The ABC broadcast saw a record total of 23 music performances on the show by artists including Brooks & Dunn, Kenny Chesney, Dave Mathews, Kid Rock, Lady Antebellum, Tim McGraw, Brad Paisley, Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood and Keith Urban. All of these performances were presented to the live audience with a large, multi-array JBL Vertec line array system supplied by ATK/Audiotek (Valencia, California).
The event system was designed by Pat Baltzell, principal at Baltzell Audio Design. It included five line array clusters made up of a total of 88 VT4889 full-size line array elements, joined by a separate flown cluster of 14 VT4880A full-size arrayable subwoofers. Four VT4887 compact line array elements were built into the stage as front-fills.
Baltzell and Rick Shiner were co-FOH mixers for the show; Baltzell mixed the performances that used re-recorded backing tracks and mixed all the production dialogue, while Shiner mixed the music performances, all completely live.
(Jim Evans)
