Category: LIVE BROADCASTING

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REACHING OUT – WHO AND WHERE IS THE AUDIENCE?

Working on the opening of the Louvre Abu Dhabi reminded us again of some of the key questions raised by the changing news environment.

 

Where is the audience?

This was an event that got the global media excited as one of the world’s greatest museums allowed its legendary name and reputation to extend into the Middle East. Getting live video of the inauguration – which involved many VIPs including both the President of France and the Ruler of the UAE – out to news channels on traditional and new media around the world was a vital part of the launch plan.

By reaching out to the international broadcast news agencies as well as to key target stations we were able to ensure that the story was distributed by satellite as it happened, making it available to both TV and web channels on an equal basis.

How do you reach the world’s broadcasters?

It may not be obvious, but individual broadcasters are not always well equipped to distribute stories – even those they are covering exclusively – to other broadcasters around the world. Any channel can make a production technically usable by other broadcasters but their normal focus is on producing and delivering content to their own audience. This means they may not have the contacts and experience required to communicate with the world’s media and organize the necessary satellite feeds.

For this story, our relationships with broadcasters and news agencies, together with our experience of arranging satellite paths that can reach around the world, allowed us to maximise live access to the story as it unfolded.

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BROADCAST MONITORING

world-fingerprint-3743625 (1)Live broadcasting has always been a vital part of our work and one of the strengths of live-linked TV interviews is that there can be no debate about where and when coverage appears.  Everybody knows what happened.

But when we produce news edits for broadcasters and news agencies – often for the same stories we have covered live – one of the biggest challenges is to find out exactly when and where they been broadcast.  Traditional broadcast monitoring can be expensive and, in our experience, somewhat hit-and-miss, so over recent years we have been pleased to adopt a system that produces impressive and cost-effective results by checking a unique digital ‘fingerprint’ from our footage against the recorded output of almost 2,000 broadcast channels world-wide.

At a recent charity golf tournament in Sardinia we produced a series of live satellite-linked TV interviews on Sky and BBC World followed by a TV news edit.  When the event organizers wanted to know what coverage had been generated, with the help of our monitoring agency we were able to report a healthy score of 91 separate news stories on 24 different stations in 15 regions around the world, well above average for this type of event.  For the last three years we have used the same system to monitor coverage from projects including our distribution of a major New Year’s Eve fireworks show which has generated separate news stories measured in thousands globally.

The tool isn’t right for every project, but it is a highly effective way of measuring coverage and gauging the return on investment of time, energy and money.  We are always happy to discuss the costs and benefits of monitoring for any project without imposing any obligation to use it.

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UP PERISCOPE – LIVE STREAMING NEWS FROM ANYWHERE?

Depending on your point of view, in 2015 we are either living in a golden age of news or teetering on the brink of unregulated chaos and information overload. Communication via internet and social media has seen the rise of citizen journalists and media-savvy extremists as well as bloggers on almost every conceivable subject.

Now new apps Meerkat and Periscope allow anyone with a smartphone to stream video and audio live, effectively broadcasting to the world. But telling a story well requires skill and experience and reporting live from wherever you happen to be can raise a multitude of practical, legal and ethical issues.  Placing such powerful tools in the hands of everyone opens the door to problems including piracy, violation of copyright and invasion of privacy.  Threats range from the commercial – US TV network HBO recently issued ‘take down’ notices to Periscope after the app was used to leak episodes of Game of Thrones on Twitter – to the intensely personal. The potential for live coverage from a major atrocity or disaster, not to mention smaller and more intimate tragedies and the activities of the growing band of internet trolls presents a disturbing prospect.

Periscope, 20 April 2015It’s too soon to judge the impact of universal live streaming on the traditional media landscape, but respected journalists and media ranging from The Economist to Sky News have already experimented with the apps to add a new dimension to their output. The results of live ‘fly on the wall’ smartphone footage may not be polished, but its flexibility and immediacy are attractive.  Behind-the-scenes coverage seems an obvious place to start and political campaigns including the forthcoming US Presidential election look set to test the public’s appetite for unconventional reporting.

New channels and technologies may be changing the way people access news and information, but the more material there is the more we need help to find the things we want to know amongst the many that are of no interest whatsoever.  For now at least, navigating the growing number of live streams presents a significant challenge.

Stories are the lifeblood of broadcast news and at OLB our business is built on bringing unusual stories to the attention of conventional and new media.  We believe that by shedding light on news from parts of the world, people and businesses that are off the beaten track we provide a valuable service, but we also recognize the importance of the broadcasters and news agencies as editorial gatekeepers.  Whatever the means of delivery, ultimately it is the objective judgement of others that confirms the quality and relevance of what we produce.