Behind the Scenes: Putting On A Live National Broadcast With ESPN [VIDEO]

COLLEGEVILLE -- This week in our "Behind the Scenes" series on WJON, we hang out with the crew at SportsCenter to see how to put on a live national broadcast.

The excitement of SportsCenters broadcast at St. John's will be one to remember. But before the cameras can roll, producer Jonathan Whyley says they need to scout the area.

"So we will get boots on the ground, try and get a sense of what the atmosphere and environment is like and then we start to lay a blueprint about how we will capture that environment," says Whyley.

Camera crews arrive first to start collecting footage for the show and once the bus arrives the raw footage is sent back to headquarters in Bristol.

"It's a week long process that takes about twenty people on site and then we have a great team back in Bristol that helps us edit and put everything together," says Whyley.

The next 18 hours is all about setting up the lights, anchor desk, cameras, sound and doing a walk through with the producers and talent.

"We try to have a really good idea of what we are doing before we get into it, and then we short of never know what we are going to find once we get on campus," says anchor Sara Walsh.

The show is ran back in Bristol with the live feed coming from the truck on location. Whyley then explains what happens once the show starts and goes over what each person is doing.

"The producer will communicate to talent and Bristol and integrate the show, the director will switch up to eight cameras for different shots and depending how the show is scripted we will play and punch through all of those," says Whyley.

Then on the day of the show it's lights, camera and action. Whyley says he enjoys his job but once the cameras are rolling there is no safety net.

"You can't say stop, I don't want to do this because millions of people are watching and if something goes wrong you just have to on the fly fix it and adjust," says Whyley.

Once the show wraps up it's time to load up all the equipment and then off to the next destination to do it all over again.