Mr. Crawford’s involvement in broadcast, production, and new media spans over forty years. He has worked extensively in the United States and throughout the world. His experience bridges all facets of broadcast and non-broadcast production.
His career began while still a senior in High School, producing a weekly half-hour Junior Achievement television program sponsored by WESH-TV, Orlando, Florida. Following graduation, Chuck was hired by WFTV, Orlando as a projectionist/studio cameraman. This was during the broadcasting changeover from black and white to color transmission. His tenure was interrupted by two years of military service in the US Army, serving in South Carolina and in Istanbul, Turkey. Upon his return to WFTV he progressed up the employment ladder to staff director and then to Production Manager.
After a brief stint working in Convention and Entertainment services in Orlando, Chuck moved to Washington, DC, accepting a position with WETA-TV as their inaugural Editor using the innovative CMX editing system. Among the programs edited while at WETA are Baryshnikov at the White House, the From Jumpstreet program series, as well as segments for McNeil/Lehrer Report, and Washington Week in Review.
While in New York City finishing the audio work on the Baryshnikov program, Chuck was offered an editing position at Matrix Studios, New York. After accepting the offer, he performed numerous editing tasks at Matrix for clients ranging from PBS to the BBC and from Revlon and Evan Picone to Viacom and Nickelodeon. Among his credits are the 3-2-1 Contact program series and Great Performances.
In 1981, while visiting back in Orlando, he stopped in at WFTV. During his visit a call came in from the ABC News contingent at nearby Cape Canaveral. The ABC team was there to cover the impending Space Shuttle launch and they needed an Associate Director to assist their team. Fortuitously, Chuck joined the ABC coverage team at the Cape. This began his freelance career with ABC as he was then living in New York City and ABC gained a local freelance Associate Director!
Over the next 10+ years, Chuck provided directorial and editorial support to network operations and programs including ABC News Advertising and Promotion, World News Tonight, Nightline and This Week with David Brinkley. He was awarded a Broadcast Designers Association Gold Award for the ABC News “Crime In America” animation.
During this span and not forgoing his editing skills, Chuck continued editing at production facilities in New York and Washington, DC on a freelance basis. This expanded his contacts with the production equipment suppliers universe and he connected with Digital FX in Mountain View, CA when they introduced their Digital FX Composium platform. Demonstrating and operating this new device took Chuck to Europe and Asia, as well as throughout the US.
In 1992, while operating the Composium at the Betelguese Editing House in New York City the client was the NBC Sports Olympics Group who were then preparing for the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. Chuck accepted a freelance position with NBC as Technical Director/Editor for one of the three cablecast channels to be run from Barcelona during the 1992 Olympics. Thus began his long association with NBC Olympics, progressing to Associate Director for the 1996 Olympics as part of the New York Operations for the Atlanta Games and culminating as Technical Manager for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia. The NBC experience garnered him three National Emmy Awards – 1992 Technical Director, 1996 Associate Director, and 2000 Technical Manager.
While In Barcelona for the Olympics, Chuck began a relationship with Panasonic Broadcast Systems that was providing equipment support to NBC. Expanding his freelance skill set, Chuck moved on to provide a breadth of services to Panasonic over the following years from Producer/Director/Demonstrator/Trainer to Technical Writer/Publisher/Consultant. He produced marketing support videos for the Panasonic nonlinear editing (NLE) systems – Postbox, newsBYTE, and DVedit, along with developing and executing end-user NLE training classes in the US and Europe. As a technical writer, Chuck authored operations and reference manuals for the NLE systems along with manuals for the Ramsa DA‑7 Digital Audio Mixer and the Panasonic DVD Authoring System (DAS).
Formalizing their efforts for Panasonic, Chuck co-founded Television Production Services, Inc, in Washington, DC in 1993, with his wife, Samantha Cheng. TPS expanded to provide support to and production relationships with broadcast equipment manufacturers and production companies. TPS provided video editing services, DVD authoring services, documentation and technical writing services to various manufacturers of consumer electronics and special interest production entities. Among TPS’ clients was THX Audio Systems, San Rafael, CA with TPS authoring twelve technical specification manuals for the THX Media Director system. And, Chuck co-authored two books for McGraw-Hill Publishers – DVD Demystified Third Edition and Blu-ray Disc Demystified, and edited Programming HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc for McGraw-Hill.
While operating TPS, Chuck and Samantha founded an on-going separate entity named Heritage Series, LLC. Heritage Series has produced the following documentaries – Norman Y Mineta, The Boy From San Jose, Dalip Singh Saund: His Life, His Legacy, and Honor and Duty: The Mississippi Delta Chinese. Heritage has provided production services to numerous organizations, including the US Capitol Historical Society and McDonalds Corporation. And, Heritage Series is currently in production on a distinguished alumni interview series for Syracuse University and a documentary on world-renowned artist Dora Fugh Lee in association with the Chinese Museum of Washington, DC.
