Following a restructuring of the "ARD-Mittagsmagazin", Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk MDR has been responsible for the program's extended program on a weekly basis with ZDF since the beginning of the year. The new Studio 1 went into operation on May 27, 2024. The television broadcasting operations of Norddeutscher Rundfunk and Radio Bremen were relocated to MDR in Leipzig at the end of April 2024. We took a look around there.

Frédéric Fiévez ascends to COO of BCE, entrusted with leading operations and services development to align with BCE’s strategic vision.

For the live broadcast of "The Finals Rhein-Ruhr 2023" in Düsseldorf and Duisburg, ARD and ZDF put together a joint production. The article provides a behind-the-scenes look at how the presenter positions were realized and the bouldering competitions were broadcasted. The presenter position of ARD and ZDF was located at the beginning of the high jump facility directly on the lower quay wall to the Rhine. Jessy Wellmer (ARD) and Sven Voss (ZDF) were covered with two Ikegami cameras on pump stands. The technology came from a WDR SNG unit of WDR. To illuminate the sports presenters against the sun, four 2-kW fresnel spotlights with daylight and barn doors were used on stands.

The German Championships in 18 sports took place as "The Finals Rhein-Ruhr 2023" on the second weekend of July in Düsseldorf and Duisburg. To optimally showcase the four-day event at the nine venues, ARD and ZDF had developed a joint production plan months in advance. Bernhard Herrmann examined the elaborate TV production and technology in front of and behind the cameras.

Retroactive to January 1, 2024, TVN LIVE PRODUCTION GmbH is taking over the TV production company TopVision Telekommunikation GmbH & Co. KG. The brand, the company headquarters in Berlin and the management will be retained.

As European League of Football (ELF) continues to expand its footprint, onboarding several new teams in the last year, more fans want to tune into live matches via the official ELF homepage stream as well as popular European TV networks such as ProSieben, ran.de, More Than Sports TV and more. To accommodate an increasing volume of match broadcasts across networks, streamline production, and ensure a high-quality, low-latency viewer experience, ELF began looking to sustainably scale its production infrastructure with an assist from Amazon Web Services (AWS). Together with ELF’s production and streaming partner Novel Media and AWS Partner LOGIC media solutions GmbH, AWS helped realize a cost-efficient, cloud-based remote production pipeline for the league in under three weeks, just before the start of the 2023 season in June. The collaboration marks the first of its kind for a pan-European sports league. 

Long-time LiveU user and UK-based production company Over Exposed, turned to LiveU once again to create dynamic, viewer-engaging and highly cost-effective, 5G remote production coverage of the recent, iconic Vitality London 10K run. The run also integrated the British 10K Championships.
 

If you wanted to watch all 51 matches of the UEFA EURO 2020 on screen this summer, in Germany you had to turn to MagentaTV. All matches were offered there in UHD and Dolby 5.1. As the service provider, Plazamedia was responsible for the studio production. Bernhard Herrmann was there for our issue 9.2021 in the nerve-racking 2-2 between Germany and Hungary.
 

TVN MOBILE PRODUCTION has travelled to St. Petersburg, Russia, with around 65 people and mobile technology. On behalf of UEFA, the TV service provider from Hanover, Germany will produce the TV pictures of a total of seven matches of the European Football Championship UEFA EURO 2020/21. The first live broadcast for TVN will take place on June 12.
 

Estonian rental company Strikken supplied the lighting design and production design and equipment for the Power Stage Live TV podium, which welcomed the 2020 winners of Rally Estonia event – part of the World Rally Championship (WRC) – and was set up close to the final stage finish line, near Rally Estonia’s HQ in Tartu. They relied on the power and versatility of Robe moving lights including LEDWash 300s, LEDWash 800s and MMX Spots to deliver spectacular looking results. The luminaires were picked for their compact size, light weight, and brightness, and all rigged on the stage ground support structure together with some outrigged pipes facilitating the front positions.

The 2021 LPL Spring Season Finals kicked off in Wuhan. And the League of Legends lovers from all over the world will once again gather their eyes on this city of heroes. Ten playoff teams struggled for a championship spot.

Grass Valley announces that Electronic Arts Competitive Gaming Entertainment (CGE), the company’s esports division, selected GV AMPP (Agile Media Processing Platform) to enable fully distributed, remote production for its major competitive gaming events EA SPORTS™ FIFA 21 and Apex Legends. The end-to-end cloud workflow allows EA to deliver broadcast quality storytelling to its global fanbase – with a production team working from their respective homes – regardless of where the live tournament is taking place. In an industry first, the workflow utilizes Grass Valley’s GV Korona switcher control panel connected over the public internet to a K-Frame production center engine running on GV AMPP. GV AMPP is part of the company’s GV Media Universe, a comprehensive ecosystem of connected solutions, services and marketplaces that make cloud-based media workflows a reality. The Grass Valley system will be used on an ongoing basis for the 2020-2021 FIFA World Cup qualifying tournaments.

With 100 Days to Go to the Opening Ceremony, there are still about 15 test events for the Olympic and Paralympic Games still to be held, mostly under the READY, STEADY, TOKYO banner. The test events act as dress rehearsals for all parts of the competition, from the running of the tournament to logistical and operational capabilities so that when the Games come around, everything proceeds smoothly.However, the status of test event in artistic swimming is still to be confirmed following their initial cancellation by aquatics international federation FINA. It was originally cancelled alongside the diving test event, a Diving World Cup event, before that was re-instated following discussions involving all parties.

Producing the Formula 1 for TV is, besides the production challenges as such, a logistical tour de force. Production equipment needs to travel around the world preceding the racing circus and must always be on-site and ready for use at the right time. To have an optimal and quickly operational solution at the race tracks, NEP Germany relies on a new container solution to transmit signals from the pit lane and for interviews alike. From this season onwards, broadcaster Servus TV acquired the rights to broadcast Formula 1, and NEP Germany is acting as a production service provider to the Austrian network. The new container solution is a mobile production studio, installed in an extendable air freight container that NEP developed together with Broadcast Solutions. Interacting with additional air freight containers that function as “set-up vehicles”, so to speak, they travel around the world during the Formula 1 season.

Considered the ‘pinnacle of yachting’, the America’s Cup is not only the oldest but also the most difficult sports trophy to win. The 2021 Cup, which took place in the Hauraki Gulf off the coast of Auckland, saw the defender Emirates Team New Zealand race against the challenger Luna Rossa PRADA Pirelli, winning by 7:3. Communications specialist Riedel was entrusted with the overarching technology concept for broadcast and race management for the host broadcast partner circle-o. To complement its hardware and software technologies, Riedel deployed custom-made Sennheiser microphones for the coverage of the prestigious sailing event, which saw the two innovative German companies collaborate closely on this extraordinary project.