By Nick Mitsis

Today’s broadcaster is highly sophisticated, educated on satellite products and services and expects more from a contract than mere satellite space. Many content service providers within the satellite industry have answered that call and provide the broadcasting community with tools necessary for a successful, diversified transmission. This, in turn, is working well for both the service provider and the broadcast client.

Regardless of the broadcast–athletic, entertainment or news–it has to be more than just a seamless transmission today. Broadcasters want rich media, at times interactive content securely transmitted to the desktop, to the television and around the world. "Broadcasters today want to use technology that offers them true two-way communications for both content, IP and voice," says Bill McNamara, general manager of BT Broadcast Services, the Americas. "They also need the capability to get feedback in real time."

Recently, BT Broadcast Services (BTBS) produced the live video Web cast component of Oscar.com, the official site of the award ceremony for the 76th Annual Academy Awards. During the live event, BTBS provided the signal acquisition and encoding for the online pressroom interviews, the backstage interviews with the winners of each Oscar category, as well as the Red Carpet interviews and the Governor’s Ball.

Prior to the awards, BTBS encoded all movie trailers for the nominated films. During the event, BTBS provided the signal acquisition from backstage at the Kodak Theatre to its Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. media centers for monitoring purposes. The signal was then digitally encoded in Windows Media format in Washington, D.C for delivery to the Akamai network, for distribution on the Oscar.com Web site. Likewise, viewers were able to view the Academy Awards coverage on demand.

"In working with our partners for the Oscars, we looked at Web casting requirements that ABC had and were able to offer a solution from the camera to the desktop while partnering with a content distributor," McNamara adds. This year, 9,100 viewers accessed the Web site content concurrently and streamed a total of 7 terabytes, averaging nearly five minutes online.

Even so, Web interactivity surrounding a live event seen globally is not the most paramount for broadcasters–making sure the transmission is seamlessly delivered to the viewer defines the difference between success and failure. Like others in the satellite industry, hybrid solutions are now a part of today’s complete package offered by satellite service providers and broadcasters welcome the redundancy. In the case of the Oscars Web cast, BTBS used fiber plus satellite links for backup ensuring ABC there would be no content or signal loss.

But doing a simulcast to the desktop is but one of the many options broadcasters may want to have when partnering with a satellite service provider. "A complete package is what they are looking for–satellite space, camera crews, SNG trucks, downlinking, etc.," says McNamara. Broadcasters simply want to know that there are more options available to them than merely satellite segment.

The Changed Face Of ‘Traditional’

A broadcaster has to multicast a live event to all its affiliates nationwide and its partners worldwide. While the basic formula has not changed much, the traditional output has. Take this past summer’s Olympic Games, for example. For NBC alone, it broke records. According to the broadcasting giant, this Olympics garnered three times the coverage of its predecessors, airing 35,000 hours of programming to its television channels around the clock for two weeks. In the end, it took a lot more than mere uplinking to bring the 28th Olympiad into people’s homes.

BTBS was one of the service providers on site. The company signed a contract with NBC to provide it with three transportable earth station trucks (TES), a transmit/receive flyaway system and a team of engineers. Once acquired, the content was uplinked to the Hellas-Sat satellite and downlinked by BTBS’ flyaway system located at the International Broadcast Center (IBC) in Athens. The content was then inserted into NBC’s Olympic coverage programming for distribution across the United States.

But NBC was not alone. Networks from all over the globe converged in Athens and the IBC for their transmissions needs. Almost as impressive as NBC’s presence was the European Broadcasting Union’s. The EBU is one of the largest professional associations of national broadcasters in the world, with roughly 70 active members in 51 countries Europe, North Africa and the Middle East as well as 46 associate members in 29 other countries. It needed on-site facilities and turned to Transvision International for its equipment.

Transvision built and staffed the largest temporary teleport center at the games for the EBU, erected and staffed a 850 square foot satellite technical operations center providing more than 30 separate satellite circuits for continuous service during the games. This entailed the use of eight, 4.5 meter Ku-band antennas, integrated with 15, fully redundant amplifier systems. Transvision also supplied the EBU with two, 2.4-meter TVRO systems for SNG feeds.

"We were contracted by the EBU primarily because of our fairly large equipment base which they needed in order to provide the transmission of the games to their members," says Kimithy Vaughan, president of Transvision International. "Broadcasters now are asking for a diversified transmission pass, multilateral feeds for secure transmissions."

Aside from the EBU, Transvision also provided various RF systems, control and RF shelter, digital equipment and approximately 80 percent of the satellite transmit antennas in the satellite farm to other broadcasters.

Providing Complete Options For All Broadcasters

But the IBC was not the only broadcast center in Athens operating during the Olympics. Globecast, partnering with Stefi Productions, which provided broadcasters with logistical support as well as transport security and warehousing, and Gearhouse Broadcast, a broadcast solutions company incorporating equipment rental and sales, project management and production coordination, formed an alliance to create a digital broadcast center in Athens. This center accommodated the requirements of non-rights holders and other broadcasters for logistics capabilities for their Olympic coverage. "Through our partnerships, we offered playout facilities, live broadcasting positions and office space," says Gary Champion, head of news (Europe) for Globecast. "Likewise, we also offered broadband connectivity for journalists through our solution."

