Consider the tension of a championship game: the stadium is silent, the kicker approaches the ball, and millions of viewers are glued to their screens. Now, imagine that feed cutting to black at that exact moment. For Chris Pulis, Chief Technology Officer at Globecast Group, that scenario is a nightmare he works tirelessly to prevent.

Globecast acts as the vital, unseen conduit between content creators and global audiences. By managing channel feeds for cable, satellite, and streaming providers, the company ensures that an American broadcast reaches viewers in South Africa or that international news networks appear seamlessly on U.S. television. At the heart of this operation is a West Coast nerve center managing 400 live channels simultaneously.

The Logistics of a High-Stakes Relocation

When the decision was made to shift operations from Culver City to a new facility in Westlake Village, California, the margin for error was non-existent. Pulis emphasized that in the world of live broadcasting, service interruptions are simply not an option.

The success of this 18-month migration relied heavily on a strategic alliance with Spectrum Business. Long before construction crews broke ground, Spectrum Business had already established fiber-optic connectivity at the new site, ensuring a seamless transition that remained invisible to the end viewer.

Adapting to a Digital-First Broadcasting Landscape

The industry is undergoing a seismic shift as traditional satellite distribution yields to internet protocol (IP) networks and cloud-based delivery. Jean-Christophe Perier, Globecast’s Chief Marketing Officer, notes that streaming platforms are aggressively capturing traditional broadcast audiences. To remain competitive, Globecast must provide the high-bandwidth, secure infrastructure required by both legacy broadcasters and modern streaming giants.

"If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing." — Chris Pulis, Chief Technology Officer, Globecast Group

The Culver City site had become a bottleneck, both in terms of physical space and maintenance costs. The move to Westlake Village was designed to provide the scalability necessary to meet rising consumer demand for high-quality, live content.

Engineering a Seamless Transition

The collaboration between Globecast and Spectrum Business was comprehensive. Engineers from both firms co-designed a robust network architecture featuring 100-gigabit connections, redundant links, and modern IP-based communications. By creating a temporary network bridge between the two facilities, the team was able to test and commission the new site while maintaining full operations at the old one, transferring services in stages to ensure total reliability.

  • Strategic Redundancy: Dual connections ensured that even if a primary link failed, the broadcast remained live.
  • Collaborative Problem Solving: When physical infrastructure challenges arose, the teams worked as a unified unit to resolve them.
  • Future-Proofing: The new facility was built to handle the massive data loads required for modern live-event production.

Unlocking New Business Potential

The Westlake Village hub has fundamentally changed what Globecast can offer. The company now manages complex, high-volume operations, such as a motorsports channel that broadcasts 30 live races over a single weekend—a feat that would have been impossible in their previous location.

As the industry pivots away from satellite—evidenced by Globecast removing over 100 antennas globally in recent years—the partnership with Spectrum Business has positioned the firm to handle the next generation of IP-based distribution. Perier describes the new hub as the "aircraft carrier" of their global fleet, a facility built not just for current requirements, but for the evolving demands of the future.