Hybrid Event Production in Chicago
Your remote audience deserves its own producer, its own audio mix and its own camera plan — not a webcam pointed at a room. 1,400 broadcasts at 99.98% uptime.
What We Broadcast
In your room, in our studio, or entirely online.
Already have an AV partner for the room? Good — we work alongside them regularly and take only the broadcast half.
Four Reasons People Close the Tab
The audio is a room mic
Nothing loses a remote audience faster than hearing a PA through a camera microphone. A broadcast mix is a separate mix — direct from the desk, levelled for headphones, with the room noise gone.
Nobody is directing
One locked-off wide shot for ninety minutes is not a broadcast. Cutting between speaker, slides and audience is the difference between watching an event and attending one.
The remote audience is an afterthought
If the same person is running the room and the stream, the stream loses every time there is a conflict. It needs its own producer whose only job is the people at home.
Nobody monitored the actual stream
Watching the encoder output is not watching the stream. We monitor what your audience receives, on the platform they receive it on, for the whole broadcast.
We Came Out of Broadcast, Not Out of AV
Nightjar was founded in 2018 by three people from live television who had spent 2020 watching corporate events discover streaming and do it badly.
That background is the whole difference. An AV company thinks about the room and adds a camera. We think about the broadcast and treat the room as one of its inputs. A director calls the show, an engineer owns the stream, and someone is watching what your audience actually receives.
We run a studio in Fulton Market for broadcasts that do not need a venue, and we work happily alongside whichever AV partner owns your room.
- ✓Founded by live-television people, not AV integrators
- ✓1,400 broadcasts at 99.98% uptime since 2018
- ✓Our own studio in Fulton Market
- ✓Works alongside your existing in-room AV partner
What We Have Put on Air
A sample from the last eighteen months.
They Are Watching Two Different Events
The single most common hybrid mistake is treating the remote audience as an overflow room. They are not. They are watching a completely different event, on a laptop, with a work inbox one tab away.
So we produce for both. The in-room audience gets a live event with energy and presence. The remote audience gets a broadcast — a mix built for headphones, cuts timed for a small screen, graphics legible at laptop size, and moments built specifically for them so they are participants rather than eavesdroppers.
Across our hybrid clients, average remote watch time is roughly two and a half times what it was before they made that split.
- ✓Two producers, two mixes, one integrated run of show
- ✓Graphics and slides sized to be legible on a laptop
- ✓Q&A and polls routed so remote questions actually get asked
- ✓Watch-time and drop-off reported per segment afterwards
Tell Us the Audience and the Date
We'll come back within three business days with a format recommendation, a platform view and a quote. And if you've already licensed a platform, we'll tell you honestly whether it's the right one.
What Clients Ask Before Booking
We already have an AV company for the room. Do we need you as well?
Often, yes — and we work alongside in-room AV partners constantly. They own the room; we own the broadcast. The split matters because when the room and the stream conflict, a single team always resolves it in the room's favour, and the remote audience pays for that.
What does a virtual or hybrid broadcast cost?
Audience size drives platform cost; format and camera count drive production cost. A single-camera town hall is a very different number from a multi-day multi-track summit. Tell us the audience and the format on a first call and we'll give you a realistic range before anyone builds a proposal.
Which platform should we use?
It depends on audience size, geography, whether you need registration and gating, and how much interactivity matters. We'll recommend one, configure it and load-test it — and if you've already licensed something that's wrong for your format, we'll say so and help you work around it.
What happens if the stream drops?
Dual encode paths, a bonded backup connection and a failover we've rehearsed rather than merely documented. Our uptime across 1,400 broadcasts is 99.98%, and on the rare occasions we've had to switch, audiences generally haven't noticed.
Can you produce from our office, or do we need a venue?
Either. We produce from client offices, from venues, and from our own studio in Fulton Market — which is lit, acoustically treated and hardwired, and is often the cheapest and most reliable option for a recurring town hall.
How far ahead should we book?
Four to eight weeks for most broadcasts, which gives us time for a proper tech rehearsal with your actual presenters. Multi-day summits want longer. We hold some capacity for short-notice work — call and ask.
Tell Us the Audience and the Date
Format recommendation, platform view and quote within three business days. Free platform review if you've already licensed one.