BBC/ITV/Sky Elections Coverage

BBC/ITV/Sky Elections Coverage - Printable Version

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RE: BBC/ITV/Sky Elections Coverage - Stooky Bill - 17-03-2024

(17-03-2024, 10:39 PM)peterrocket Wrote: The cost of installing a 512mb line, full fibre, on a 12 month business contract (and the cost of paying a full year) is much less than a sat truck and sat time. Not to mention the fact trucks can be hard to get hold of on busy periods.

Though presably not as cheap as a BBC owned and operated sat truck using BBC satellite space. That's essentially free, but of course can only do a handful of counts. I assume ITN and Sky have similar permanent SNG provision

It'll be interesting to see how less reliant the broadcasters will be on satellite compared with previous elections. Last time round there a lot of Dutch and French trucks being used. But technology and the industry has changed a lot in the last 4 years. There's still the need for some satellite but IP has improved a lot.

RE: BBC/ITV/Sky Elections Coverage - newsjunkie - 17-03-2024

(17-03-2024, 10:39 PM)peterrocket Wrote: They won't install broadcast fibre, but they'll go for broadband installation as you certainly won't rely on any count centre infrastructure. In most cases it's public sector or an educational establishment. The ports you need will no doubt be blocked, and there's often no point trying to get them opened as IT policy will get in the way.

The cost of installing a 512mb line, full fibre, on a 12 month business contract (and the cost of paying a full year) is much less than a sat truck and sat time. Not to mention the fact trucks can be hard to get hold of on busy periods.

Know the right staff at the centre and you can use the network cabling in the venue to patch your way around to make life easier and less need for cable traps.

Throw on a decent network switch and you've enough connectivity for:
1x Live U feed up to 10Mbs but the same unit can also bring talkback and return vision
1x Ethernet for reporter's laptop
1x Ethernet for a Comrex / Luci Live for those centres also on radio.

You don't even need the most high-spec Live-U, just one with two sims as backup will do the trick and you've got redundancy.

Obviously if it's a big count, you'd look at an SNG, but even with the smaller installations, you can do multi-cameras with an ATEM switcher.

Some BBC Nations have been using that process for many years now.

I would be very surprised if anybody is installing their own broadband lines.

For crucial counts they will use SNG (or sat supplied IP).
For everything else they will use count provided wifi or bonded cellular. Most councils will be working with the media to provide ample wifi so they can get a decent quality feed out.

News budgets have been squeezed hugely since 2019 and all will be keen to save money where they can.

RE: BBC/ITV/Sky Elections Coverage - Stooky Bill - 17-03-2024

(17-03-2024, 09:27 PM)Andrew Wrote: I’d probably go lower and say no more than 200

And it's worth remembering that not every count/declaration is featured on the TV election coverage, at least not live.

The broadcasters have someone at every location but often it's just to phone in the result (and they won't necessarily be journalists) . Some will have a someone to record pics which are sent back later for regional news etc. It's only large ones that have live video sent back, and only the really significant that have a reporter.

Incidently I've worked a few elections including one for regional news. The big problem we had there was that camera operators get bored at election counts, they're there for hours. So what you get back is a lot of footage of people counting votes... that's really all there is happening for most of the night. We had to enforce a limit of maximum a minute of counting shots as it wasn't worth wasting server space and time on them (back in the days before there was lots of space and you could just transfer the data over) . Even then they were rarely used.

RE: BBC/ITV/Sky Elections Coverage - Brekkie - 18-03-2024

I guess nowadays there is also the possibility local authorities will live stream results themselves - whether that would be of broadcast quality is another question.

RE: BBC/ITV/Sky Elections Coverage - Andrew - 18-03-2024

I know the count nearest to me does 2 constituencies. One is always Labour, so no particular story there, and one is generally the same as the Government in power, so probably a story there, but not dramatically so, with backbench uncontroversial MPs and it’s an uncontroversial area with no angle to take, so it’d be filmed for regional news, but wouldn’t get a look in on the live election night.

There will be loads of places along similar lines.

RE: BBC/ITV/Sky Elections Coverage - Moz - 18-03-2024

(18-03-2024, 12:16 AM)Brekkie Wrote: I guess nowadays there is also the possibility local authorities will live stream results themselves - whether that would be of broadcast quality is another question.

Well if they show it just as a push back with other graphics on screen it should be fine shouldn’t it?

RE: BBC/ITV/Sky Elections Coverage - Newshound47 - 18-03-2024

(17-03-2024, 07:11 PM)Steve in Pudsey Wrote: The English 3pm games are shown live overseas of course, I guess from the World Feed - how resilient is that?

Wasn't there quite a big effort using Live U and journalism students to cover counts last time?

I’ve not heard of a match recently going down and people abroad and those using unofficial streams complaining about it. So it must be fairly resilient.

RE: BBC/ITV/Sky Elections Coverage - mcrdev - 18-03-2024

(17-03-2024, 10:39 PM)peterrocket Wrote: They won't install broadcast fibre, but they'll go for broadband installation as you certainly won't rely on any count centre infrastructure. In most cases it's public sector or an educational establishment. The ports you need will no doubt be blocked, and there's often no point trying to get them opened as IT policy will get in the way.

Ten years ago this was a pretty accurate summary of the situation, but in my experience nowadays most public and educational establishments are used to hosting live streamed events and have the knowledge and policies in place to allow the required access. Certainly all of the count centres around me where we used to have trouble arranging connectivity are now relatively easy to get sorted, you just need to get to talk to the right person.

At the more clued up places it's not unusual these days to be presented with a router in a cardboard box and instructions to plug it into a certain port, which puts you on a special VLAN and bypasses all their internal networking and gives you pretty much direct access to the internet.

RE: BBC/ITV/Sky Elections Coverage - DTV - 18-03-2024

(17-03-2024, 11:53 PM)Stooky Bill Wrote: The broadcasters have someone at every location but often it's just to phone in the result (and they won't necessarily be journalists) .

Always makes me laugh that this is still how it's done. Nearly every European country now has a fantastic central results website, detailing the count at the equivalent of ward-level as it comes in; we're still having people telephone into newsrooms to tell them seat level results, frequently ending up with small errors in vote tallies for broadcasters. I'm sure there are some who find it charming and quaint, not sure that's what I'd call it.

RE: BBC/ITV/Sky Elections Coverage - newsjunkie - 18-03-2024

(18-03-2024, 10:33 AM)DTV Wrote: Always makes me laugh that this is still how it's done. Nearly every European country now has a fantastic central results website, detailing the count at the equivalent of ward-level as it comes in; we're still having people telephone into newsrooms to tell them seat level results, frequently ending up with small errors in vote tallies for broadcasters. I'm sure there are some who find it charming and quaint, not sure that's what I'd call it.

It is not just about passing on the result (PA do this anyway). They will also be tasked with alerting the broadcaster to when the result might come and which way the result is looking like it is going.

ITV has in the past 'declared' results before they are formally announced at the count. Also if a network is close to declaring the result, knowing that several seats are very likely to go one way or another may tip them over the edge in declaring a winner. That is all detail you wouldn't get from either PA or the council website - they will only give you the final result. It is not like the US and other countries that give running totals of the count as it goes on.