For members of the media who do not have access through the National Football League to cover Super Bowl XXXIX and the pre-game festivities leading up to the big game on Feb. 6 from the inside of Alltel Stadium in Jacksonville, FL, Vista Satellite Communications and BT Broadcast Services, in conjunction with local television station WJCT-TV, will be offering some on-site alternative for live spot coverage of the NFL championship game from the rooftop of WJCT across the street from the stadium.

“We are going to set up two live stand-up positions with the intent of providing opportunities to broadcasters or whomever to come in who are not credentialed or have not got the rights to be a part of the event, to do a 15-minute stand-up into a news cast or a live-to-tape to allow them to say they were live in Jacksonville for the biggest sporting event of the year,” Jay Lebowitz, vice president of Vista told Satellite News. “In cooperation with WJCT, we are jointly setting up this operation. BT was kind enough to step up and market this opportunity to the international community.”

In addition to stand-up positions, Vista is offering tape play-out and a local fiber connection outbound to the Vyvx network, which will allow Vista to deliver a signal anywhere it needs to through a combination of fiber optic networks and satellite. BT is bringing its fiber and satellite transmission services to this initiative as well, a spokeswoman for BT told Satellite News. She noted the three companies also are offering ancillary services such as video editing services and freelance reporters for news organizations who cannot afford to have one of their own there to cover the game.

“We are also supporting other types of services, like satellite media tours,” Lebowitz said. “We have a number of companies that are doing media tours [this] week live from Jacksonville with various NFL talent and other corporate companies that want to be part of the event.”

And working at a marquee-sporting event such as the Super Bowl comes with its own unique challenges, Lebowitz noted.

“Obviously, we do not want to impede on what the NFL is doing, so we are not intending to circumvent them in. Of course, there are always security concerns at any event of this type. Security in and around the stadium is going to be very tight, so people wanting to take advantage of this service will need to have good, solid identification. And the logistics of setting up a live operation–the planning, the coordination, making sure everybody gets in and out in a timely fashion–are some of the things we have to deal with [this] week.”

(Jay Lebowitz, Vista, 954/838-0900)