By Brian Galante
Live event and broadcast production specialist CP Communications is welcoming a new Director of Production for its St. Petersburg, Fla.-based Red House Streaming unit.
He reports to the VP of Red House Streaming, Lowell Beckner, and will manage the Red House Streaming studios’ in-house broadcast and A/V productions from CP’s Pinellas County production complex and network operations center.
Taking the role: former WFTS-28 in Tampa Master Control Supervisor Karl Prentiss.
He has more than 40 years of broadcast engineering, video and photography experience and began his career as a Master Control Operator at WBAK-TV in Terre Haute, Ind., in 1979. He later handled similar duties for WPTV-5 and, in a different role, at WPEC-12 in West Palm Beach, and has been in the Tampa Bay region since 1994.
“This new position at Red House Streaming is an incredible career opportunity for me,” Prentiss said. “As the Director of Production, I am excited to work alongside a creative team of proven innovators, and I am looking forward to trailblazing the future of our industry with them.”
Prentiss’ experience at WFTS, the ABC affiliate serving Tampa, St. Petersburg and Lakeland-Winter Haven, saw him working closely with Beckner, who served as the station’s Director of Engineering. CP says Prentiss’ work ethic made a lasting impression on Beckner.
“When I thought about the kind of manager we needed at Red House Streaming, I thought of Karl,” Beckner said. “His engineering expertise and understanding of studio operations are strengthened by his creative eye and hands-on work producing high-quality content. From photography to graphic design, to video, Karl knows what it takes to create high-quality content and to push forward the boundaries of our industry.”
Prentiss in 2014 left WFTS-28 to pursue his own photography business, Prentiss Photography, where he specialized as a portrait, wedding, and commercial photographer. Then, a move back to Indiana in 2017 allowed Prentiss to broaden his creative skillset even more.
As the Creative Projects Manager for The Skinny Productions and Fatheadz Eyewear in Indianapolis, Prentiss handled all photography, art direction and production management for a variety of brands and projects. He designed and built all aspects of the in-house video studio for “The Skinny with Rico and Ken” racing podcast, fully incorporating vMix 4K Production software, which Prentiss directed, switched, edited, and delivered.
He’s now returning to Tampa Bay, as CP subsidiary Red House continues to build the line-up of productions being taped and streaming from its 5,600-square-foot St. Petersburg facility. Once settled in northeast Pinellas, Prentiss will lead the local production team in providing custom glass-to-glass IP production and streaming solutions for every type of live event or recorded programming.
The RHS production complex features two 600-square-foot studio spaces and an adjacent control room with vMix 64 4K production switchers, and a Yamaha TF1 64-channel audio console with Dante interface.
Studio A houses a professional anchor desk with several monitors for custom branding, and Studio B offers a dynamic chromakey space for virtual packages. Both studio spaces include Panasonic AW-UE100KP 4K PTZ cameras, Sennheiser wireless talent microphones, and DMX lighting with Dracast studio lights.
RBR+TVBR’s Weekly Tech Roundup is scheduled to tour the Red House facility in St. Petersburg in early March. Coverage is slated to appear in the Spring 2022 RBR+TVBR Special Report, distributed at NAB 2022 in Las Vegas.
