VENDOR

Case Study

770 Broadway,
9th Floor. Studio Build

Yahoo Finance needed a new home. One studio. One control room. Same live production, every market day, without missing a beat. I built it.

The Brief

Same Show. Smaller Footprint. Zero Downtime.

Yahoo Finance was producing live financial news eight hours a day, five days a week, from a facility on the 4th floor of 770 Broadway in New York City. Three studios. Three control rooms. A main equipment room. Master Control. A large broadcast operation.

The plan: move everything to the 9th floor. Keep two studios, one control room, master control and a equipment room. Same broadcast capability, half the square footage. And do it without interrupting a single market-day broadcast while the old floor was being decommissioned below.

The 9th floor facility needed to be built to 1080P/60 3G-SDI spec conforming to SMPTE 424M — with PCM digital audio, 8-channel embedded per video stream. Most of the equipment would be owner-furnished, relocated from the floor below. New technology would be targeted and deliberate.

"The majority of the equipment will be Owner Furnished Equipment transitioned from existing assets. Yahoo plans to reduce capabilities and have two studios, one control room, and maintain the same functionality for Master Control."

What that actually meant: I had to simultaneously manage a construction project, a broadcast technology integration, a scenic fabrication program, a storage infrastructure migration, a lighting system overhaul, and a phased decommission of the 4th floor — all coordinated across more than ten specialized vendors — while Yahoo Finance stayed on air every single day.

My Role

Sr. Director of Studio Projects,
Yahoo Real Estate & Workplace.

I was the Yahoo Project Manager and Owner's Representative. The single accountable studio point of contact on the client side. My name is on every executed studio related Statement of Work. My signature authorized every milestone, every change order, every vendor payment.

The role bridged Real Estate & Workplace, Broadcast Engineering, Systems Engineering, Streaming Engineering, Network Engineering, Broadcast Technology, and ten-plus external contractors. It required simultaneous fluency in architectural design, Construction management, AV systems integration, scenic fabrication, structural rigging, enterprise storage infrastructure, and broadcast lighting — often in the same meeting.

Contract & Procurement Management

Negotiated and executed all SOWs and the Master Services Agreement with One Diversified, LDG, ASG, Provo Studio & Showfab. Managed the full procurement lifecycle from RFP through signed PO under Yahoo's Vendor MTC framework.

The Team I Built

Ten-plus vendors. One schedule. No excuses.

You don't build a broadcast facility like this with one company. You build it with a carefully selected ecosystem of specialists, each responsible for a different piece of the machine, coordinated so tightly that none of them can afford to be late.

One Diversified LLC

Primary systems integrator. System design, broadcast equipment supply, rack build, installation, cabling, system programming, commissioning, and training for the entire 9th floor facility.

~$2.3M

VALUE

How It Happened

Ten months. One shot to get it right.

APRIL 2023

MSA Executed. Design Begins.

Master Services Agreement signed with One Diversified (4/24). Concept design presented. Preliminary 9th floor schedule issued. LED design services engaged via Additional Services Request. Provost Studio engaged and scenic design begins. LDG Engaged to work with Architect on Lighting grid design. James Fitzgerald Construction chosen as General Contractor. Acoustical Consultant engaged.

WHAT THEY DID

The Finished Facility

From concrete and cable
to broadcast-ready.

Exterior — Yahoo Studios vestibule with ribbon LED board and Y! branded column. 770 Broadway, 9th Floor, New York City.

The ribbon LED board wrapping the studio perimeter — live studio visible through the glass wall.

Main studio — anchor desk on the raised platform. Liantronics curved LED wall behind, scenic elements from ShowFab.

Full set view with CueScript teleprompters, Ikegami cameras, and the complete scenic environment operational.

Construction phase — ShowFab scenic installation underway. The studio floor, truss structure, and orange scenic wall panels taking shape before commissioning began.

Production Control Room — full broadcast team operating the Ross Video Ultrix and Carbonite system during a live Yahoo Finance show.

Newsroom floor — editorial team at integrated workstations alongside the studio glass wall. The machine behind the machine.

Newsroom — full team at work with the ribbon LED board overhead and studio visible through the glass. Designed to feel like you're inside the broadcast, not just near it.

What I Actually Did

Nine contributions. One working studio.

Built the Vendor Framework from Scratch

Negotiated and executed the Services Agreement with One Diversified in April 2023, establishing the legal foundation for all downstream SOWs. Yahoo's Vendor MTC covering IP ownership, service levels, change management, and payment terms, protecting Yahoo's interests across the entire engagement.

Authored and Signed Every Primary Studio SOW

My name is on the Diversified SOW, the LDG Broadcast Lighting SOW, the ASG SOW, The Provo Studio SOW, the ShowFab SOW, and all supporting agreements. Scope precisely defined. Deliverables enforceable. Payment schedules tied to milestones. No ambiguity, no surprises.

Drove Design Across Every Discipline Simultaneously

Coordinated a design process spanning architectural, broadcast, scenic, and lighting disciplines, all running in parallel. From preliminary architectural backgrounds in May 2023 through the Yahoo Finance Final Design in June, multiple revision cycles reviewed and approved before a single rack was installed.

Managed a Complex LED Strategy

The 9th floor LED environment included a 12'×7' wall, a 75.5'×24" curved ribbon board, a 24"×7' portrait LED, and the relocated Liantronics curved display from the 4th floor. Engaged Diversified for additional design services at $20,712 to develop floor plans, rack elevations, power requirements, mounting details, and signal flow. Then authorized CO#1 to reconfigure the package, and got $53,865 back.

Coordinated Two Simultaneous SAN Migrations

Managed the Primary SAN and Primestream Xchange MAM relocation to the BF2 datacenter and the Mirror SAN move to the 9th floor, at the same time. 764 hard drives. Fibre Channel switches. Complex re-IP work. All coordinated with broadcast engineering and Diversified so the production team never noticed.

Enforced Room-Ready Standards

The room-ready milestone, August 20, 2023, dust-free FFE, was the critical path dependency for every downstream installation. I enforced it. Everything else was downstream of that date, and nobody moved early.

Managed Change Orders Without Losing Control

CO#1 signed within 6 days of issuance. Unilumin proceeded with the revised LED configuration without delay. ShowFab's CO#12 authorized for site conditions while keeping total project cost within bounds. Change management as a discipline, not a bureaucratic exercise.

Oversaw the Showman Fabricators Scenic Program

The studio set, raised anchor desk platform, curved scenic walls, orange panel backdrop, branded elements, ProCyc green screen system, newsroom nook wall and bench, column lighting rings, sliding monitor mounts, touchscreen rolling cart. All of this required close coordination between ShowFab's Local 1 union carpenters, the broadcast technology team, and the lighting installation crew to arrive at an integrated result.

Built Training Into Every SOW

Ross Carbonite, Ultrix, Xpression, and tally system training. LDG lighting control training. Ikegami camera commissioning. Every vendor was contractually obligated to train Yahoo staff before handover. The team that built it was the team that taught the operators. That's how you get a facility that stays on air.

What Got Delivered

A list of things that exist now
that didn't before.

Broadcast-Ready Studio on 9th Floor

1080P/60 3G-SDI production facility per SMPTE 424M. Full PCM digital audio infrastructure. Eight hours a day. Every market day.

What This Required

The skills you need to pull this off.

Broadcasting is infrastructure. Infrastructure is people, contracts, schedules, and technology, all moving at the same time. Here's what it actually takes.