IBC
It’s the time of year when Britain goes midsummer mad for the festival of live music in a field.
article here
With more than 40 hours of TV plus 85 hours of live radio in
addition to live streams from the five biggest festival stages, Glastonbury
2023 delivered record coverage live from Worthy Farm, figures likely to be
matched if not exceeded by the time US R&B star SZA closes the festival
next Sunday.
In addition to network coverage on the four main linear
channels and on iPlayer there is a second iPlayer channel this year. It will
serve up 30 hours alone and will act as more of a catch-up service. That could
be important this year given the clash with the Euros which means programme
schedules will be calculated at the last minute.
“What worked really well in 2023 was iPlayer. It was only
the second year of iPlayer, the numbers were good and it gave everybody a
better understanding of what could do on iPlayer,” says Alison Howe, Executive
Producer, BBC Studios.
Content from Worthy Farm was streamed over 50 million times
across BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds - up 47% on 2022. On BBC iPlayer, viewers
streamed sets and Glastonbury programming a record 47.5 million times, up 49%
on 2022.
A highest ever audience of 21.6million also tuned in to some
of the coverage on TV bringing the total audience up 7% on last year across
linear television.
“What also worked well was being able to use a drone for the
first time on an artist’s set.”
This was timed for Elton John’s arrival on the Pyramid Stage
and required all the stars to be aligned including artist approval, clear space
for launch and take off, health and safety greenlight and good weather.
“The technology for capturing live music is evolving
especially with cameras but we’re always mindful of not introducing new angles
or visual ticks that distract the audience enjoyment of the artist.”
Howe works with musicians and their management year round
for various BBC shows and says the collaboration with them is essential to
making Glastonbury coverage work.
“They trust our teams
to deliver the performance and often work directly with artists or their
representatives on sound and the visual side.”
It is one reason why
Howe and the rest of the BBC team maintain a strong presence on-site.
“Connectivity at
Glastonbury is challenging at the best of times and you cannot rely on phone
signals or WhatsApp so often the best way of checking something with someone is
to go find them. It is hard to do that if you are offsite. The artists expect
you to be there to sort things out.”
Technical provision has broadly the same template as last
year including for at least 64 cameras. “There’s been a few tweaks in the
various technical compounds and as a result we've had to do a little bit of
replanning,” says Gareth Wildman, Head of OB, Timeline TV. “It’s a big site and
way that we connect things together uses quite a lot of fibre connectivity and
juggling things around.
Although it seems like a really simple thing, if a truck
parks on a different side of the compound makes quite a big difference to the
technical planning in terms of cable runs.
It's been really obvious whilst doing the planning for this
year's Festival that it’s not like any other OB. It’s almost a temporary
installation of an IBC because there's so much going on.
“We're collaborating with BBC Radio, BBC Technology and
other OB teams and the whole machine needs to work together to make these
hugely popular music programs. It is really heartwarming that there's still
that much collaboration between the different stakeholders but also it’s
eye-opening for how meshed everything is with everything. Every cog in this
machine is vitally important.”
Timeline provides satellite uplinking as a back-up broadcast
in case there are any issues with the IP. It provides the radio cameras and RF
links used for all BBC presentation hits over the festival site. It also
supplies the fibre interlinking the stages and the presentation areas which
include a BBC studio up at The Park and another on the hill by Worthy Farm.
Timeline also operates three large scanners where BBC programmes are mixed on
site. These are designated for BBC One and BBC Two, another for channels Three
and Four and a third for iPlayer.
The BBC cover five stages live: Pyramid, Other Stage, Park
Stage, West Holts and Woodsies with camera and engineering coverage provided by
Cloud Bass and Vivid Broadcast. All audio across for broadcast and radio is
provided by BBC Radio. Audio and vision feeds from each of the stages are fed
back to Timeline’s trucks for program production.
Facilities for a sizeable on-site editing operation
of non-live is managed by Origin
Broadcast including Avid suites
and EVS systems.
This year, Timeline is also providing off-site facilities
for the second iPlayer channel at its Broadcast Centre in Ealing. An advantage
of doing this off-site is that the BBC keeps its crew numbers on-site down.
“Those people working on it get to sleep in their own beds
every night which is a big plus for some,” says Wildman.
There's been a permanent fibre network on the festival site
for some years and it's been through a few iterations.
“Obviously, being on a farm it is quite susceptible to being
damaged between festivals,” Wildman says. “Over the years we've been burying
the fibre deeper and deeper and getting better at routing it.”
The network is used to route TV signals, all audio and news signals, security
cameras and internet for the festival itself and for merchant’s pay machines.
“We've just finished going through this year's checks before
we arrive on site on 25 June. It’s all looking pretty good. On top of that we
lay in 50km of fibre for the last mile of connectivity running between
stages and the connection hubs to the presentation and uplink vehicles.”
Fibre circuits are more cost
effective than satellite and it would be technically feasible to remote all of
the feeds back to a central hub. That they don’t is partly a matter of reducing
risk of reliance on one contribution path and also because it helps smooth
running of the event to be on site.”
All coverage of the Pyramid Stage, which hosts headliners
Dua Lipa, Coldplay and SZA, is UHD HDR to feed the dedicated UHD channel on
iPlayer. All other coverage is HD SDR
Howe doesn’t rule it out expanding the higher bitrate format
in future. “We have to balance our ambition and budget. It’s about investment
and being mindful of the budget available to us and what is the best use of our
budget.”
Howe’s work on 2025’s Glasto will actually being during the
live weekend. “The only time you can really think about new camera positions
for example is when the festival is at its busiest because if you come back a
week later, it’s just a field.”
“What makes it so successful and so enjoyable is that a lot
of different teams come together with the single goal of making it work and
whether something is weather related or artist related or technical things only
get resolved because of the knowledge and calmness and humour of everyone
involved.”
She is particularly excited about Cyndi Lauper and Shania Twain but she is
particularly eager to see which stars of the future Glastonbury 24 might
uncover. She picks out New Zealand-Australian Jordan Rakei playing West Holtz
as one to watch.
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