allowed them to hear and comment on live interactions between rowers and coaches. All of this adds up to a professional sports experience that we will continue to build on at RHStv.”
Technical support services were provided through a crew of seven field and control room technicians to capture the rowing competitions as they unfolded on the water. That includes two broadcast camera technicians and one drone pilot for aerial content, plus one tech manager and systems technician to manage and transmit field-acquired content back to the Red House Streaming Production Center in St. Petersburg. There, a staff of five technicians provided live switching, replay, graphics insertion and monitoring among other live production services to create a truly professional live sports broadcast that was replicated on the Overnght Streaming Network.
