Broadcast
Next week, Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding is expected to attract more than 2 billion global viewers. Adrian Pennington gets the inside story on TV’s biggest ever live OB.
The list of the UK’s biggest TV ratings smashes is dominated by royal occasions, but coverage of Prince William and Kate Middleton’s nuptials is predicted to dwarf them all with the largest worldwide TV audience in history for a single event.
On 29 April, more than 2 billion global TV viewers – twice the audience of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony and almost three times the audience for the wedding of Charles and Diana in 1981 – are expected to tune in, with an additional 400 million keeping up with events via live streaming, radio and social networks.
FACT FILE
Top 10 rated UK TV broadcasts
1 1966 World Cup Final, BBC/ITV 32.30m
2 Funeral of Princess Diana, 1997, BBC1/ITV 32.10m
3 Royal family documentary, 1969, BBC1/ITV 30.69m
4 EastEnders: Den divorces Angie, 1986, BBC1 30.15m
5 Apollo 13 splashdown, 1970, BBC1/ITV 28.6m
6 FA Cup replay: Chelsea v Leeds, 1970, BBC1/ITV 28.49m
7 Royal wedding: Charles and Diana, 1981, BBC/ITV 28.40m
8 Royal wedding: Anne and Mark Phillips, 1973, BBC1 27.60m
9 Coronation Street: Alan Bradley killed by tram, 1989, ITV 26.93m
10 Only Fools And Horses: Batman and Robin (below), 1996, BBC1 24.35m
While contingency plans for covering state funerals are constantly updated by broadcasters, planning for this day began as soon as the couple announced their engagement in January. It has not been without political manoeuvring, as ITV, Sky and the BBC must pool resources while working out how to win the ratings war.
Coverage will be shared from select camera positions along the route, including vantage points at Buckingham Palace, cranes and, during the service itself, from inside Westminster Abbey. The BBC is in charge of the latter and will make the HD feed available, independent of editorial and graphics, to ITN, which will have its own cameras at the entrance to the Abbey and is also providing pictures both to Sky News and ITV.
Since NEP Visions is producing the BBC’s live feed of the Queen’s visit to the Abbey on Maundy Thursday, 21 April, its HD4 truck will remain at the Abbey to cover the wedding eight days later.
“We will cable and rig for the Royal Maundy Service and then re-cable and add more cameras for the wedding,” says Brian Clark, NEP Visions’ commercial director. “We’ll have no fl ypacks or OB facilities spare that weekend.”
More than 20 manned and fixed cameras will be rigged inside the Abbey, including 14 cameras built and installed by SIS LIVE, one of which will be mounted on the ceiling looking down onto the Abbey interior. Outside the Abbey, ITN, Sky News and the BBC will each populate the 1km route of the procession to Buckingham Palace with dozens of cameras.
TV’S BIGGEST EVENTS
4bn+ 2011 Marriage of Kate and William (estimated)
1bn 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony
1bn 2010 Chilean miners rescue
750m 1981 Marriage of Charles and Diana
700m 2010 Fifa World Cup
111m 2011 Super Bowl
106m 1983 Last episode of M*A*S*H
Source: BFI
Due to the pressure on resources, most of the UK’s OB suppliers are being roped in. Arena TV is deploying its OB12 and OB14 trucks for the BBC, as well as helicopters for aerial shots along the ceremonial route, while ITN has called on vans from CTV, Telegenic, Prolink and Visions.
SIS LIVE claims to be a key supplier, with facilities including six OB units, a specialist sound truck, 13 uplink units and an array of RF communications including 13 radio cameras, 32 UHF radio-talkback systems, and at least 35 talkback circuits provided by fi bre or satellite.
More than 180 of its staff will be on duty and most of its 40 satellite uplink trucks will be out covering the story for clients that number domestic broadcasters, plus TV2DK, NBC News, Dome Productions and France Televisions.
Key negotiations
There will be more than 150 OB cameras fielded for the BBC, ITN and Sky alone, in addition to dozens of cameras held by broadcasters’ roving news crews, not including the army of international broadcasters. A further 130 OB vans will be corralled in a media compound at Green Park and temporary studios are being erected adjacent to this at Canada Gate.
