- November 25, 2024
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Ormond Beach resident Patrick Thornton is responsible for everything spectators hear from their living rooms during a televised sporting event.
The crowd noise. The announcers. The music.
Thornton, an audio engineer for CBS, mixes all of that together from a semi-truck audio studio off the field, all the while handling communications from camera operators, directors and producers. He knows what wire belongs to what microphone, and while it can get hectic due to the multitasking, Thornton loves his job.
“I always joke and say that audio is like the central nervous system, because everything comes through audio, one way or another," Thornton said.
On Aug. 11, the winners were announced for the 41st-annual Sports Emmy awards, and Thornton was one of 10 audio engineers recognized with the award for their work during the 2019 Masters Tournament. The Emmy for "Outstanding Technical Team Remote" is not Thornton's first. He's been nominated nine times since 2008, and won an Emmy as part of a larger group within CBS in the 90s.
But, it is the first Emmy he's won specifically for the job he performs during games, and that, Thornton said, is what makes it so satisfying.
“It’s a technical achievement award for what we do on that golf course," Thornton said. "It’s almost magic. What you see here at home, it takes an awful lot to get there.”
Thornton began his career in 1983 with Turner Broadcasting. He worked in shipping and receiving at the time, allowing him to meet virtually everyone in the company, including founder Ted Turner. Within six months, Thornton decided that the best place to be at in the company was the remote TV truck.
Not many want to get into audio engineering because of the amount of work involved, Thornton said, but as someone who loved both sports and music, it was a "no brainer" for him.
Around 1985, he started working in the industry while simultaneously going to college in the morning for an electrical engineering technology degree and working games in the afternoon.
He's now dedicated 35 years audio engineering.
For the last seven years, Thornton has lived in Ormond Beach. Charles Rembaum, a friend of Thornton, said when he found out Thornton had won an Emmy, he was shocked. He joked that he couldn't believe it until he saw the award. He wanted Thornton to be recognized because it's not every day a local wins an Emmy.
“To me, that’s very, very impressive, especially in a small town," Rembaum said.
The Masters poses an added technical challenge for all the audio engineers working the famous golf tournament, Thornton said. Sounds from the field come via telephone lines, an old school method, and engineers like Thornton
need convert the signals into a digital format before transferring them to one of four trucks for mixing.
Working the Masters is an entire operation that takes about 400 crew members and 10 days to set up prior to the tournament, including camera operators and other staff, Thornton said.
The bigger the games, the more stress that is involved, he added. It's why for him, the games that are most fun to work in are the college basketball and college football. There's something about covering a University of Tennessee football game and hearing 100,000 people sing "Rocky Top," Thornton said.
“That’s the kind of stuff that’s really fun about it," he said. "You have an opportunity to be in places no one gets to be, or people would pay to be there and I’m getting paid to be there.”
