Bringing the Irish National Elections Coverage Alive

CONTINUING THE POLITICS THEME…..

RTÉ is another broadcaster to rise to the coverage challenge posed by national election night – last-minute, countrywide activity from often remote locations – by turning to LiveU. The broadcaster deployed 13 units across the Republic to bring the unfolding events of the late February night to viewers. The project was overseen by LiveU partner Tyrell.

RTÉ, already a LiveU customer, was eager to increase its election night coverage and to bring a greater sense of dynamism and connection to events using live feeds from declaration centers. Outside the major urban areas, cellular coverage across the country is very poor to non-existent.

Piotr Kaszynski, Head of News Technology with RTE, said, “The paucity of cellular coverage is the reason why we decided to deploy LiveU technology with Ka-Sat connectivity. Streams from 13 LiveU count centers were connected to an HD SDI switcher and were available at all times in our three production galleries – two Hub Studio galleries and 1 transmission studio. We also recorded all incoming streams from LiveU encoders. IFB was integrated directly from our trackback system to LiveU servers.”

Tyrell worked closely with RTÉ, using its knowledge of the broadcaster’s workflows and LiveU technology to provide server integration, maintenance, support, and logistics.

Kaszynski said, “This was a great success and really benefitted our editorial output. We delivered a huge amount of live content to our viewers, be that broadcast or online.”

This deployment shows the flexibility of LiveU’s solutions whereby if cellular coverage is so poor or non-existent then Ka-Sat is a very viable alternative. Elections provide a real challenge for broadcasters and LiveU’s technology – as evidenced by multiple election deployments – allows broadcasters to think differently.

Now the political spotlight is definitely on the US with the Republican and Democratic National Conventions taking place next month. Look out for the LiveU units covering the events.