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July 2007: BBC Resources is supporting 22 hours of live high definition coverage of the Live Earth concerts taking place on 7 July, which will go out to over 135 countries across the world. Its new HD studio, Studio Eight, at Television Centre in London is acting as the hub for the operation, where content will arrive and be packaged up by BBC Resources for different international broadcasters. Every single bit of HD equipment in the building is being utilized and new lines are even being installed between BBC Resources' post production and studios divisions to transfer material and get it out of Television Centre and around the world.

Live Earth is a global concert series aiming to engage with people across all seven continents and give solutions for climate crisis. Material from concerts in Sydney, Tokyo, Shanghai, Istanbul, Johannesburg, Hamburg, London, Rio and New York will be broadcast to over 2 billion people, which makes the project the largest, most complex HD broadcast in media history. It takes place at the same time as the Wimbledon Championships, which BBC Resources is also supporting and one of the key challenges has been getting hold of HD equipment, as much of it is already being used.

The Executive In Charge of Production André Mika and the World Feed Producer/Director Paul Flattery will be based at BBC Resources’ Studio Eight and are working with a team to craft a 22-hour HD and SD programme that will be broadcast via satellite (Intelsat) to reach an estimated audience in excess of 2 billion people. The scope of the Live Earth broadcast even surpasses the Olympics.

As well as receiving material from the concerts, BBC Resources in London will receive additional feeds from countries holding Live Earth celebrations that wish to contribute to the programme. Feeds will stream into the BBC Resources’ hub where material will be ingested into an HD environment, or be broadcast live and fed throughout the extensive satellite distribution network, coordinated by Live Earth Transmission Manager Bob Adler. The programme is being made in a totally tapeless HD environment and BBC Post Production is providing around 8Tb of EVS Server Storage to record the concerts and provide live server-based editing of all the footage.  All live material, pre-edited packages and highlights edits will be available to the director at a moments notice.

There are a large number of international broadcasters involved, with many different scheduling requirements which need to be met, which adds to the challenge. Plus there are different international standards which BBC Resources needs to deliver to, for example 29.97 frame HD to the US and Japan and 25 frame HD to Europe. BBC Post Production, part of BBC Resources, is using its brand new Snell and Wilcox Alchemist Ph.C – HD frame rate standards converter to make this possible. BBC Post Production was the first facilities house in the world to take delivery of this new technology and invested further in it by designing a system to support Dolby E conversions. It has already used the Alchemist on a variety of BBC programmes such as Planet Earth, Galapagos, Bleak House and Nureyev for worldwide sales, as well as Live Earth.

The HD broadcast is unprecedented mainly due to the fact the majority of host countries and venues do not broadcast in HD and in some cases the production team has had to ship out and install HD equipment to support it.

In the UK there will be live coverage of the concerts at the new Wembley Stadium on BBC ONE and BBC TWO. A whole host of major international artists will feature, with performances from Madonna, The Beastie Boys, Razorlight, The Red Hot Chili Peppers amongst many others. Jonathan Ross, Graham Norton and Edith Bowman are presenting. Cable and satellite viewers will be able to access three streams of global concerts via the BBC’s Interactive channels and the BBC transmission will also be available on the BBC’s HD Channel. In addition to television, there will also be coverage on BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 2 and the BBC World Service. In addition to supporting the 22 hour broadcast, BBC Post Production is also delivering a 144 minute highlights package just hours after the concerts end.

André Mika , Executive In Charge of Production , said: “I have worked on large international projects before – dubbing DreamWorks SKG's animated feature The Prince of Egypt into 30 languages and serving as Associate Director on the Athens Olympics for NBC, as well as writing and producing original content for HBO – but this is a beast of another nature. The global coordination of content and formats combined with the creative collaboration across seven continents is unlike anything else I've ever encountered. Thankfully I’m being supported by an extremely talented production team and BBC Resources, who are pulling out all the stops to make this important event happen and make a piece of broadcast history in the process.”

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About BBC Resources

BBC Resources Ltd is one of the largest production facilities in the UK. The company consists of three core businesses, BBC Studios, BBC Outside Broadcasts and BBC Post Production. The size and depth of the company’s resources enables it to handle even the largest-scale projects. Major broadcast events BBC Resources has facilitated include Wimbledon, Children In Need, The FIFA World Cup, Glastonbury and the Winter Olympics. With a focus on innovation, BBC Resources continually looks to produce technological ‘firsts’ from ground-breaking cricket stump cameras and the world’s first ‘HD Plunge Cam’ to virtual reality capability and real-time HD media transfer between remote sites.

The sale process for BBC Resources Ltd has begun. This comes as a result of the BBC’s commercial review (December 2004), which concluded it should only own commercial businesses that export or exploit the BBC brand and content – BBC Resources is a facilities and services provider so doesn’t fit this profile. The BBC believes that under new ownership – as with the successful sales of BBC Technology to Siemens and BBC Broadcast to Macquarie – BBC Resources has opportunities that have not been available whilst owned by the Corporation; it will also retain the stability of on-going contracts with the BBC.

For more information visit www.bbcresources.com

For further information, please contact:

Georgie Hollett, PR and Communications Manager, BBC Resources
Tel: +44 (0)20 8624 9495
Mobile : +44 (0) 783484 5612
Email : georgie.hollett@bbc.co.uk

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