Michael Drazin

Michael Drazin has almost 20 years of broadcast engineering experience, comprised of production, distribution, integration, station group, and network. Drazin’s experience across all facets of the environment allow him to bring a unique perspective to the overall philosophy and direction as the industry evolves.

Drazin is currently the VP of special projects for THUMBWAR. He has developed HDR production plans for events including March Madness Basketball for CBS/Turner/AT&T, "The Match" for Turner, and Thursday Night Football 2019, as well as the American League Championship Series (ALCS) and World Series Baseball for Fox. Planning is currently underway for Fox Super Bowl LIV in Miami. Drazin has overseen unique production scenarios including "Every Shot on Every Hole" at The Masters 2019 for Augusta National, and is working with the NBC Olympic team on the integration of HDR into the Olympic production environment. This fall, the team executed Notre Dame football home games in HDR.

Also, Drazin executive produced the McCreery 3 Cushion Champion of Champions Billiards tournament, a 45 camera 1080p production creating 35 hours of content with a crew of 150. The production redefined the style of 3 Cushion Billiards coverage, as well as the collaboration between entertainment and technology.

Previously, Drazin was a member of CBS Operations and Engineering, focused on overseeing initiatives across sports, production, distribution, and news. He brought a vast knowledge of technology, workflow, and operations to each of the business lines, in addition to the integration between the various businesses. Initiatives included overseeing the technical rebuild of the CBS News bureau in Washington D.C. as a full IP-based facility. He also oversaw the migration of business units to the chosen media asset management platform and has substantial knowledge of high dynamic range (HDR) through the entire broadcast lifecycle. As a member of the CBS Sports management team, Drazin was focused on overseeing initiatives across remote and studio production, as well as ensuring cohesiveness between the environments. He focused on new technology implementation through successful workflow management to ensure that they remained at the forefront of the industry. Drazin's responsibilities included coordination of all phases of new projects from ideation through completion, including budgeting and the evaluation of technologies.

Prior to CBS, Drazin was the manager of special projects at Univision Stations Group. He was part of the team responsible for a $25 million upgrade of the group's 44 facilities nationwide, including project assessment and system architecture. He also oversaw the deployment of a streamlined news environment that cost-effectively standardized production operations, as well as group-wide media sharing between all of the stations and a centralized system management.

Before Univision Stations Group, Drazin was the project manager of technical and strategic planning at ABC television. He detailed systems specifications, design, and implementation, in addition to conceiving, budgeting, and implementing systems including news editing, automated production control, master control, VANC-based graphical insertion, captioning, loudness management, and file-based media management. Through these projects, Drazin established relationships with manufacturers, product managers, research and development engineers, and sales representatives.

Drazin has received three Emmy Awards.

Featured in: Live HDR Production Workshop (Monday)