New Year’s in Times Square

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-Justin Emge

The numbers are in, and once again, Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve came in first place with around 5.78 million viewers. Of course, this number doesn’t include the millions of other viewers around the world who watched the ball drop in Times Square from the special Times Square Alliance broadcast, but massive numbers in both cases!

What most don’t understand is the amount of work that goes into such a massive production.  Unlike sporting events where there is an infrastructure already in place at said stadium, Times Square is an outside broadcast like no other which requires weeks of setup and months of planning.  To put this in perspective, if you go to a major local sports facility, they have a dedicated parking spot for the TV truck(s), a terminal room that connects the truck to every corner of the facility, a broadcast box for the talent, proper power drops, the list goes on and on. Go to Times Square and none of this is built-in, and when you consider that the broadcast covers the entire “bow-tie” from West 43^rd Street to 46^th Street, what you have is a production of epic proportions

In other words, the Broadcast Engineers for the New Year’s Eve Ball Drop must build out a broadcast facility and distribute audio and video in an area that is almost double the size of any major stadium in the world.

Since there isn’t enough time (or knowledge) to dig into how the entire production is pulled off, I’m going to dig into a very specific portion that is integral to the broadcast…  Wireless communications for the crews, and wireless mics and IFBs for the talent on ABC’s portion of the show.

JETWAVE WIRELESS

Before I dig into the specifics, I first want to introduce you to Jetwave Wireless.  They are a locally-based company that specializes in RF and provide special services for events like the New Year’s Eve Ball Drop. You have probably never heard of them, but you have literally heard their work on some of the biggest shows, especially the larger productions that take place in New York or Washington, DC.  For New Year’s Eve, the man in charge of wired and wireless comms was Josh Flower, while Ryan Stotts took care of the wireless mics and IFBs. Jetwave has been providing this service to ABC and the Times Square Alliance for the better part of 20 years and has continuously improved in order to provide the best quality to their customer.

WIRELESS MICS AND IFB FOR ABC

ABC’s coverage of the New Year’s Eve Ball Drop is by far the primary concern throughout Times Square. If you watch the broadcast, you will see two roaming crews that travel from ABC’s Time Square Studios, down to Duffy Square at 46^th Street and up to the roof of 1540 Broadway, otherwise known as the Disney Roof (as the ever-popular Disney Store is just below.) When the crews move around, they not only need but EXPECT seamless coverage with no dropouts. Imagine the frustration if Mr. Seacrest’s mic and IFB dropped out during a live hit? To accomplish this, Jetwave Wireless has set up a massive RF over Fiber system that hits every corner of every block of the entire area.  To get a transmitter or receiver deployed on each block, a network of fiber is hung weeks in advance. I would estimate that well over 15 miles of 12-pair fiber was hung or pulled up and down Broadway for the various crews to use. On every block, a rack of hardware was set up and connected back to Jetwave’s trailer on 45^th Street where they were able to monitor and distribute RF.  The microphone audio was then distributed to ABC’s OB truck, who in turn provided mix-minus back to Jetwave which was broadcasted out to the talent as they moved around Times Square.  By all accounts, it worked phenomenally well and with no issues.

WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS

Where things get a bit more difficult is on the communications side of things.  In the same rack of the RF-over-fiber equipment was a Cisco SG-350, which was trunked back to a Cisco IE4010 in Jetwave’s trailer, which in turn was connected to the E-IPA card in the Eclipse Frame.  This allowed Jetwave to distribute 24 IP Transceivers which provided coverage for 49 roaming FSII Beltpacks. 

The requirement was to allow each person wearing a FSII Beltpack from ABC’s Studio on 45^th street to roam down to the main stage (Duffy Square) where the big-name artists played their numbers, then roam up to the roof of the Disney Store, and everywhere in between.  To deploy so many transceivers, at least six Cisco switches were set up on Broadway, with ethernet drops to the various transceivers, all trunked back to the Clear-Com Eclipse frame in Jetwave’s trailer. But deploying this wasn’t as easy as throwing up the transceivers and walking away, you also had to get creative with the placement of those transceivers.

If you consider that Mr. Seacrest’s roaming crew had at least ten FSII beltpacks, and the stationary crews at ABC’s stage had another 15 to 20, capacity became a concern at the beginning and end of the show when everybody was congregating in the same exact area.  Additional IP Transceivers were deployed in and around those high traffic areas in order to allow for 30 to 40 beltpacks.

To better illustrate the placement of the FSII IP Transceivers, here is a general idea of how the hardware was deployed.

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