Wireless Broadband Lets ‘Rock Star’ Roll Quickly
Emmy-winning cameraman John Armstrong knows there’s nothing more real in reality TV than trying to manage around-the-clock production.
“We always talk about how they should do a behind-the-scenes show,” said the 52-year-old Armstrong, who shoulders a 25-pound cutting-edge digital video camera around the Los Angeles mansion used as a set for CBS’ “Rock Star: INXS.”
Such a show would display the technology that makes the frenetic pace of “Rock Star” possible. In what producers believe is an industry first, Armstrong’s camera -- as well as five others used in daily production -- is linked by a high-speed wireless connection to CBS’ television complex eight miles away.
The wireless feeds give editors at Mark Burnett Productions in the CBS TV studios at Fairfax Avenue and West 3rd Street in Los Angeles a live look at Mig Ayesa, Suzie McNeil, J.D. Fortune and other contestants vying to become lead singer of the rock band INXS.
Watching the action live gives the editors a big jump in piecing a story together when the digital clips arrive by truck every few hours.
“They have to crank out the show real fast,” Armstrong said.
More important, wireless broadband -- which can be set up in days -- saves Burnett “hundreds of thousands of dollars” over a wired connection, said Cara Goldberg, a line producer.
Burnett is part of a small but growing group of businesses nationwide turning to wireless broadband connections. Architects, engineers, hotels and law firms are pioneering a system that bypasses the chokehold telephone and cable companies have on phone and Internet access to customers’ homes and offices.
The spread of wireless broadband coincides with a major push by phone companies, which are spending billions of dollars to install fiber-optic lines to deliver super-fast Internet speeds. But those projects can take years to complete.
Wireless systems, by contrast, can be built relatively quickly and cheaply, requiring little more than rooftop antennas with radio gear to move signals over the air and with ethernet cables linking them to computers inside.
Wireless systems are not perfect and still too expensive for residential use. But comparing it with standard wired hookups, businesses like the versatility and flexibility of wireless.
“In TV production, you have to get things done and get the show on the air,” said Chris Thompson, chief executive of Wexler Inc., a major video and communications rental house that Burnett has hired for the INXS show. “Having to wait is never an option.”
Hundreds of wireless carriers across the country are courting business customers as they build and expand systems around the two major high-speed wireless technologies, known as Wi-Fi and WiMax.
TowerStream Corp., with about 1,000 business customers in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and other cities, provides the bandwidth to Burnett. NextWeb Inc. serves 2,500 business customers throughout California, including such Hollywood firms as Kaleidoscope Creative Group, which develops marketing and trailers for major movies.
TowerStream and NextWeb offer speeds that can reach 100 megabits per second, which would deliver about 4,800 typewritten pages of text a second. Typical DSL service is 1.5 Mbps, or about 72 pages a second.
“It’s a good way to go,” said Joe Birkman, chief information officer at Kaleidoscope. “It works.”
Kaleidoscope pays $480 a month for a 2-to-3-Mbps connection to transfer compressed files of trailers, credits, motion graphics and advertising to studio clients for approval. The company, which worked on such films as “Star Wars,” “Jurassic Park,” “Titanic” and, more recently, “Van Helsing,” hand-delivers its final film-quality tape.
“We had a business DSL connection, and it just wasn’t working,” Birkman said. “We had to go to a [dedicated high-speed] T-1 line, but it was going to take two months to get in and the phone company wanted $700 to $800 a month.... NextWeb had its system up and running in a week.”
NextWeb and TowerStream are scoring with broadband wireless because they offer what phone companies can’t, said Lindsay Schroth of the Yankee Group research firm in Boston.
Their systems are less costly and can be installed quickly, she said.
And wireless operators “have good customer service” compared with phone and cable firms, Schroth said.
Wireless broadband also costs hundreds to thousands of dollars less a month, she said, than either a business-class digital subscriber line, DSL, or a T-1 line.
Wireless networks use base stations where radio signals from customers are collected and routed. NextWeb, for instance, avoids any contact with local phone companies by relaying signals wirelessly to the fiber-optic backbone of long-distance carrier Level 3 Communications Inc., where it picks up its Internet link.
In Las Vegas several months ago, NextWeb made its first foray out of state to build three base stations in areas where it expected to pick up at least 20 business customers per base station.
That’s how few it needs to gain enough critical mass, about $5,000 a month in revenue, to start making a profit in six to nine months, said Eric Warren, a NextWeb spokesman.
But the economics that make the business market attractive -- gross profit margins of up to 80% -- don’t work in the residential market where DSL is selling for as low as $15 a month. NextWeb’s lowest price is $150 a month. “Right now, there’s no way for us to make money on that,” Warren said. “The new WiMax gear may get the cost down, but it will take a while for that to happen.”
For now, there’s plenty of room to grow by serving companies.
TowerStream President Jeff Thompson said a Bechtel Corp. construction unit turned to wireless for its trailers at Boston’s “Big Dig,” a long-running expressway and underwater tunnel project. Bechtel would order T-1 lines, he said, but by the time they arrived, the trailers would be moved. With TowerStream, the antennas move with the trailers.
In San Mateo, Calif., the Hilton Garden Inn dumped its DSL two years ago because of frequent interruptions and slow upload speeds, which frustrated business customers who were trying to send large files to their offices or clients.
General Manager Derek Hudson turned to NextWeb for speeds up to six times faster and a reliable microwave network. He learned later he also got better customer service and 24-hour response to changes he needs.
Even so, Schroth said, she is guessing that wireless broadband has perhaps only 2% of the business market.
“Market shares are nothing to brag about,” Thompson noted.
Also, glitches need to be worked out. TowerStream’s connection is reliable enough for Burnett editors to view the action, but there are enough blips and breakups to prevent them from working with the live feeds, line producer Goldberg said.
“Some days are better than others,” she said on a recent Thursday. “Sometimes, the screen will freeze, and we’ll miss a sentence or two at CBS. Today, there’s a big crane on top of the CBS building that is blocking our transmission, so today is not a good day.”
Still, said Weston Henderek, an analyst for Sterling, Va.-based Current Analysis, “what NextWeb and TowerStream are doing with their high-speed fixed wireless systems is real competition for the phone companies.”
