Football League Show

“Real football for real fans”. A demanding weekly football highlights show on BBC1.

When IMG sports media won the BBC Football league show in 2009 it required an ambitious and complicated technical solution, involving devolved production across three different locations. The show involved four different elements:-

– The capture and distribution of every football league match to the IMG edit facilities and all the football leagues rights holders.

– The ingest, logging & edit of the Championship games and packages at the BT Tower.

– The ingest logging & edit of the League 1 & 2 games and packages at Arqiva in Hertfordshire.

– The compilation & playing of all the show elements at the Studio at Media House in Chiswick.

To deliver this remarkable proposition, IMG & co-production partner BT turned to Timeline TV. Timeline designed and delivered a wide area tapeless ingest and logging solution based on IP Director. Each site is equipped with EVS IP Director & LSM networks. The IP Directors at the three sites are linked over the internet allowing log sheets created at Arqiva to automatically update the ones at BT Tower & Mediahouse.

Content Workflow

BT coordinate the filming and distribution of every match to all FL rights holders and media partners. A rough cut version containing the vital elements of every match is made available in a linear video exchange funneled through the international gateway at BT Tower. This “Goals Exchange” occurs between 18:30 and 20:30 every Saturday. Timeline ingest these onto BT’s Avid Unity, the Arqiva X-SAN and an EVS LSM at mediahouse for disaster recovery purposes. Timeline run the entire post production operation at Arqiva which generates all of the League 1 and 2 content. When BT and Arqiva have finished cutting their packages they are fed down to the Timeline EVS operator at the studio, where he then plays them live into the show.

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