Subject: FW: Studio upgrade one pager
From: "Miranda, Luis" <[email-masked]>
To: "Dacey, Amy" <[email-masked]>, Lindsey Reynolds <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2016 13:04:49 -0700

Amy and Lindsey, below and attached is the updated memo from Mitch, our Studio Director, on what we need to upgrade the studio. As you’ll see from the attached studio log, since January 2015 the  breakdown shows the DCCC with the bulk of the bookings.

Group

Number of Recordings

DNC

88

32%

DCCC

144

53%

DSCC

39

14%

Total

271

Malasky Memo:

Over the past month, I have spoken and met with multiple companies who could potentially complete our studio upgrade project. The type and size of the companies varies, but I spoke with all of them about what we are looking for and showed them the current space and equipment we currently have. Several of them have sent in basic price estimates based on those meetings.

The consensus from everyone I spoke to is that the appropriate minimum budget to modernize the studio is around $500,000. We obviously could spend a lot more than this, but according to everyone I spoke to, that is the minimum amount we would need to accomplish all of our goals. I also found a summary of the previous studio overhaul and found that we spent $1,633,714 in 2004 to upgrade the studio then- a significantly larger amount than we’re looking at for this project.

Completing the modernization would help us in a multitude of ways. Among them, is the ability to shoot in HD, which is currently the minimum standard for all video. We could increase the number of TV hits we were able to do and reduce the amount it would cost per hit by doing many of them over the internet. We could improve our capacity by having both studios operating fully and we could expand the type of programming and videos we produced by creating more dynamic and flexible sets and backgrounds.

They all agreed that we need to gut everything and put in all new equipment. The consensus is that all of our current equipment is extremely outdated and is well beyond its usefulness. In fact, so much of it is so old, that it is extremely unlikely we could salvage and redeploy any equipment by selling it off to help offset the costs. Most of it is destined for a museum or a junk yard.

There are some competing pieces of advice. Some say we should rip out all of our current cables and re-cable everything while some say the current cabling is ok. Some also recommended reshaping the control room which currently houses both the controls AND all of our backend equipment. Since all of the new gear would take up significantly less room than our current gear (while being significantly more powerful) we could build a smaller room just to house the racks of equipment and re-configure the control room to better fit our workflow.

No matter their recommendations, everyone’s proposal came in at minimum $500,000. There are pros and cons to each group, some of the smaller groups might be a little cheaper but would take more time while some of the bigger groups have more overhead so would be more expensive but could dedicate more staff to our project and complete if faster plus could provide better service if things break.

Time is an important factor, since it takes minimum 3 months from the time we sign a contract to complete the project (if not longer) so we’re already nearing the window we would need to begin if we wanted to complete the work during the relative down time of late July though Labor Day. So the faster we can move on this, the more likely it is that we will be able to put this equipment to good use for a good chunk of this election cycle.

[SigDems]<http://www.democrats.org/>Luis Miranda, Communications Director
Democratic National Committee
202-863-8148 – [email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]> - @MiraLuisDC<https://www.twitter.com/MiraLuisDC>

From: Malasky, Mitch
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2016 4:04 PM
To: Miranda, Luis; Palermo, Rachel
Subject: Studio upgrade one pager

Hey Luis,

I’ve written up an upgrade update memo and am attaching it to this email. Please let me know if you have any critiques or comments. Otherwise, it is good to send along to Lindsey.

I’m also attaching the summary of the work from 2004/2005 that includes the figure of how much is cost to do the studio back them.

The last things attached are the cost summaries I’ve received so far. I’m still waiting to hear from Juan (who probably done the most work ahead of time but is taking a long time to get back to me) and possibly one other person.

Please let me know if you have any questions or need anything. As I mentioned before, I’ll be out of the office tomorrow for Passover but will be on email and will be back in person on Monday. Thanks!

Mitch

________________________________

Mitch Malasky
Media Center Director
202 314 2259
[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>