Veteran TV broadcaster Mark Allen does most of the interviews and daily wrap ups for Live Airshow TV. Early in the week he also shot video and is shown here heading for Rare Bear’s pit after qualifications.
STEAD (Sept. 10) – For the past few years the Reno National Championship Air Races have been streamed live over the Internet by Live Airshow TV. The company is the result of its president Jeff Lee blending his passion and experience to bring this to the event’s fans.
Like any production, there is a lot of equipment needed. Here a couple of the staff are unloading a truck.
Jeff Lee, president and founder of Live Airshow TV, sits in the production trailer. From here he will direct live coverage of the Reno Air Races.
Charles Lozano changes a lens on one of the TV cameras Live Airshow TV will use to stream the Reno Air Races.
There is a large amount of equipment needed to stream the air races including a few thousand feet of cable. And here Dave Novak is testing the cables to make sure they are all in good order before being put out.
And the company started right here in Reno.
“Live Airshow TV official formed right after the 2008 Reno Air Races,” he said. “In fact every year when we come here, on the Monday following the races we celebrate our anniversary.”
The roots of this came from a long-term relationship when Lee and Rolls Royce vice president Ken Perich worked together on the heritage program.
“I worked basically for him doing video,” he said. “I had been working video for Aviation Nation in Las Vegas as the director of video productions. And I also had been doing work for another screen company out in California.
We did Andrews Air Force Base, Little Rock Air Force Base but they didn’t really get the whole air show thing as they were more interested in renting screens.”
That’s when Lee got a vision of what he wanted.
“I kind of realized that this is my passion and I thought we could take this to a different level. So I parted ways with them and started looking doing this on my own,” he said. “So when Ken and I saw each other he’d asked, ‘how’s that thing going?'”
Finally Perich asked Lee what he needed. The response was a little operating capital, some cards, a website and a few other items.
“It was the morning after the races,” he said. “We were at the Sienna Hotel up stairs where Rolls had their check in, hospitality thing. He went over and was scribbling then a couple of minutes later handed me this napkin.”
On the napkin Perich laid out the partnership he and Lee would have. It amounted that both men would own a third with another third, “just hanging out there.”
“And he said, here’s what I’ll do and here’s what you do and we’ll see what happens,” Lee said. “We shook hands and there you go. That napkin is on my credenza at home and I see it everyday.”
After that he took his experience in Las Vegas, linked it to the guys with screens and kept pushing toward his goal.
“We just decided this is something we can do, I love it, it’s a passion for me. So I get to merge my love for production, telling stories and aviation,” he said.
But his first experience with the air races actually came in 2000 when a man connected with Miss American brought him out to shoot a one-hour show that wound up on what was then Speed Vision, later Speed.
“It wasn’t as much as “here’s the races, here’s what happened and the guys that qualified, whatever,’ it was who are these guys and why in the heck would you do this,” he said. “ I didn’t even know they did this so we basically focused on five unlimited guys and it was called, ‘People, Passion, Pistons and Power.’”
That was when he actually met Perich and Lee then did a little project for Rolls called, “Welcome to Reno.” They used to do a corporate event in conjunction with the heritage event.
For the next few years he shot both Rolls and another group. This evolved into other projects including getting involved with Aviation Nation.
So Lee brought a wealth of production experience when he started Live Airshow TV. He also expanded to other air shows like the one at Andrews Air Force Base in 2009.
“There were a couple of shows that we did Internet only and we didn’t do big screens,” he said. “We kept talking to Reno for several years. So in 2009 we talked them into letting us come out here and we were, to my knowledge, the first ones to even attempt even going live out here. We learned very quickly that year why no one had ever attempted it before.
“The sheer scale of this place is just phenomenal. We got a 1,000 cable run down to the tower and we’ve got a 1,000 foot run the other way.”
That first year he only did the Sunday show, which was a subscription or pay for view broadcast.
