The magic touch: TSI Touch in Uniontown provides screen behind CNN election coverage
TSI Touch in Uniontown provides screen behind CNN election coverage
No matter which state or precinct John King zoomed in on during Tuesday night’s election coverage, CNN viewers were seeing a piece of Fayette County.
The CNN Magic Wall, like many other touchscreens around the world, was made and installed by TSI Touch.
The Uniontown-based company has been around since 2011, when it was spun off from Trident Systems, a government-contracted company that makes electronics and processing systems.
When Trident decided to get out of the touch screen market, one of its vice presidents called John Pryzbylinski with a proposition: “You want to reopen and go together?”
The newly named TSI Touch launched in 2011 with four employees, including Pryzbylinski, now its president.
Aside from the COVID years, it’s grown every year, Pryzbylinski said. Even then, they were able to avoid layoffs.
That small four-person crew has now grown to a staff of 57.
“We knew we had a good thing,” Pryzbylinski said. “It was just a matter of how it could be promoted and being cost-effective. But we knew that we had the right people at the time to get this thing going and keep it strong.”
About 85% of TSI touch’s business comes from touchscreen products, ranging from handheld products to large-scale screens.
It also makes protective solutions, such as a glass retention bezel system for video wall displays sturdy enough that Pryzbylinski could bounce a basketball off of it.
Each year, they ship between 15,000 to 20,000 screens.
They can be seen throughout the region, from the remodeled Pittsburgh airport to the West Virginia University campus.
And they’re also seen around the world. Workers are currently engaged in a project in Singapore, navigating the half-day time difference.
Sometimes, they’ll fulfill an order without knowing the final destination. Once, they received a call after someone spotted a TSI Touch screen at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
“We’ll be going through a certain airport or just through some building, and we’ll say, ‘Oh, that’s ours,'” said Jonathan Witt, general manager of TSI Touch.
And for several years, TSI has been supplying CNN with the screen for its Magic Wall.
TSI makes and installs the 81-by-48-inch touchscreen, which has become a staple of election night coverage.
“They came to us with a need that we are able to supply them a solution with,” Pryzbylinski said. “They’ve done a very good job with the content portion of it that was created, and quite frankly, learning the product to be able to do it. John King works that thing like it’s magic, and that’s not because he just figured out how to work a touchscreen. It’s because he did his homework and research and really got to know the product, and it really makes it look great.”
Having their product front and center throughout one of the biggest news nights of the year has been a positive spotlight for the company.
“When they’re on air, our social media blows up, our phones blow up, other networks who have one that maybe doesn’t work so well will call after that,” Przybylinski said. “So it’s a fun night.”
Some of that phone traffic is messages between employees, sending texts and videos from the CNN coverage.
The first feeling is, “Phew, it works,” Witt said.
“It’s just a fun moment for us because we literally will just all text each other and be like, ‘Oh, look at this! It’s working great. It looks good,'” he said. “It’s just kind of like a celebration type thing, seeing our products in action and actually being used to communicate such very important information.”