Sayonara, Adios, Dosvedanya, Goodbye, Au revoir, Shalom, Auf Wiedersehen, Arrivederci, Salam
June 1, 2019
PACSAT’S Sacramento Studio will continue, moving back to the convenient Senator Hotel Office building directly across from the State Capitol Building, The studio will be renamed Emerald Studios and be owned and managed by PACSAT’s long time VP of Operations, Marcia Calvin. She can be reached at 916-287-1704.
PACSAT’S Austin, Texas, studio will continue to operate as it has from the Congress building across the street from the State Capitol Building and is now independently owned by Elizabeth Mallory and Kevin Vann.
Long time PACSAT Truck operators, Rod and Bill Kelley, will continue to provide independent uplink services from their satellite uplink truck (Bill) and production uplink truck (Rod), out of the Sacramento and San Francisco regions for west coast services under the name of PACSAT Plus. They’re excited to hear from you: 855-672-2728. They will be allied with a San Francisco Bay Area production company, POV Video.
Multiple National Emmy Award winning photographer, Ken Cavalli, will now provide freelance services out of Sacramento as will long time professional photographer, Felix Mendoza.
The rest of us will go our own way. To contact any of us, our current email addresses will be in service for a while. You can also check out the homepage on PACSAT’s website, www.pacsat.com to see current updates.
My long journey in this industry began when I was a young lad hawking the local weekly newspaper on the streets of a small town in North San Diego County. Later, I had a paper route, became the janitor for the local newspaper and eventually became a printer’s devil, melting and cleaning molten lead. At the tender age of 14, the publisher asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I said I wanted to be a foreign correspondent based in London.
The fire was lit and I forged my path that would take me to the mountain top. Proudly armed with my San Diego State Journalism degree, I set out to live the dream. I worked at almost every job level along the way. I was a cameraman, mixed chemicals, processed film, edited it, wrote scripts to match. On my way from San Diego stations to one in Santa Barbara where I did much of the same, but, this time I was also a reporter, and a substitute anchorman. Finally I got a vacation relief reporter’s job at KNBC in Burbank, which resulted in a full time position and finally a promotion to the State Capitol, where I was Bureau Chief. NBC learned I wanted to go overseas and was offered 6 weeks in Beirut in the mid-seventies to cover the Lebanese civil war, relieving the correspondent there. I passed the test and a year later I took over the Bureau.
Several years later, in April, 1987, while based in Tokyo, Japan as an NBC Foreign Correspondent covering Asia and the Pacific Rim, I hocked the farm and signed contracts that launched what eventually became PACSAT, based in Sacramento, California.
My wife Kathy and I had decided that it was time to escape the hectic and dangerous network news lifestyle. Son Stephen was 3 years old and James had just been born. After 10 years overseas, living in Beirut, London, Moscow and Tokyo, Kathy said it was time for me to grow up, stop risking my life and return home and raise our family.
While I remained in Tokyo covering the region, the new business, run by a staff of six, started with one used satellite truck for modest uplinking services for television networks and our State Capitol news feed distributed via satellite to subscribing TV news stations throughout California.
I returned to Sacramento a year later, to begin building and growing PACSAT. Along the way, Elizabeth was born. During the next 30+ years we expanded into a company that provided uplink trucks from the West Coast to Florida and international uplink flyaways that traveled the globe providing transmissions for major breaking news and sports events. The Sacramento Headquarters grew, providing live insert studios and video and audio production and post production. A second studio was also added in Austin, Texas.
In the USA we provided services for all networks for minor and major sports and news events, including Presidential Pools, Super Bowls, World Series, NBA Playoffs and Finals, Stanley Cups, All Star Games, earthquakes, hurricanes, Academy Award red carpets and so much more.
Internationally we transmitted news and sports events from the North and South Pacific, Asia, North, Central and South America, North and South Africa and Eastern Europe, including the war in the Balkans, two Gulf Wars and Afghanistan.
It has been a marvelous journey. In the past 30+ years, Kathy and I worked with a fabulous team of professionals at PACSAT. We have great memories and made lifelong friends, at the company and with many clients and vendors.
Thank you for calling us, working with us, relying on us all these years. Now, with technology’s advances, and being an aging septuagenarian, the tread on my tires wearing thin, it is time for Kathy and I to escape into the Sierra Nevada, to enjoy our family and friends, the beauty of nature, equanimity, vintage wine, legendary Bourbon while watching the sunset over Lake Tahoe.
Hope to see you in the future.
Thanks for the memories.
Cheers,
Steve Mallory
President – PACSAT
Click below to see the gallery. For optimum viewing, choose the “justified” view in the upper right corner. You’ll find multiple pages of PACSAT memories. Enjoy!
http://tinyurl.com/PacsatPhotos
