LIVE PRODUCTION


“We hadn’t done a festival since 2019,” says Alison Howe, executive producer at BBC Studios. “Returning was a big item on the agenda and then it was how to return and return with all the things people love about what we do. While adding more, offering more, covering more.”


BBC Studios delivered over 30 hours of TV programming for BBC One, Two, Three and Four as well as the iPlayer content and to the Beeb’s radio outlets, streaming coverage from all five stages. “Viewing habits continued to change in the two years we weren’t at the festival,” Howe notes.


not everybody’s going to be watching from dawn to dusk, so how do we make sure that the coverage is complementary regardless of where you’re watching, and listening,” explains Howe.


MORE, OFFERING MORE, COVERING MORE


Having the iPlayer channel on from the afternoon meant, as broadcast partner, the BBC could be live from the festival from midday, right through until one or two o’clock in the morning.


Windows on the Festival


“We used to think when we came on air we had to recap a lot of stuff that had already happened, but 2022 was about thinking


HOW TO RETURN WITH ALL THE THINGS PEOPLE LOVE ABOUT WHAT WE DO. WHILE ADDING


Another BBC first for 2022 saw it broadcast from Glastonbury earlier than normal. Originally the BBC was planning to do a programme on the Thursday evening before Glastonbury 2020, as it would have been Glastonbury’s 50th anniversary year. Covid put paid to that, but BBC Studios kept plans for the special in place.


“It was only a half hour programme. When we


all gathered in the production space on the Friday morning after it went out you could see that people really enjoyed having that early window back into the festival,” says Howe. “It was almost backstagey, there was not really much happening, but just knowing that Glastonbury was back was really important to a lot of the audience.”


At that moment, Howe - who went to her first Glastonbury in 1992 with BBC radio and began working as part of the TV coverage in


1998 - felt the stalled return of Glastonbury was going to work.


Sharing the experience


“The festival has grown over the years to be this massive, loved and important event. The BBC has grown with it,” Howe says. “Every time we all go back there, collectively, we do something different, we do something new, we share the experience together, whether it’s about the artists or the weather, whatever it is.”


Much has changed since the 1990s when the BBC was only filming or recording one or two stages and audiences tuned in late at night to see or hear anything.


“Back then it was pretty simple event broadcasting. Now when I think about this year, and what we did, the ethos is still the same, it’s just that technology has changed and the capacity has changed,” Howe says. “We can share so much of what’s happening there with the audience. That’s just grown every year and I hope to grow again next year.”


Televisual Bulldog voters will be watching and listening.


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