Low-profile Harmar firm spans globe to bring you TV shows, sports

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
By Anya Sostek, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Its location, tucked behind a trucking company and a Port Authority Transit bus facility near the Pennsylvania Turnpike, doesn't exactly scream glitz and glamour.

But in the last couple of weeks alone, Harmar-based NEP Broadcasting has had a starring role at such events as the Tony Awards, NBA Finals, "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart'' and the World Cup. It even handles some Pittsburgh Steelers games.

And the vast majority of Pittsburghers have never heard of it.

"We're the largest purchaser of Sony broadcast cameras in the world," said Dan Wilhelm, NEP's executive vice president. "Here in Harmarville."

NEP -- started in the 1970s as a part of WNEP television in Wilkes-Barre -- is the nation's top company for remote television production. Worth hundreds of millions of dollars, the privately held company designs, builds and helps operate the equipment trucks that bring major events from stadiums to living rooms.

"We take a sketch on a napkin at a bar and turn it into a truck," said Chief Executive Officer Lou Borrelli. "We do it all internally."

In a recent contract with NBC, for example, the company spent about six months building three high-definition trucks that the network is now using to broadcast sporting events.

The high definition trucks were used over the weekend in New York for the 106th U.S. Open, and are now en route to Rhode Island for the U.S. Women's Open. In the meantime, NEP is using one of its dozens of other mobile broadcasting units to air the Dallas games of the NBA Finals. European units also are broadcasting from several of the World Cup venues.

"Looking at the sports page is like looking at our production schedule," Mr. Wilhelm said.

In addition to building the trucks, NEP makes all travel and hotel arrangements for employees who travel along with the trucks. For the major networks, the company usually sends along three drivers and four engineers who assist the network cameramen and producers.

"It's more than just building a pretty truck," said Mr. Borrelli. "There's a whole support function, getting there in the proper time frame."

Of NEP's 450 full-time employees, about 200 are based in the Pittsburgh area, including carpenters, engineers and logistics professionals. More than 1,000 freelancers worldwide also work for the company.

The company started with one man: Tom Shelburne, whose family owned WNEP. He personally took an interest in building remote production trucks to broadcast Penn State football games.

During the '70s, Pittsburgh's location made it an attractive home to several of the nation's top remote production companies, said David Case, president of the Downtown-based PMI television production company.

"Pittsburgh was within 400 miles of 80 percent of the nation's population," said Mr. Case, who has worked locally in television production for more than two decades. "The only way you can get those trucks to one location or another is to drive them."

When WNEP was sold to the New York Times Co. in 1986, Mr. Shelburne spun off NEP into its own remote production business. In the late 1980s, NEP merged with New Kensington-based TCS after the companies jointly produced the Pan American games in Indianapolis.

As sports -- fueled in large part by ESPN -- became 24-hour television fare, NEP's trucks got busier and busier.

"The growth of the company mirrors the growth of televised sports," Mr. Wilhelm said.

In 1994, NBC, which had previously maintained its own fleet of production trucks, outsourced much of its remote broadcasting to NEP. Shortly thereafter, most other networks followed suit.

As a private company, NEP does not release financial details beyond its number of employees. But when the company was acquired in April 2004 by Apax Partners and Spectrum Equity Investors, its then-president quoted the enterprise value at $320 million.

NEP also has grown by acquiring other companies in the broadcasting or remote production business. NEP Screenworks, for example, supplies the jumbo-size screens used at concerts, including the Rolling Stones tour that passed through Pittsburgh last fall.

NEP Studios is the largest holder of independent studio space in New York City and houses shows such as "The Daily Show'' and "People's Court.'' In May, the company acquired Roll to Record, a British company that produces the United Kingdom versions of TV shows such as "Big Brother" and "Deal or No Deal.''

The growth seems like it has come effortlessly, but Mr. Case warns that often, the remote production business can be a dangerous game. "So many of these investments you need to make into technology can be company killers," he said.

Mr. Borrelli said that the outlay of time and money required to research and purchase new technology is one reason that the networks got out of the remote production business.

For him, tracking technology means sometimes looking in unexpected places. He watches not just video equipment companies, for example, but also video game companies.

Users of sports video games are now accustomed to controlling camera angles, or calling up a slow-motion instant replay, he said.

And that is the next challenge for televised sports.

"We have to produce a live TV show that's as interesting as the video games," he said. "In my mind, that's the competition."