Covelli Center adds production studio for students

Brendan Kucera
Wed, 09 Oct 2019 02:14:16 +0000
News, Sports, Big Ten student u, broadcast media, Buckeye sports, Covelli Center, Gene Smith, Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium, ohio state, Ohio State broadcast media, Ohio State Buckeyes, Ohio State game coverage, Ohio State journalism school, ohio state media production, Ohio State sports media, schottenstein center, value city arena

Big Ten Network Student U production manager Mariesha Gibson helps teach students aspects of sports television creation. Credit: Brendan Kucera | For The Lantern

A state-of-the-art production studio opened this semester in the Covelli Center that will help students seeking careers in sports broadcasting develop even more professional skills.

Big Ten Network Student U Productions opened the studio for Ohio State students to learn all aspects of sports television creation, from production and on-air broadcasting to camera work, Mariesha Gibson, BTN Student U production manager, said.

The facility was created so production could be managed from a central location, regardless of which field or arena was hosting the sports activity, Chuck Alitzer, broadcast video engineer for Ohio State, said.

“Part of this idea that we had was to kind of make these global places that we could operate from,” Alitzer said. “Covelli offered us that chance to make the first global opportunity to reach all of our athletic venues.”

The upgrade included $40,000 worth of equipment installed with the purpose of sending signals back to the production studio, Alitzer said.

This allows for feeds from multiple arenas to go to one central command center, which is the Covelli Center studio.

Equipment for running the feeds is currently located at the Covelli Center, Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium and the Schottenstein Center, but there are plans to add more, Alitzer said.

Having a space solely for production has been beneficial because of the previous lack of space and proximity to the announcers in the past, Gibson said.

“Sometimes we don’t get the amount of space that we would like,” Gibson said. “At times we will get a certain room where we are in the same room as the announcers. It forced us to have to be really quiet so the audio doesn’t bleed over into the announcers’ headset.”

The new production facility is connected through every varsity sports facility on campus, allowing the production crew to be centrally located. Now only announcers and camera crew for the program are required to be on-site for game coverage.

The reaction from students has been positive because they are able to be freer due to having an independent space, Gibson said.