WHAT’S NEXT?
LIVE SPORT TV
more OB facilities onsite – which isn’t sustainable” says Adam Berger, CCO at CTV Outside Broadcasts. “Now we have the ROC, the many people that used to populate the EVS Room and the Production Gallery are no longer on site, they’re now operating in safe and spatial comfort from the ROC in High Wycombe” “The ROC has already covered BT
Sport matches completely remotely and in UHD HDR,” Berger continues. “BBC Sport has adopted remote production for some matches, with our first match on June 24th and we have covered more since including the live evening BBC1 match on July 5th between Southampton and Manchester City” “We’ve got exactly the same
THE NEW GAME C
For live sports
broadcasting, the hopeful
spring of 2020 rapidly turned to despair. Michael
Burns finds out how the
broadcasters and their
partners have coped with Covid-19.
oronavirus has affected far more than TV production, but for the UK sports broadcasting industry, in England at
least, things began to ease in June. “The Premier League has returned
and as ever we are responsible for the world distribution,” says David Shield, SVP of IMG Studios. “The EFL Championships and League 1 & 2 playoffs are back. [We’ve also been] responsible for selected world feeds matches for Serie A (Italy) and Jamie Murray’s Battle of the Brits for Amazon.” IMG has been part of a joint
initiative between Sky Sport, BT Sport, ITV Sport, BBC Sport and Sunset+Vine which discussed and implemented measures such as health questionnaires (which staff and freelancers complete online), temperature checking, on-site welfare officers, social distancing mitigation in OB trucks and a wipe-in/wipe-out policy for hands and equipment. “At IMG Studios in Stockley Park
we have instituted these measures and more, including ‘one way’ systems around the building,” says Shield. “We
have reduced the office capacity to meet the two metre social distancing rule and have scheduled technical production operations across more areas, allowing fewer people into control rooms.”
REMOTE ROCKS UP When the Premier League returned for its first match (Watford vs Leicester) on 20 June, BT Sport utilised a specially built remote operations centre (the ROC) in High Wycombe for a remote production. Presentations came from its studio in Stratford, with the broadcaster working with engineering partner Timeline TV to enable about a third of the Stratford- based team to drive the presentations from their homes. The ROC, a facility with two
remote galleries, was constructed by two members of Euro Media Group, CTV and Telegenic, in only three weeks. “Coronavirus certainly accelerated
our plans for remote production. OB Units are designed to squeeze as many people together as possible, so socially distancing operators meant
connectivity going to the ROC as we’d have at a Premier League ground,” he continues. “We’re using exactly the same technology as we would have done in the OB. The difference is that we’re remotely controlling it. We can do two productions simultaneously and we’re planning for a third gallery to be online by early August, because we have the capacity to deal with it.”
HOME NETWORKING Currently utilising the ROC is production company Sunset +Vine, which adapted early to the first weeks of lockdown; for example, a completely live production of Early Kick Off on BT Sport was produced remotely. With the full production team collaborating from their own homes in a sort of ‘virtual gallery’, the host Jake Humphreys presented the programme live from his house in Norfolk. Though guests communicated over Skype or Zoom, Humphreys hosted the show using a higher quality camera and remote technique previously developed by Timeline TV for covering the WSL. The OB-intensive operations
produced by IMG normally rely upon third party OB suppliers. “This meant we had to look at
things differently because we did not have as many options for remote working as others may have,” says
Summer 2020
televisual.com 29
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