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MillimeterOn the Line
Sep 1, 2008 12:00 PM,
Story by Cynthia Wisehart
Photos by Joshua Touber
Local-market ingenuity pays off for NY1 and KCNC
Denver CBS affiliate KCNC put its new XDCAM HD infrastructure to the test at the Democratic National Convention. Cameraman Bob Burke captures the moment when Hillary Clinton nominated Barack Obama.
When Barack Obama turned up on stage in Denver's Pepsi Center at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) to congratulate his running mate, Joe Biden, he explained why the convention would move to Invesco Field the next day. “Because it's about ground up, not top down,” he said of his decision to accept the nomination in front of a stadium-sized crowd. It was, he said, about ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
As Obama looked out across an audience peppered with wireless camera operators, toward a wall of skyboxes filled with exhausted broadcast engineers and producers, he may not have realized that his words would start coming true the minute he stepped off the stage. In the coming 24 hours, ordinary people would need to do some extraordinary things.
NY1 cameraman Kevin Dugan takes aim at the vast crowd in Invesco Field shortly before Obama’s acceptance speech.
The last time broadcasters had to navigate a two-venue political convention was in 1960, when John F. Kennedy accepted the Democratic nomination at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. In the 48 years since, the parties periodically threatened second venues that never materialized. So when the Invesco announcement came, just seven weeks before the convention was to open, it was hard to believe it was really going to happen. Broadcasters who had already spent a year preparing for unprecedented back-to-back Democratic and Republican conventions would now have to find a way (and a budget) to squeeze a third venue in between.
And they would have to do it — effectively and literally — in the dark. Information about the move from the Pepsi Center to Invesco Field was understandably scarce and hard to pin down. The security requirements of a sports stadium took precedence over broadcast infrastructure — and daylight. Broadcasters would be accommodated with an overnight move that would be inconvenient and painful. It could be no other way.
Neither station—or any of the world’s broadcasters—knew until the last minute that they would be making an overnight move from the Pepsi Center to a crowded camera riser in Invesco Field.
***
When dawn came to Invesco Field, local Denver CBS affiliate CBS4 (KCNC) was live from the Broncos' 50-yard line. Against a background of 76,000 empty seats and a sprawling Greco-Roman stage platform where the candidate would accept his nomination, anchors Brooke Wagner and Tom Mustin, engineer Robert Garibay, and field producer Libby Smith kicked off the day with one of the earliest live newscasts to broadcast from inside the arena. It was just one Sony XDCAM HD and a mic; the lights had to be quickly changed from 3200K HMIs to 5600K Kino Flos as sunlight started to pour in; the teleprompter caught up about 10 minutes late. But they were live and they were on the air, exactly as assistant news director Kristine Strain had dared to plan.
That accomplishment wouldn't be worth mentioning except for the sequence of events that started 6 hours earlier. At about 11 p.m., a handful of engineers who had already worked all day began to strike the Pepsi Center skybox gear. The deadline was 12:30 a.m., when the secret service would escort the last truck into the Invesco parking lot and circle the wagons. Everybody was pressed for time. They were also pressed for elbow room. With Melissa Etheridge and Jesse Jackson amassing crowds just outside the skybox doors, it was initially impossible to get the gear out of the rooms and down the stairs to the convoy.
Cory Baker, who would set up KCNC's opening shot, had left the Pepsi Center earlier to get some sleep. “As I was leaving, I pictured them packing the ‘Cory box’ with everything I'd need for the morning news,” he says. No time for such niceties.
When the secret service reopened the Invesco parking lot at 3 a.m., Baker found the truck, slid open the doors, and was staring down a wall of gear. “I needed a camera, a mic, some XLR jacks, and a teleprompter,” he says, “and I just had to start digging.”
