Jim Carr’s video production studio is far from New York City, but thanks to technology and transportation, he can compete with big-city studios.
“I always say, ‘Thank God for FedEx,’ ” said Carr, principal of Carr-Hughes Productions on Route 9N near the Greenfield town line.
“Computers have really made it possible for companies like us to be in places like Saratoga.”
Carr-Hughes does sports programming for TV, covering individual sports like boxing, horse shows, cliff diving and skiing.
Four times now Carr’s been on the Emmy-winning NBC team that produced Olympics coverage for American TV audiences.
Carr, 45, subcontracted with NBC to be a producer for the track and field events at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
Between 50 and 60 people worked behind the scenes on the track and field coverage, he said.
The whole NBC Olympics team that worked on all the events won a sports Emmy for live event turnaround.
Carr also won Emmy awards for the 2004 Athens games, the 2002 Salt Lake City games and the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
One of his producer/editors at Carr-Hughes, Kevin Carcich, also edited at the Beijing Olympics and was on the team that got a sports Emmy for technical work.
Carcich, 36, of Ballston Spa was one of four people editing the track and field events and mainly focused on the field events like the discus throw, high jump and long jump.
“They had to be much more edited pieces,” Carcich said. “Typically people aren’t going to want to watch people throwing a discus.”
The Emmy Awards were given out in New York April 27.
The two men stayed in a hotel about two blocks from the Olympic stadium in Beijing and worked in a village of buildings constructed just for the games.
It was Carr’s ninth Olympics and Carcich’s first.
Carr specializes in producing Olympic game programming and covers the events leading up to the Olympics as well.
TV networks rely on subcontractors like him to produce much of their sports material, Carr said.
He covers track and field events in the summer and alpine skiing in the winter.
Next year, Carr-Hughes will produce TV coverage of the World Equestrian Games in Kentucky.
“It’s going to be the largest international sporting event in the U.S. since the Salt Lake Olympics,” Carr said.
The games will air for about eight hours on NBC and 45 hours on Universal Sports.
Carr-Hughes has five employees at its Saratoga Springs digs, which are in a renovated farmhouse near the former Ash Grove Inn on 9N. Three more people work in Lake Placid, including Carr’s business partner, Bob Hughes.
Carr, a Saratoga Springs native, started his business in a small office in the Collamer Building on Broadway in Saratoga Springs in the early 1990s. Then he operated a home office in Greenfield until two years ago, when he acquired the building on 9N.
He and Hughes merged their businesses in 2002.
As a contractor for ESPN 10 years ago, Carr worked on the Tour de France from 1998 to 2000.
A yellow jersey signed by tour winner Lance Armstrong is framed in the Carr-Hughes office.
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