The broadcast center offered an all-digital MCR, playout, fiber connectivity, C- and Ku-band satellite transmission, as well as production studios, edit suites, offices and work space with ancillary services. "One of the things that we offer broadcasters is a customized solution.

"Considering Globecast did the legwork for its broadcasting customers in Athens, they were very appreciative that they did not have to spend time scouting out locations for live shots or on-site facilities to work. We had that set up for them," says David Shearer, account manager, special events with Globecast.

Many content service providers at the Olympic Games had multiple stand-up feed points across Athens for their broadcasting clients, strategically selected to provide backdrops of historical landmarks or event venues.

From CNN, to SkyAustralia, broadcasters who worked with the Globecast team had at their disposal the equipment and work services they needed to ease the tension of transmitting a live global event such as the Olympics.

Once A Transmitter, Now A Partner

Generally, broadcasters tend to get from content service providers more of a full service partnership given all that is bundled in with the contract. But nowadays, satellite operators are joining the full-service bandwagon as well. Most of the major global satellite operators had a stake in this past summer’s Olympics, from SES Global, Eutelsat and New Skies, to Intelsat and Panamsat. But traditionally flagged by the broadcasting community as capacity providers, these space-segment operators are now offering complete solutions through content management partnerships for special event programming that has strengthened the broadcaster/technology provider bond.

Intelsat, who has been providing coverage of the Olympic Games since 1968, transmitted more than 35,000 hours of programming for 50 channels of the Athens Games. Using six satellites from its global fleet, Intelsat transmitted the Games to North America, Asia and parts of South America for a number of customers. Working with Globecast, programming transmitted over the Intelsat network reached broadcasters such as ATV Hong Kong, TV Globo, Brazil, TVB Hong Kong and Chinese Taipei Broadcast Pool, to name a few.

"We offered satellite space and ground network support to customers, as well as using local telecommunication companies, such as OTE in Athens, during the Summer Olympics," says Ken Takagi, strategy and marketing director, media and entertainment unit with Intelsat. "The main thing broadcasters have to have from a transmission provider is assurance of no outages, especially at live events. Because of that hybrid networks offer reliability from end to end, assuring seamless content delivery."

Today, many satellite service providers offer both terrestrial and space capacity, supporting complex video solutions and value-added services.

"We bundle local infrastructure with our satellite space in using it for a lot of other applications the broadcasters need," says Catherine Palaia, vice president of PASport, the broadcast services group, of Panamsat. In the past, the PASport team has sourced a helicopter for a foreign dignitary, hired cellphones for use by a large international corporation and rented a car for a broadcaster whose hotel was too far from the teleport during one event.

The PASport network has evolved to include 15 satellites with 26 points of presence. It is responsible for carrying an average of 7,000 hours of news, sports and special events transmissions worldwide per month. "Broadcasters who need either multilateral or unilateral feeds come to us and we work with them to provide both on-site teleport facilities and services, providing them with data and programming transmissions," she adds. "Broadcasters are getting more educated on satellite technology and are now coming to us with very specific needs and we work with the customer, sometimes months before the event, in order for them to have a complete turnkey solution in place."

For the Olympics, Panamsat completed 17 days of programming distribution for the Organizacion de Telecomunicaciones Iberoamericanas (OTI) and other broadcasters in 30 countries around the world. In total, Panamsat’s hybrid network delivered more than 10,000 hours of live coverage and recorded highlights of the games to viewers in Asia, Europe, Africa and throughout the Americas.

The Games were transmitted to 45 OTI member broadcasters from 20 Latin American countries. The Pas 1R, Pas 3, Pas 9 and Galaxy 4R satellites served as bridges to the region for the programming from Athens. In total, Panamsat offered 17 different paths for broadcasters from around the world to use in the transmission of the games to their home countries.

With full service to broadcast clients now in mind, Panamsat offered a remote teleport with engineering, operations and project management that supported live coverage and recorded highlights of the event. Broadcasters were also able to use VoIP solutions that delivered voice and data connectivity.

HDTV and Special Events

With the advent of HDTV, bandwidth requirements are on the rise. Couple that element with special events and now there are broadcasters who are seeking more enhanced services because they have more bandwidth at their disposal. "Broadcasters are continually using more digital feeds. Now with the advent of HDTV coming, they are transitioning to larger bandwidth requirements and looking to supplement their programming services with other allocations such as VoIP," adds Palaia.

There was an HDTV broadcasting element to some of the content from the Summer Olympics, but it did not make as significant a splash as some broadcasters and content service providers had hoped. But HDTV is on the horizon. It is only a matter of time before the bandwidth-rich platform opens even more revenue-generating opportunities for both satellite service providers and broadcasters.

Broadcasters are a lot more demanding than they used to be, requiring not only satellite space but also a strategic partnership with its content service provider. Satellite executives are answering this call and providing this business segment with the tools that they need to successfully transmit today’s news, events and information worldwide.

Nick Mitsis is editor of Via Satellite magazine. He also sits on the board of SSPI’s Mid-Atlantic chapter.