Our Expansion Into Broadcast Consulting

Broadcast Management Group expanded into broadcast consulting services to our clients a few years back (I know… strange that a company based in DC would offer consulting services, right?).  Since BMG formed 10 years ago, our main focus has always been multi-camera live production, but for a lot of reasons, our expertise in live production has really complimented our consulting practice. And vice versa. Here’s a closer look at our expansion into broadcast consulting.

Users Of The Technology

We spend a good chunk of our time in production trucks and studios. And we’re constantly assembling multi-camera control rooms in the field for remote productions. Being regular users of broadcast technology has greatly benefitted our consulting practice, meaning our expansion into broadcast consulting was a natural expansion of our live production services. When we go into a project, once we learn our client’s needs and goals, we can recommend equipment that we are already familiar with. We’ve already used it, understand it, and feel comfortable recommending it – or, in some cases, not recommending it. That’s not to say there aren’t always other options aside from the gear we’re familiar with. But being able to come to the table with a quick list of possible options saves everyone time in the long run. Conversely, we’ve found that our consulting work has had a positive impact on our live production work as well.  We are regularly meeting with our clients and manufacturers to demo systems and equipment. Often we’ll get wind of planned upgrades or new releases before they hit the market.

Live Production Mentality

Live production is our bread and butter. It’s what we do on a daily basis and – as I mentioned above – what we’ve focused on for the past 10 years. One of the things that makes live production so exciting (and nerve-racking) is that you only get one shot at doing it right. There are no re-do’s and no way to “fix it in post”. We bring that same mentality to our consulting projects. We want to get it right the first time. And – to be honest – we want there to be a definitive end – no one wants a project to drag on forever. When we’ve finished a project, we want to leave knowing that everything has been installed and tested correctly and that all key personnel are trained on how to operate the equipment.

Tech-Focused Approach

With all of our consulting projects, we pay close attention to the technical personnel who will be manning the equipment.  Are they broadcast engineers who don’t need guidance and hand holding?  Or are they tech-savvy, but still new to the technology we’ve installed?  We want to design a system that will not only meet our client’s goals and objectives, but also something that can be operated by their intended technical person.  Again, this stems from our live production work.  When booking crews for a live show, we want to find people with not only the right skill set, but who are familiar with the equipment we’ll be using.  We recently built out a small production operation for a non-profit in DC.  They wanted the capability to produce multi-camera events in-house and stream them live to the web, but had never done so before.  We built a system that could meet their needs technically, but that was also very user friendly for their staff.

Read more about our recent broadcast consulting projects.