Study Hall

ProSoundWeb
Jeri Palumbo busy at the broadcast mix helm.

A Multi-Faceted Quest: The Career Of Broadcast Sports Entertainment Mixer Jeri Palumbo

Industry veteran of more than 30 years trained first as a musician and arranger before going into post-production and then moving along a diverse live broadcast path.

Jeri Palumbo is a broadcast sports and entertainment mixer, based in Los Angeles, who’s been working in audio for more than 30 years, first as a trained musician and arranger before going into post-production and then moving into live broadcast.

Primarily focusing on sports broadcasting, her clients include the major sports leagues in the U.S. (such as the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, plus NASCAR, and many others), but she’s also worked with entertainment shows such as The Academy Awards, The Tonight Show, American Idol and more. Further, she was honored with a Telly Award for her mixing work on “Songs of the Mountains,” a broadcast bluegrass show.

Palumbo comes from four generations of musicians – her grandmother and mother were both professional jazz musicians, her great-grandfather was a musician and violin maker, and her father was a folk guitar player. Not surprisingly, then, she started piano at age three and was arranging and writing scores by the time she was in high school.

Those experiences took her to The Juilliard School performing arts conservatory in New York City where she majored in composition and orchestration. It landed her a contract as a musical director, which led to her interest in sound engineering, including an introduction to the Fairlight CMI (Computer Musical Instrument), an early digital synthesizer and wave manipulator.

“I was fascinated by how the engineer was able to change pitch and EQ,” she explains, “and it inspired me to learn more about audio engineering and the potential possibilities of sound manipulation with digital tools.”

Blending Her Skills

Her parents had long cautioned her that a career in music was unpredictable and urged her to obtain skills needed for steady employment, so she studied computer science and IT (for two college semesters) and then landed a job working in a LAN/IT platform environment, troubleshooting for a large bank. While she loved learning and working with the technical aspects of that job, she still craved the creativity music provided, wanting to blend those skills with her creative side, landing a role in recording and post-production.

With that in mind, Palumbo enrolled at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC and simultaneously hit the streets knocking on doors of the post-production houses in nearby Charlotte, NC. She offered to intern for free, but most of them didn’t bother to return her calls.

In the field, this time onsite for an NFL Network broadcast.

One that did, however, was Media-Comm, a full-service production company that serves local, regional, national, and international clients. She interned there for a semester, learning to use tools such as the video editor from Avid and AudioVision, the company’s pre-cursor to Pro Tools. Eventually she was invited to join the Media-Comm staff, where she focused on enhancing audio for television shows.

One of those shows was RaceDay, a live broadcast that preceded NASCAR stock car races on Sundays. While she’d never mixed a live show and had her doubts, the director of the show told her, “Audio is audio and you’ll be fine.”
So, she did her homework and dived in. “I was told by a former mixer that he wouldn’t touch the show because was live, and I also discovered that several people had turned it down because of the live elements and fast pace,” she notes. “Despite that, I took the gig and managed to pull it off.”

RaceDay was a big, complicated national show, and Palumbo ended up on a call list of live sports mixers because of it. Within just a week or so, CBS Sports called and asked her to work on the NCAA Final Four college basketball broadcast. Her work caught not only the attention of CBS Sports, but Fox Sports and ESPN as well. It’s led to a career working across North America on high-profile sporting events, where she has primarily served as an A1 mixer working in the broadcast truck.

However, one time Palumbo was asked to handle A2 duties for a colleague in need and this eventually led to wearing all the hats in broadcast audio, including work as an RF tech and comms. “I’ve been particularly embedded in RF technology and coordination, which has numerous technical challenges, particularly with the shrinking UHF spectrum,” she adds.

She worked alongside several RF manufacturers and colleagues during the recent frequency spectrum auction in the U.S., lobbying to save a portion of the spectrum for broadcast and live event production. One of her close partnerships in this endeavor was with the late Mark Brunner of Shure, a much-beloved industry figure who was very effective in the effort. In addition, Palumbo’s in-depth tech articles on the RF spectrum and the impact of the changes have appeared in several leading trade magazines.

It’s Not All Sports

Palumbo has also been involved in other fields of audio; for example, as noted earlier, serving as an A1 on “Songs of the Mountains,” a live-to-tape show broadcast on PBS. It presented tough parameters because the producers didn’t want to mic the traditional instruments, instead wanting it to be organic and traditional, where the musicians would play around a central microphone (an AKG C414) and step forward for solos.

Further, with the variety of acoustical instruments, she ended up riding the EQ more than the faders as the frequencies often played directly against each other. She notes that she’s proud of the work she did using simple techniques, confirmed when she was presented with a Telly Award for the project.

Recently, she’s been instrumental in launching Arena Waves, a library of very high-quality music recordings for sports and television content. It’s an endeavor that kept he extremely busy in 2020 while most live events were canceled due to the pandemic, and it officially launched at the beginning of 2021.

Specifically, Arena Waves is a music licensing library for sports, gaming, television, and film, with an available catalog of more than 70,000 tracks, with 50 to 100 new additions every week. Several things make it unique, including ease of use while also having mobile platform flexibility.

