Crew West Inc.

Live interview with the White Sox’s A.J. Pierzynski

Crew West provided a camera crew and Satellink West provided its HD satellite truck for a live interview with A.J. Pierzynski of the Chicago White Sox. The interview occurred during the White Sox spring training camp located in Glendale, AZ. The beautiful spring AZ weather greeted the crew as they broadcasted the live interview for the Dan LeBatard is Highly Questionable show which airs on ESPN. Each year, Crew West and Satellink West provide hours of spring training Cactus League coverage for various clients in SD and HD.

BACK TO FOOTBALL!

Crew West and Sat West is certainly excited by the return of football! Since the Arizona Cardinals were big players in the free agent frenzy, Crew West and Sat West has been equally as busy providing camera crews and satellite trucks to assist networks with their ENG and SNG gatherings. With the NFL lockout ending, ESPN hired us to cover the Kevin Kolb trade to the Cardinals, and Ken Whisenhunt appeared from Flagstaff on the Jim Rome Show “Rome is Burning” with the help from our satellite truck and camera crew. This season should be an exciting one for the Cardinals. Crew West is again on tap to provide all the press conference feeds from Cardinals home games, and we’re looking forward to assisting ESPN and NFL Network with their ENG and SNG coverage from University of Phoenix Stadium.

ENG Crews in Arizona & Los Alamos, NM

While covering wildfires in the west and south sections of Arizona, ENG crews battle thick smoke and an extreme lack of sleep. I found it amazing that the firefighters could work so hard with less sleep then we had. Our ENG crews working for NBC, ABC, and CBS would get up at 1:00am so they could be on site by 2:00am and live at 4:00am. Yeah, 4:00am Arizona time for a 7:00am morning show hit EST. The Wallow Fire was in the northeast part of Arizona and the Monument was in the south. The Las Conchas Fire is the fire we are currently working near Los Alamos, NM.

The press is allowed in the evacuated town of Los Alamos with a proper press ID. That’s a little tricky with my sat truck operator (from Peak Uplink) who didn’t have an NBC Network ID. We had to talk his way in or no Today Show live hit. After some scrutiny the officer relented as most police were very accommodating to the press. Also very accommodating were the residents and shop owners. One restaurant turned out hundreds of meals to the firefighters. They had a welcome sign to firefighters and the press to come in and get free food. My audio tech, Matt Radlauer, and I went in to get something and ended up helping load a hundred or more meals into trucks for the fire crews. The restaurant folks looked tired after that, so we didn’t bother them and headed to a pizza joint by our hotel.

As the summer continues, Crew West ENG crews prepare for the MLB All Star game that will be held in downtown Phoenix July of 2011. We look forward to a busy July providing services for all of the major networks including ESPN, MLB, and Fox.

-Jim Farrell, President