The LED Technology Impacting Events for the South Bend Cubs

As the South Bend Cubs Assistant General Manager of Marketing and Media, Chris Hagstrom-Jones gets the opportunity to flex his creative muscles while leaning on his television and broadcasting degree from college, all while putting on a great show for baseball fans. It involves bringing creative ideas to the team and then implementing them on game day and so much more.

That’s where we pick up this conversation from Chris’s recent appearance on the Daktronics Experience Podcast:

Chris

When I first got to South Bend, I had the chance to learn from some amazing folks, some online training and some on-site training. The board was installed maybe three years before I had gotten here in 2014, so it was a relatively new board. But, technology, as we all know, kind of starts to get a little older and while some things don’t always work right, one thing I could always count on was the fact that I could call my Daktronics rep and they could walk me through whatever was happening or they would send a technician out.

A great example is when we had the All-Star Game in 2019 at South Bend. Our board was looking a little rough and the louvers needed to be replaced. I already knew Daktronics was a great partner, but the fact that they put that time and effort into making our board look perfect for the All-Star Game really showed me why I want to stay a Daktronics partner.

Matt

That’s great to hear! Just to give a timeframe to all of this, when did you start at South Bend?

Chris

My first season was in 2014, the last year of the Silver Hawks. We were a Diamondbacks affiliate at the time and became a Cubs affiliate in September of that year, which meant everything had to change. We went from black and yellow to Cubs colors. With that, I had learned you need to jump in and help where is needed and our marketing person went on maternity leave right before this happened. She decided to stay at home, so as I was helping fill that role, I kept the marketing job as well.

That’s how I got into the whole marketing world of doing promotions and social media and all of this other stuff in addition to the production side.

So to recap – I got here in 2014 and the board was three years old. The All-Star Game was in 2019. We got a new board in 2022 and today I’m sitting at 10 years of working with Daktronics technology.

Justin

Can you tell us what the process was like to replace the display in 2022?

Chris

It was definitely something that I spent a lot of time on because, especially with a city project, you could only get one shot at it. So, I had all my ducks in a row and made sure all the proposals with the city were where they needed to be and that they understood the reason the South Bend Cubs needed a new video board.

I had to work with the city on that with our Daktronics rep as well to clearly explain why we needed all this stuff. It’s easy to say you want the best and brightest, but we needed to back that up. And, if you’re going to ask for it, ask for it all so you have everything you need in the first attempt. If you don’t think you need something, put it in there anyway so you have some wiggle room to redline and remove things if necessary.

Having said that, we actually got everything we wanted, so it was pretty awesome to have all of this new technology. We got the latest and greatest software and control system so our processes of editing a headshot, for example, was cut from a 2-hour process down to 15 minutes from green screen to exporting and putting it on the video board.

It’s phenomenal because we have pretty much everything tied into one system. You can trigger fire and everything is happening at once, whether that’s a transition that you’re trying to go to a replay source and you’ve got all the other wights and times built in so you can have a bug pop up instead of having to build it in a switcher and have your bug pop up through there – we can do it all through Show Control.

And it helps us, especially today when minor league teams are being asked to do so much more. Not only are you doing a board show, but you also have to do a broadcast. And you’re doing it all in-house, so you can split your broadcast and your board show, but still do it all in the same switcher because you’ve got all of your board elements coming straight out of show control versus having to layout them on your program output. And then that goes to the board, but then also is seen on the broadcast.

To hear Chris talk in more detail, listen to the full episode by clicking here:  https://podcast.daktronics.com/e/199-south-bend-cubs-with-chris-hagstrom-jones/