According to one source, the necessary spectrum to accommodate RF links from all broadcasters has required some intricate acts of diplomacy between the key players.
“It’s been a massive project with lots of negotiation between stakeholders, including the Palace, the police, Westminster Abbey, the DCMS and other broadcasters,” says ITN special projects editor Emma Hoskyns. “It is one day of huge significance, so we have to get it right.”
Planning for the event is in many ways similar to a general election, where channels keep presentational tricks, graphics and special guests up their sleeves.
“We will have some unique camera positions, but as much as we want to win a large audience, this is also about critical acclaim,” says Cristina Nicolotti Squires, ITV’s executive producer of royal wedding coverage. “I hope we make an entertaining and interesting programme.”
The BBC has arranged for reporter Jake Humphrey to commentate on a Battle of Britain fly-past of the Palace from inside a Lancaster bomber, although aerial shots from the plane will be shared with ITN.
According to Sky News’ royal wedding executive producer Kate McAndrew: “The Palace made it very clear that William was running the show. He wants it to be fun, modern and a day to remember, and that’s what we are trying to refl ect.”
Coverage of at least some of the ceremony in stereo 3D was lobbied for. Sky even filmed a mock wedding and offered a 3D demonstration at Windsor’s Guards Chapel, but Clarence House finally vetoed it.
“They decided that the 3D camera was going to be too big for the Abbey and felt there was not a good enough trade-off considering, in their view, that the audience for it was too small,” says McAndrew.
Another source suggests that the proposed position of the 3D rig was in direct conflict with the seat of a guest king. The lack of 3D is a shame considering that the 1954 coronation was captured partly in experimental 3D using twin film cameras, as shown in Renegade Pictures’ The Queen In 3D, which aired on C4 last year.
Interest in the wedding from US broadcasters is particularly intense. NBC is basing 50 of a rumoured 300- strong contingent at ITN’s Gray’s Inn Road HQ, where it will hire studios, edit suites and a production base. NBC and other broadcasters including Germany’s ZDF, Australia’s 7 Network and Network 10, and Canada’s
CTV, are thought to have paid up to £200,000 each to access ITN’s feed of the build-up and ceremony, over which they will lay their own graphics and commentary.
Global broadcast
The BBC says the wedding will be its biggest ever single-day operation. Its coverage, led by Huw Edwards will be distributed live to ABC Australia, ABC America, on the BBC Entertainment channel across Asia, India, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East, and on BBC Knowledge in Africa.
“It’s the first time in recent memory that a single BBC1 presentation will be broadcast around the world,” said a spokesperson for the broadcaster. Comparisons will undoubtedly be made with the wedding of Charles and Diana 30 years ago. “I did recently watch our coverage of it,” says ITV’s Nicolotti Squires. “Time has moved on in terms of the set and graphics looking very old-fashioned. However, the opening script sounded very much like the one I have just written. The sense of occasion will be the same.”
ONLINE COVERAGE
“Thirty years on from Charles and Diana’s wedding, we can see a huge leap in communications media,” refl ects Gannon Hall, executive vice-president, global marketing, at KIT Digital. “The scale, the media delivery, the user experience are all transformed, and it is set to be one of the biggest single events viewed online ever.”
KIT Digital has contracts with AP, Reuters, Disney, ABC, Getty Images and MSN to syndicate live streams and edited highlights.
Its content services team will take the raw satellite feed and edit it into two-to-four-minute segments, localised with translation in one of 15 languages and customised with graphics. The clips will also be delivered to an online market place for any station to purchase. Integration with Facebook and Twitter is offered.
Sky News and CNN will deliver streamed video and on-demand highlights to respective iPad, iPhone and Android phone apps.
Sky will also edit user-generated content gathered from across the UK on the day into a programme, Your Royal Wedding, to air in the evening on Sky News. ITV will stream its TV feed simultaneously to itv.com alongside a user-generated photo gallery.
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