[Satellite News 12-08-08] Arqiva’s occasional-use satellite and Web distribution services helped The Armenia Fund’s Thanksgiving telethon raise a record-breaking $35 million in 2008 to help rebuild Armenia.
    Produced on two stages from the PBS Los Angeles KCTC studio, the 12-hour telethon features interviews with celebrities, Armenia Fund supporters and political leaders from Armenia and the Diaspora as well as progress reports on Armenia Fund projects and shares stories of lives impacted by them. Since it first aired in 1996, the telethon has raised over $110 million dollars for large-scale infrastructure development projects.
    “The demands and needs of the telethon are critical,” Armenia Fund Director of Development, Greg Boyrazian told Satellite News. “It is a live television production that broadcasts 12 hours non-stop and on a holiday. We have a massive amount of performers, schools, universities, local businesses, volunteers and clubs involved.”
    Simon Thrush, senior vice president and head of Arqiva’s U.S. operations, said his company delivered the broadcast solution Armenia Fund needed after extensive planning. “Because an event like this is so important, we do a huge amount of planning behind the scenes,” Thrush said. “Therefore, we plan for most eventualities. Something can always go wrong. You could lose a live feed or you may have some issues with the web streaming service. So, we have a back up for everything. There shouldn’t be a great deal that goes wrong once you’re up and going live.”
    The infrastructure for the production is simple compared to similar events. The telethon broadcasts from two satellites — one for domestic U.S. viewers and one for international viewers. In the United States, Arqiva’s satellite media division delivers a solution to numerous high-powered satellite and cable stations which includes technicians, a bookings office, a single point of contact for each customer and 24-hour support in the master control room and help desk. Arqiva’s in-house fiber network links from Los Angeles to its Washington D.C. facility eliminates the need for additional vendors and subcontractors and makes the infrastructure economically viable for a non-profit like Armenia Fund.
    Boyrazian said that in addition to cost, the quality of the signal delivered to these stations was important. “Arqiva was instrumental in coordinating and arranging a series of satellite tests and we worked extensively with them,” he said.
    This year’s telethon went off without a hitch in the United States, Boyrazian said. “I was amazed. My cell phone and the telephone in the master control room never rang. I had to call the TV stations to make sure they were receiving the telethon. When they told me they were and I asked them why they didn’t call me, they told me they didn’t need to. That was a first.”
    Thrush said Arqiva encountered little problems on its end as well. “It was seamless for us,” he said. “Once the infrastructure is set up and working, we have less than half-a-dozen people actively involved in making sure it’s going according to plan.”
    Another major factor in the telethon’s development is the live webcast element of the event, also provided by Arqiva. “This year, the Armenia Fund decided that we would stream the event on the Web in two formats and in two speeds — one for high-speed connections and the other for dial-up users,” said Boyrazian. “Most importantly, we decided to do the event in Flash and Windows Media Player for compatibility on both Apple and PC. This led to an increase in online donations of 25 percent.”
    Using real-time encoding to support the wide variety of media formats, Arqiva was able to ingest and distribute Web content to and from any part of the world, including soldiers deployed in Afghanistan and Armenia itself, according to Boyrazian.
    “Although this event is facilitated by people living outside of Armenia, you could say that this is the Super Bowl of Armenia,” he said. “Almost everyone is tuned in and watching. Their local public broadcasting station gets the downlink directly from Arqiva and transmits that signal across Armenia top to bottom. They also take that signal and they send it back up to Europe so that households in France and England can watch the Armenian feed via satellite and cable networks.”
     Boyrazian said that because Armenia Fund is able to accomplish all of this through one one fiber line leaving the KCTC studio, it gives them much more time to focus on fundraising.
    For Arqiva, the Armenia Fund telethon is the longest consistently running occasional-use event of the year for the company. “Unless we are covering a sporting event like cricket, we generally don’t have an occasional use event that lasts 12 hours. They’re usually only two to three hours,” said Thrush.
    Occasional-use events made November a record-setting month for Arqiva, and the company’s next big event will be the inauguration of president-elect Barack Obama in January, an event that is expected to draw 5 million people to an area just blocks away from Arqiva’s facility and Thrush’s office. “You could say we’re conveniently located for the event, but with that many people coming to the city, I may take those days off.”