Crew ensures nearly live feed stays smooth
‘Beyond the Dirt’ embedded in arena
Each night of the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo, more than 17,000 fans jam into the Thomas & Mack Center to take in all the action. But that represents only a fraction of those in town for this annual 10-day event.
For the rest of the rodeo fans — the overwhelming majority — what’s important isn’t found inside the Thomas & Mack, but rather just outside the arena: a trailer staffed by a handful of people who have mastered the art of delivering the satellite feed to dozens of viewing parties all around Las Vegas.
Half the trailer holds a crew managing the broadcast for the
CBS Sports Network. The other half is a crew of five overseen by David Glodt, who for more than 15 years has served as producer of the live satellite feed sent to Vegas hotel properties.
The production is titled “Beyond the Dirt,” since those taking in the feed are, well, beyond the dirt of the Thomas & Mack. But it sure doesn’t feel like they’re far away at all.
“The viewers at hotels don’t see all the commercials. We’re always showing the arena, so fans get the experience of being in the arena,” Glodt said. “And instead of having broadcasters, we have the rodeo in-house announcers. That’s what the fans want. The viewers get their own in-house experience, plus some more — our own video replays, cameras on all the time, and our own graphics, giving stats on the cowboys, stuff like that.
“We’re able to promote various things going on in Vegas during the rodeo, like the buckle ceremony each night, what’s going on the next day. Nice nuggets of information. Even during rides, you’ll see stuff on the crawl at the bottom of the screen.”
And fans get all the action — along with those stats and nuggets — in as close to real time as one could possibly expect, much more so than via the TV broadcast. It takes no more than three seconds to go from Glodt’s truck to the satellite truck, then to the satellite itself way out there in space, then down to all the hotels that subscribe to the feed.
“It’s really live,” Glodt stressed. “It may even be less than three seconds. It’s quick. I still think it’s amazing, and I’ve been around this a long time.”
Glodt spent 24 years with ABC News before moving to Houston and launching his own production company. Living in Texas will certainly make one well aware of rodeo.
“I’m actually from Massachusetts, but I fell in love with rodeo,” Glodt said, noting his work on rodeo in Houston ultimately got the attention of Wrangler NFR officials. “Las Vegas Events asked me do this. But it wasn’t as sophisticated as this back then.”
Indeed, Las Vegas Events — which manages the Wrangler NFR in conjunction with the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association — has made substantial investments in the production trailer during Glodt’s tenure, allowing his staff to consistently deliver a nearly flawless and always-improving product.
“Stuff goes wrong, and you deal with it when it does. I’ve got a team of people who know how to fix it. I’m not a technical guy; I just know who to point to,” Glodt said with a laugh. “But 98.5 percent of the time, it runs well. Las Vegas Events spares no expense in doing this. We just try to make it better every year.”
Sitting next to the production crew as a go-round got underway at the 2018 Wrangler NFR, it was organized chaos in the front row of the setup. In rapid-fire fashion, director Rick Davidson was calling out to all the arena camera operators, letting them know when their angles were going live. Graphics operator Raquel Clendening and production assistant Karlee Peterson queued up the graphics and the crawl news and announcements, while Mike Zubek handled all the technical direction aspects.
In the back row, associate producer Maria Prekeges kept a close watch on the schedule and jumped in to