Broadcasting Around the Clock at CES

By Katie Primm, NBC Universal

This is the third year NBC Universal has been the official broadcast partner for the Consumer Electronics Show and my first year attending here in sunny Las Vegas (not a bad week to be away from the frigid East Coast). I've been soaking up all the flashing lights and beeping gadgets at the Convention Center, but I have to admit that many of the new technologies are over my head.

Full disclosure: I am not a techie. I have a cell phone, Blackberry and laptop. I love Facebook and Hulu and my DVR. I've even started reading e-books. But beyond that, I appreciate any IT help coming my way. I'm loving the opportunity to see the new devices, but I've felt more in my comfort zone with the live TV being produced at the NBCU booth (#9836).

The networks of NBC Universal are vast (USA, Bravo, Oxygen and SyFy just to name a few) and we've taken several of the shows on the road to showcase not only what our viewers see on the air everyday, but also the behind-the-scenes view of how it all gets put together. NBC, CNBC and MSNBC have been all over the Convention Center trying out new gadgets and also bringing tech CEOs and their new products to our cameras to get an up-close look for everyone who couldn't make it out to CES personally. From live on the floor at CES, we can cover the news as we watch if directly unfold.

Al Roker was here for Today and also the Weather Channel's Wake Up With Al. Of course waking up with Al is always an early morning - 6 am on the east coast - which means even earlier in Pacific time. To make a 3 am PT show, our crews were on site by midnight making sure all the video and audio signals were being sent back to our control rooms in New York clearly.

CNBC has been broadcasting around the clock - literally - for CNBC all across the globe. As I write this, the booth is crowded with fans of Maria Bartiromo and Closing Bell. Eventually, a lot of the new products premiering at CNBC will make their way to a store near you, but how many opportunities do you have to stand behind a cameraman and see what he sees during a broadcast? Or peer through our temporary Las Vegas control room's glass wall and watch all the feeds coming in and traveling out direct to your TV? The two most common things I've heard in the last 36 hours? 1) I've always wondered what this is like and 2) That is SO cool!

As has been mentioned earlier on the blog, we've got a great location and hundreds of people walk by our booth every few hours. As they walk by, they're able to see Jim Goldman and Julia Boorstin from CNBC interviewing CEOs from companies like Imax, Comcast and Haier just to mention a few. The coordination of the producers on the ground is fantastic to watch. Headset in one ear and Blackberry in one hand, they are the eyes and ears of the CNBC control room in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.

I'm sure you've heard the expression "the camera adds 10 pounds." In reality, depending on the lens being used, the sets and furniture can actually gain weight too; a wide angle lens will really stretch the image to fill the screen. Watching MSNBC or CNBC at home this week, you might not be aware of the realities of our space. On a raised platform overlooking our booth, we've managed to squeeze two cameras, two crews, producers, lights, tables and oh yeah - the reporters you see every day. While Maria, Jim and Julia demonstrate the newest tech gadgets, the crews are practically straddling all their equipment. Everyone always gets a little bit closer - in terms of physical space - when working behind a camera!

While people walking through our booth can watch the crew adjusting audio levels and putting microphones on all the guests, what they can't see is the maze of equipment we had to bring with us just to make all this possible. Our satellite truck is parked in the parking lot more than 1000 feet away from our booth busily sending live feeds and taped material around to NBCU properties. Two cables containing 12 strands of fiber optics cable each are humming along transporting all of our material to the satellite truck, HD routers and fiber optic head-end gear. Boxes and crates transporting cameras, lights, transmission racks and miles of cables have piled up creating a virtual fort of television production.

And Vegas is just the first stop for all the equipment. When CES wraps up on Sunday, our 53-foot truck will be packed full - from front to back and top to bottom - and start the drive up to Vancouver. In just a few weeks, it won't be images of the newest TVs and computing devices traveling across our fiber optic cables, but the newest Olympic champions happily showing off their new hardware on TODAY.

So watching television is becoming increasingly mobile as viewers can watch content on their laptops and smartphones, but it's still a big operation to get it all directly to your hands. Be sure to stop by the NBC Universal booth and watch some productions yourself and take a look at our booth production schedule to pick the best time to come on over!

As for me, I'm ready to explore the rest of CES and if I'm lucky, maybe I'll find a gadget easy enough for even me to use!