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In The News
March 12, 2003, 5:58PM Let there be light ... and sound Longtime fans are familiar with the traits of a typical country rodeo in Texas. But at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, technology has cured these flaws. Distance is defeated by long lenses and giant TV screens, inattention by instant replay. Sound arrives over 32 huge speakers hanging from the roof, each aimed at a specific section of seats in Reliant Stadium. Those who'd rather watch the action on one of 1,600 television sets in the Reliant Park complex get their own feed of audio and video, mixed in a suite of broadcast studios behind rodeo offices in Reliant Center. Somehow it all works out. Here's how. Sound and lighting in the stadium are the job of Rob McKinley, general manager of LD Systems. Anyone who saw the Power of Houston fireworks displays over downtown in 1997-99 knows his work. It took two weeks for McKinley's team to prepare the stadium for the rodeo. That included hanging 180,000 pounds of equipment from the roof supports. The company used helicopters to place fireworks on downtown skyscrapers for Power of Houston, McKinley said, and he considered using choppers again to carry equipment to the stadium roof, but decided instead on a very tall crane. Next week, the loudspeakers and the six video screens over the stage will come out, along with the 100 automated spotlights. The sailcloth sound baffles hanging from the roof will remain until it is opened again, probably when football season rolls around, McKinley said. The spotlights cost up to $20,000 each and eat 500,000 watts of power when they're all turned on. The amplifiers, installed on the catwalks under the roof, take another 120,000 watts. All that is roughly the same as 50 typical households, McKinley said. At each star performance, the stadium soundboard is turned over to the star's own engineers, who are responsible for the volume and mix the crowd hears. McKinley can only advise. "The system can be operating great, but if that person doesn't understand how to mix the room right, you're going to have a bad outcome," he said. The sound and light controls are on a two-story platform at the south end of the stadium. Computer monitors show the mix of sound throughout the stadium, and an employee at another computer choreographs the lighting. McKinley's smartest spotlights can generate a full palette of colors; vary their beams' width and intensity; project patterns of leaves, animals or faces; and make them move. And that's just inside the stadium. If hooking up a computer or home theater system makes you ill, stay away from the new broadcast studios hidden behind the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo offices in Reliant Center. Resembling NASA's Mission Control, the nerve center is dominated by a TV screen that's 16 feet by 4 1/2 feet wide and can be configured into dozens of smaller screens at the touch of a button. Smaller rooms around the perimeter are used for mixing the broadcast audio, storing material on tape and disk, housing the mainframe computers and switches, and other arcane jobs. Just about every element of the show, from chicken judging to the rodeo action and concerts, gets videotaped. Some of this material shows up in the stadium, on the giant end-zone screens and the four "wild walls" in the concession area. Some is telecast by Direct TV, a show sponsor, and some is on pay-per-view. Much of the rest is distributed closed-circuit through those 1,600 TVs in the show's offices and clubs. And some is even sold to the performers, says broadcast manager James Davidson. He estimates that the video production facility represents a $5 million investment. Davidson is the sole rodeo employee in the broadcast complex, and he hires about 50 helpers for the show. "The guys I use work all over the state," he said. "It's a pretty specialized field and there are only X number of them. "The truck companies (that work ballgames and other events) hate it when the rodeo comes around, because I have all their crews."
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