Trinity Broadcasting Network – Trinity Music City

Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) is the world’s largest religious network and America’s most watched faith channel. TBN offers 24 hours of commercial-free inspirational programming that appeals to people in a wide variety of Protestant, Catholic and Messianic Jewish denominations.

TBN has been converting their large production facilities from SD to HD. The Trinity Music City (TMC) facility in Hendersonville, TN is one of the recently upgraded facilities. TMC required a system that would produce high quality HD Christian and family entertainment, quickly change between setups at the touch of a button and be the first TBN facility to go tapeless.

The design was meticulously planned for nearly 3 years. Rooms were reconfigured to create more space. The design goal was to accommodate a complex, large scale crew requiring up to 20 technicians in the control areas and also allow for the rooms to be reconfigured quickly for smaller productions requiring a maximum of 4 people. Most rooms in the industry are designed for one specific purpose; this facility had to serve small and large in-house productions as well as outside clients and producers that TBN partners with to create specials. The TMC facility has the most flexible control rooms in the broadcast industry, allowing an outside producer to reconfigure the rooms with almost no limitations.

One of the greatest innovations of the TMC facility is the “sliding switcher” design. For simple productions, TBN wanted the director to act as technical director and operate the switcher in the center of the console. For complex productions, the switcher needed to be too the far right side of the console for technical director operation so the director could be seated at the center of the console. The facility designers worked in cooperation with OPM-Services, LLC and Laguna Designs to build a console that allows the switcher control panel to physically “slide” to the desired configuration.