Opportunity Knocks

First, a short story. In 2001 the Croatian version of the Grammy awards, the Porin awards, were set for an outdoor broadcast on Croatian National television station HRT. A row of old automated scanners were lined up, prepped and ready for the show. Suddenly, a big storm blew up and the tent was demolished along with most of the equipment, including those old scanners. Sadly, the show was cancelled.

Meanwhile, HRT had intentions to purchase the license for the popular gameshow Who Wants to be a Millionaire, but now had no intelligent lighting with which to decorate the program. A decision was then made by HRT to purchase new fixtures and Martin distributor Light Shop – Disco Sistem saw an opportunity. 

For Light Shop the process to secure MACs for the HRT studio included product presentations, a visit to the Martin headquarters by the HRT television lighting team and a bit of negotiating. In the end, Light Shop won the bid.

Today, 14 electronic ballast MAC 500s and 10 MAC 600 eNT’s grace the Millionaire set, happily delivered right on schedule. The intelligent lighting rig has also been used on a number of other shows including Croatia’s Eurovision Song Contest. Now that’s a story with a happy ending.