NBCUniversal 2023 Upfront

NBCUniversal Upfront brings together top names in television and marketing to showcase upcoming content and explore unique partnership opportunities for brands. It is a vibrant showcase held at the iconic Radio City Music Hall featuring an array of performances including a-list musical talent, movie previews, dancers, stand-up comedy, and the biggest names in television. Seamlessly orchestrating the event's technical landscape, TV Tech Managers plays a pivotal role to ensure its continued success providing oversight through rigging, staging, scenic construction, lighting, audio, screens, projection, playback, and streaming.

Beginning with a vision from our client NBCUniversal, and our valued partner Hudson Gray, we generate a precise technical design with detailed vectorworks drafts, and a meticulous budget. The event poses a unique challenge, supporting a design that is both prominent in itself, yet flexible enough to support all the brand identities of NBCUniversal's subsidiaries. This has led to an intricate configuration of LED displays, projection screens, dynamic staging and scene choreography. Radio City’s coveted status gives us 4 days to load everything in, and just 3 days for rehearsal. In preparation, we coordinate a massive 5-month effort of off site fabrication, testing, and pre-programming across all departments. 

At 2023's centerpiece was a 100’ wide, 30’ tall bowtie-shaped LED design by Matt Steinbrener. It was complemented by additional flyable displays, and two triangular arrays projecting into the house off stage right and stage left. Atomic fabricated the frame with LED panels and servers provided by Fuse Technical Group. Screens Programming was led by Zak Haywood at The Hive. Lighting design is headed by Ryan O’Gara with fixtures and infrastructure provided by 4-Wall Entertainment. 

Certain transitions necessitate the largest pieces be flown over 1 foot per second. Speeds that require us to account for over 55 metric tons of emergency-break potential across the massive set. Aaron Benson and Frank Kern at TAIT Towers continue to engineer state of the art systems that allow these pieces to fly smoothly and safely. Also a shoutout to Tony Mandito and Bruce Weinstein who directly oversee onsite production carpentry, ensuring all scenic and stage pieces get loaded safely on schedule; with infrastructure provided by All Access and Firehouse Productions.

Outside the venue, a fleet of Tv Trucks overseen by Brett Dicus and Deni Graap house control rooms, plus the show’s streaming and broadcast infrastructure.

We would like to thank NBCUniversal for trusting us with this key industry event for over a decade. Additionally, all of our vendors and staff who continue to make this event a success.

TV Tech Select Credits

Technical Producer - Tony Pietrzak

Producer - Dirk Sanders

Technical Director - Tyler Littman

Operations Manager - Olivia Lovin

Production Manager - Kari Arenberg 

Broadcast Tech Manager - Brett Dicus

Broadcast Production Manager - Deni Graap

Staging Supervisor - Bruce Weinstein

Thank you to our Collaborators

Lead Designer - Matt Steinbrener

Lighting Designer - Ryan O’Gara

Head Carpenter - Tony Mandito

Lighting Director - Ben Green

Lighting Programmer - Chris Hetherington

Gaffer - Eric Norris

Production Rigger - Chris Widecker

Thank you to our Vendors

All Mobile Video - Camera Infrastructure

All Access - Staging

Atomic - Scenic Fabrication

Fuse Technical Group - LED Infrastructure