One could get the impression, reading about First Baptist Church's Christmas Production, that this is a church with unlimited resources. But that isn't the case, and part of the success of the church's technical ministries is a result of careful stewardship and watching for the opportunities the Lord puts in their path.
“In 2007, I began to put together a new [to us] video control room,” describes David Fitzgerald, minister of media for First Baptist Church of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “Budget was very constrained, so we looked to the used market to populate this room. KOTV in Tulsa, Okla., and KWTV in Oklahoma City, Okla., were switching out to new GVG WorldCams, so I purchased their old BTS LDK-9 studio cameras with lenses, prompters and pedestals. I also brought back from Oklahoma a 27-foot Budget rental truck full of analog composite control room gear (switchers, routers, DAs, monitors, racks, DVEs).
“Over a three-month period of ‘Deadliest Catch' type hours,” he continues, “we put together a world-class control room by 1994 standards. When production companies and television stations were upgrading to new digital and HD gear, we swooped in and took their old gear off their hands for pennies on the dollar from the new price. They were thrilled to get rid of it; I was thrilled to get it.
“With my broadcast news production background, we set up a control room with enough infrastructure to handle whatever IMAG needs that would come our way,” Fitzgerald adds. “We didn't know just what that meant until July 2008, when we did two simultaneous live shots from separate military bases in Baghdad for our annual patriotic service. That was the ultimate test of our installation, and with only the addition of a rental satellite downlink and two receivers, we did it fully from our own control room. That was an awesome day, an awesome memory and an awesome pat on the back for the hard work we had put into bringing that control room to life. We spent only $58,000, but from that, we got (11) BTS studio cameras and the new control room and engineering rooms. You simply can't do that with new gear.”
