TeamCoco Calls on Nextiva

Years ago David Letterman turned the late night talk show scene upside down with his unique bits, some of which took him outside the studio to the streets of New York. The idea that a host would leave the studio at the time was revolutionary. Today it’s not so unusual for talk show hosts to do shows from remote locations.

For example, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert recently featured Russia Week. And Conan O’Brien has made a habit out of going remote.

The affable redhead has done Conan in San Diego and New York City, as well as Mexico and South Korea. And while on the front end the Conan show’s efforts appear to be a lot of fun and games, there’s plenty of work that needs to happen on the backend to make these remote shoots run smoothly.

That’s where business communications, and Nextiva, enter the picture.

TeamCoco has called on Nextiva to power its voice communications during some of these remote efforts. For example, Nextiva recently supported the Conan effort during the show’s Comic-Con/ConanCon show in San Diego.

Nextiva staff members went to San Diego with Conan IT Director Chris Hayes to ensure service was up and running. The setup for that effort included 30 physical phones and Cisco blocks to transfer from Ethernet to RJ for the trucks. And there were two lines to the Conan show’s home office in Burbank. It was a pretty basic setup, noted Hayes, but providing the many Conan employees and vendors with the ability to communicate reliably was extremely important.

The Nextiva system served 120 individuals, including people involved in casting, dressing rooms, hair and makeup, production, publicity, and talent. And Hayes was able to access the NextOS 3.0 portal to make any needed changes.

Conan and Nextiva first worked together at New York’s Beacon Theatre for a week-long broadcast in 2011. That was year a after Conan launched on TBS.