Pan-American Sports Network up and Running in Record Time
Las Vegas, NV – Pan-American Sports Network (PSN), a 24-hour Spanish and Portuguese language all sports network, went on-air February 15 from a facility designed and built by AF Associates, Inc. in under two months. The facility is temporarily located in Hollywood, Florida. AFA and PSN are designing permanent studios in Miami Beach, Florida.
"A. F. Associates has an established reputation for delivering projects on-time," said Marc Bressack, vice president of sales for A. F. Associates. "The exceptionally limited time frame was a major challenge and we were able to provide the right resources to not only meet, but exceed PSN's goals."
"PSN chose A. F. Associates for two reasons: A. F. Associates had the confidence in their team to guarantee the launch date of February 15th and, they had the experience and expertise to deliver," said Alexander Johnson, PSN vice president of production.
Since its debut on February 15th with the opening match of Copa Libertadores soccer tournament, PSN has quickly demonstrated its ability to uniquely meet the interests of fans throughout Latin America. Approximately seven million subscribers are already receiving PSN programming highlighted by exclusive coverage of the region's most important soccer matches. By the end of the year, the number of PSN subscribers is expected to exceed nine million in Latin America and the Caribbean. Soccer will comprise approximately 60 percent of programming which consists of live events, tape-delayed events, replays, pre-and post-game shows, and news programs.
Two identical Master Control Rooms are based upon Philips Saturn digital master control switchers. Chyron Maxs provide character generation and crawls for each channel. All program material, commercial spots and multiple raw feeds will be stored on Grass Valley Group XP Profile servers for future playout. Louth Automation Software will control the program and commercial servers.
The facility receives one satellite downlink of sports programming from Central and South America which will be either live or delayed and turned around for later transmission in two different languages, Spanish and Portuguese.
A second satellite feed of raw sports programming is downlinked from Latin America and also split into two platforms - Spanish and Portuguese. The feed is integrated with Chyron and instant replays, color commentary and play-by-play commentary, then uplinked to cable operators in various Latin American countries for live distribution.
Voice over booths, utilized for play-by-play announcing, have been installed with the ability to process incoming audio and retain the ambient arena noise.
Two AVID on-line non-linear Edit rooms have been provided which can be used for editing long form material as well as assist in the production of promotional material.
The system was pre-assembled to the maximum extent possible at AFA's Northvale facility prior to transporting to the Hollywood location.
A. F. Associates, Inc., the nation's leading systems integrator, is a Video Services Corporation company (Amex: VS). AFA is an industry leader in the design, engineering and fabrication of fixed and mobile television facilities. Services include design, engineering, consulting, detailed design, documentation, prewiring, installation, and commissioning for broadcast, cable, satellite, production/post production and corporate video markets. AFA maintains headquarters in Northvale, NJ and operates an office in Burbank, CA.
PSN is a portfolio company of the Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst Latin American Sports and Media Platform. The platform encompasses PSN, PSN Multimedia (home of the future PSNSports.com domain), Pan-american Team Sports, Pan-american Stadiums and Traffic Sports. The platform is managed by the Muller Sports Group, New York, in partnership with Hicks, Muse.