It’s about much more than sports for Palumbo, and here she’s pictured with her friend, the legendary guitarist Les Paul, who passed away in 2009.

In addition, there’s efficiency of the ready-made cut-downs for bumpers and highlights in the Producer’s Edge section of the service – cues are drop-in ready. Arena Waves also writes on-demand theme and cue requests and can provide quick turnarounds. With selections ranging from catchy themes to hard-driven rock, lighter to more dare, there’s a tremendous number of styles available.

In fact, the catalog is so eclectic that, even though its intended purpose is sports, television and film, anyone can create personal playlists for their own listening pleasure. The service is free (available at arenawaves.com) and just requires registration, with Palumbo noting, “It’s a perfect meld of everything I know.”

Against that backdrop, let’s learn more with a Q&A session.

Q: What is a typical day like in your world?

Palumbo: Arrive early, unload the truck, run cables, interconnect with the facility, set up audio, fax if working in the field. In the truck, patch my patch bays, SAPS, routers, and fader layouts. Load and set up music cues.

Q: How do you stay organized and focused?

Palumbo: The pressure of live keeps me focused. Also having a Plan A, Plan B, etc. as backup options for live. For complex mixing (i.e., eSports or multiple routers of audio), I’m a big fan of populating my bottom layers to remain static while cloning to upper layers per need of each show.

Q: What do you enjoy the most about your job?

Palumbo: It’s live, it’s exciting and when it goes well, it’s instant gratification.

Q: And what do you like least?

Palumbo: It’s live, it’s exciting and when it goes badly, you swear there’s not enough money in it ever!

Q: The best and worst parts of being on the road?

Palumbo: I’m on the road although I’m not on a bus – I’ m on planes a lot. The best part is the road family, exploring new areas of the world and for certain eating local cuisine. The downsides are the hours, the wear and tear on your body, and lack of sleep.

Q: What are your long-term goals?

Palumbo: To try new things, push my personal limits and continue to follow current and new passions.

Q: What if any obstacles or barriers have you faced?

Palumbo: For certain, misogyny and sadly, only from certain productions and a small posse of peers. Also sadly, everyone else – not just me – has experienced the exact same treatment from the exact same people in the exact same productions.

When a recent interviewer offline told me she encountered these issues with the exact same people 20 years ago on a sports event (this particular production travels), I challenge all the networks to wake up and investigate these “handfuls” that are predictable, unprofessional and putting a black eye unfairly on the entire broadcast community (and is now into its second generation of newcomers being mistreated yet again, by the exact same people). I assure you that the broadcast community is not what these few bad apples represent, but the network productions ignoring it won’t fix it.

Q: How have you dealt with it?

Palumbo: I ask questions not only of them but of those around them. If they all “posse together,” I move on to a team that is worthy… and good… and healthy. I don’t stay in places where I know it will be impossible to change.

Q: What advice do you have for women who wish to enter the field?

Palumbo: First, you have to have thick skin. Sports and rock ‘n’ roll come with a lot of testosterone that often “reacts” in their environments of comfort (i.e., a football field before a game). These people are in “game mode” and are not there to think of anything else.

Second, production maltreatment versus real emotions. Please know the difference. It’s intense and gets crazy and not every minor thing said is a reason for “HR.” However, abuse should never be tolerated. Just know the difference and if you don’t know, get educated before entering this environment, hence “thick skin.”

Third, know when you’re on a toxic team – those that withhold information, constantly throwing their fellow members under the bus, not owning up to errors, etc. Be aware that even though this exists to some extent everywhere, not every production conducts itself this way and the good ones, with good leaders, will not tolerate this from their team.

Fourth, move on when you know it’s not going to work out for you. Get out earlier and find your tribe sooner. Fifth, hone your skills. And finally, when you’re wrong, admit it. If you don’t know something, admit it. When you do know, help your teammates learn.

Q: Must-have skills?

Palumbo: Know your audio or tell those around you that you’re willing to learn what you don’t know. People skills matter and be kind and understanding to those around you. Everybody has a bad day, and everybody has a bad gig – shake it off, learn from it, get up and do it again

Q: Last question – your favorite gear?

Palumbo: For in-studio mixing, I’m a big fan of Eventide gear. I’m also a big fan of the AKG C414 due to its wide range of patterns. I love Sennheiser wireless mics for field and lavalier needs and love all Lectrosonics wireless IFB/in-ear products. Both Sennheiser and Lectrosonics wireless mics and IFB/IEMs are interchangeable to me in quality and robustness. Radio Active Designs uses a nice VHF and lower bands for communications that steer clear of broadcast bands, and Clear Comm and Telex have some nice workarounds with their comms systems as well.

Shure Wireless Workbench is great for some concert venues alone while I would combine Workbench with IAS (Intermodulation Analysis System by Professional Wireless Systems) for larger-scale concerts (arena level). We use IAS for larger-scale sporting events. I like Studer consoles in the studio broadcast environment as well as Calrec consoles on broadcast trucks or remotes.

Go here to find out more about SoundGirls.

Study Hall Top Stories