Eurovision 2011 - 10/12/14 May 2011

Do you mean just the Song Contest or Eurovision/EBU as a whole?

I'd be siding on the side of poppycock...
The contest itself is uplinked to some EBU satellite space, both from a satellite truck at the venue, and also fibred to a remote uplink - somewhere outside Paris in this case. The host broadcaster also provides bookable unilateral feed points - the BBC used these during the semifinals for Paddy and Sarah's presentation.
On the night, the BBC just had a pair of commentary booths (one for TV, one for radio), with ISDN links back to London.
The only transmission involved was for the voting segment. The EBU set aside 8 satellite channels, and each of the 39 voting countries accesses the satellite in rotation. One talkback circuit tells each country's CNCT (national technical coordination centres) when to access the satellite, and a second one is sent to each studio so the presenters can be briefed, and the shots lined up to match each other.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,698061,00.html

Worth a read!

I must admit, the whole ebu thing seems a bit confusing - what else do they do?

ash

thanks for the info!

ash

Quite a lot. (And if you think of the EBU as just a club of broadcasters, run by broadcasters, to benefit from the scale of their individual efforts as a whole, it works quite well)

They run the EVN Eurovision Video News exchange service, which is how a large number of European countries share video footage of national stories. The BBC use EVN along with APTN and Reuters to source pictures of events they didn't have crews at themselves (or to improve the coverage where they did). If there is a big story in Paris, then BBC are likely to use pictures supplied by France Television provided by EVN, for instance.

The EBU also, until very recently, negotiated a deal for Olympics sports rights for their members, such that the EBU gained pan-European rights, rather than each individual country negotiating with the IOC for individual rights. They then provided lots of technical assistance in back-hauling the multilateral (host feeds) and unilateral (individual broadcaster feeds) back to Europe, as well as providing streaming services for smaller broadcasters who may not have had them. Unfortunately this deal has now stopped - with the IOC instead negotiating individually, which could mean some EBU primary members no longer have the rights to show the Olympics...

The EBU, as an association of European (and near-European) broadcasters also plays a very strong role in standardisation of technical standards, and also in ensuring that all its members have access to good quality information about the latest broadcast standards, and makes recommendations to its members about what should be used for a given quality level etc.

It's a pretty useful "club" for European broadcasters - and is a good example of European (and near-European) co-operation, independent of a political organisation. (It isn't part of the EU - and includes broadcasters from Europe who are not in the EU - Norway, Switzerland etc. - as well as broadcasters in North Africa, the near Middle-East etc.)

Indeed - they're based in Geneva.

That's probably a far better description than I could muster (and I deal with them pretty frequently) - but you may be able to find more of interest on www.eurovision.net (for the operational part) and www.ebu.ch (for the wider organisation and technical standards).

On the news side, if there's a big event happening somewhere, they'll arrange a camera and and uplink, and sell stand-up or playout facilities in fifteen minute chunks, so all a broadcaster needs to do is send a journalist to the story. (Today, for example they've got a sat truck somewhere in the Lake District.) They'll also handle all the bookings if you want to hire a studio for a 2-way interview from pretty much anywhere in the world - for example, if you want someone in Dundee on your programme, the EBU can book the studio, the lines to London, and the satellite space.

And it's not just EBU members who can book their facilities, any broadcaster can buy their services.

Interesting. It does make me wonder that if broadcasters like NRK and NDR* struggle to afford to host the contest.... possibly it's got a bit too big? The size of the ESCs does seem to have increased in the last few years, perhaps the EBU should think about scaling them back a bit to make them affordable. Imagine if a financially troubled country like Greece, Spain or Ireland had to stump up for it?

*although couldn't NDR not persuade it's colleagues in other regions of Germany (WDR, BR etc), to co-operate with the production?

I think its time that the Two semis, get cut right back. A X factor type show would still do the semis justice and with it in a tv studio and have 3000 people only, that would cuts cost right down.

Not really as they'd have to build a completely separate set, probably in a completely different venue (even city in some cases) and accommodate 15-20 acts a night and all the broadcasters etc. How would that save money when they've got a stage set up that can handle it already?

That's a terrible idea.