“It worked, we didn’t make a ton of money, we didn’t make money but we covered our expenses,” he said. “And we got our audience from EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association).”
Still things weren’t there as sponsorship dollars were hard to find due to the economic melt down. When 2010 came around, and it was August, Lee realized they weren’t going to be live again so he was searching for an alternative.
“We decided, ‘let’s turn ourselves into news reporters,’ and we’ll just go back, we know all the players, we love coming out here so let’s just do that,” he said. “So we came out and that’s when we started doing the daily reports.”
He added that it took a while for those to catch on, as people didn’t know about it. At that time RARA was still doing their podcasts as well.
“Computer power wasn’t as it is today so we worked late into the night and we put it out there,” he said. “That changed a lot of how Live Airshow TV started to develop our fan base. We kind of took the model that we did here and not only do daily stuff but we did in depth interviews.”
Then they covered are various air shows around the country using this same model and were back in Reno for the 2011 Air Races.
“We all know what happened in 2011, we had one of the last interviews with Jimmy,” he said. “Most of the networks and news agencies picked up on that and used our interview. Of course nobody knew what was going to happen in 2012 and last year at the 50th, we had Jet Man, it was like it’s got to be done up big.”
Then Live Airshow TV went to Oshkosh, another show and back to Reno.
“The big jump for us really was last year. Not only for those three shows but we hooked up with these guys and this production unit in San Antonio, a purpose built vehicle just for TV,” he said.
Over the years he’s worked in an RV, a portable POD space type unit, and even in a tent he felt came from Afghanistan as it had so much dust. So the current production trailer he’s using seems like a Taj Mahal.
“When we hooked up with these guys it was like, ‘wait, we don’t have to build a control room every time, it’s already there,'” he said. “That really changed the way we did things last year, the way we’re able to record things and put them out to the fans.”
According to Lee the response from the Internet has been great. He said that over the three days last year Live Airshow TV got over 51,000 views with about 20 or 23 thousand unique viewers from at least 30 or 40 countries around the world.
“For an Internet audience that’s big for network television that’s nothing,” he said. “You go to where the fans are, your give them an outlet, what they want, where ever they are. So You Tube is huge for us, we’re having to learn the whole social media thing and gone over 6,500 likes on our Face Book page.
” I love doing all this even at 5 at Sunday afternoon, still it’s awesome,” he said. “When I’m sitting here watching these cameras, I’m thinking about the guy in Des Moines, Iowa, Rochester, New York or Charlotte, North Carolina as they can’t be here. So if I don’t show it to them, they’re not going to get to see it.
“So I’m a fan and I’ve told these guys, if you ever see me not being a fan, slap me. Because that’s what this is about, it’s not about me it’s about them. It’s about the fans, what can we do to feed their hunger for aviation and air shows.”
Lee also uses Live Airshow TV to help educate young people about aviation.
“Ken and I set out to do this in the beginning but no idea of how we were going to accomplish it,” he said. “So we teamed up with ISTAT (International Society of Transport and Aircraft Trading.)”
Through this association they’re using a series of videos targeting middle and high school students to expose them to the hundreds of careers aviation offers rather than just focus on being pilots.
And Lee feels this is an important aspect of his business.
Looking toward the future, Lee’s very aware of the changes that are going on.
“There is a wave, a culture change not only here but I think around the industry. We’ve been preaching for several years that we’ve got to change things, we’ve got to start appealing to a younger audience and start doing some things differently that appeals to them, ” he said. “Not to say that seeing a B-25 flying over is one of the most awesome things you can see but we’ve got to figure out a way to attract that teenager and do something to get his attention. Things like that, the social media aspect of it, the video aspect of it, that’s what the younger audiences are going for.”
This week is the time Lee and his crew will bring the Air Races to a larger audience, both young and old. Something that lets him use his passion and makes full use of his experience.
Starting on Friday, www.liveairshowtv.com will begin to stream the Air Races live as well as doing updates and daily wrap-ups to a worldwide audience.
