Red Bee Launches Oz Broadcast Centre

[dtvone]

The face behind Australian Television could be on the verge of a massive revolution, if negotiations are successfully completed between RED BEE and Australian Broadcasters.

RED BEE started life as "BBC Broadcast" which was created by the BBC to handle their on-air playout and internet presence. BBC Broadcast was later bought by Macquarie Capital Alliance Group and Macquarie Bank, it was then renamed Red Bee.

RED BEE offer a very comprehensive range of broadcast services..

Red Bee website

http://www.redbeemedia.com/

Report from the News Section from SMPTE org

http://smpte.org.au/industrynews.asp#606

"Red Bee Media has announced the launch of Red Bee Media Australia. This will include subject to finalisation of contracts, opening a state-of-the-art Broadcast Centre in Australia in 2008, which will bring together all of Red Bee Media’s existing Sydney operations into a new multi-client facility. The facility will use similar media management and playout technology to Red Bee Media's existing world class facility in London, UK."

SBS to use RED BEE for MEDIA MANAGEMENT & PLAYOUT

"Red Bee Media has been appointed, subject to finalisation of contracts, by the SBS Corporation (SBS) to provide outsourced playout and digital media management services. SBS is the first of the main broadcasters in Australia to outsource these types of services."

Wiki History of Red Bee

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Bee_Media

RED BEE PRESS RELEASE

http://www.redbeemedia.com/press/2007/aust...st_centre.shtml

['ct']

We watch with interest.

That is all I can honestly say at this time apart from the playout facilities that were cobbled together in 2000 for the launch of digital were and are a mess and antiquated pile of rubbish, even before it even went to air, hence the sbs decision to replace and now outsource it.

[dtvone]

We watch with interest.

Indeed we do...

Anyone care to speculate as to whether the ABC or any of the commercial networks will follow SBS's lead.

[dtvone]

http://theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,2...from=public_rss

Article from The Australian indicating Red Bee's is now targeting the ABC and Channel Nine to jump on board with SBS.

BBC offshoot sets local TV abuzz

* Peter Wilson, Europe correspondent

* March 15, 2007

CHRIS Howe flew into Australia earlier this week to begin overseeing the creation of a new broadcasting centre, which has already won the right to put SBS broadcasts to air and is now discussing similar deals with bigger Australian broadcasters.

The ABC and the Nine network are the obvious targets for Red Bee, the British production house for which Howe is designing Australia's most advanced facility on the ABC's old site at Sydney's Gore Hill.

"We have non-disclosure agreements with the networks we are talking to, so I can't be specific. But yes, we would hope to work with the major broadcasters in Australia," Howe told Media in London before leaving for Australia.

The ABC is an obvious candidate to outsource some of its broadcasting services to Red Bee, which began life as the production arm of the BBC and last week got its foot in the door of Australian public broadcasting by being named as SBS's preferred supplier of key production and digital media management services.

The appointment of Nine's former chief operating officer Mick Morris as Red Bee's new managing director in Australia has also raised industry expectations that Nine will follow SBS in outsourcing work to Red Bee.

Red Bee, which was hived off by the BBC in 2002 and bought by the Macquarie Bank and the Macquarie Capital Alliance Group three years later, already does some captioning work for the Seven network but Australia's other big broadcaster, Ten, has recently invested in its own pre-broadcast facilities so it is less likely to sign up with Red Bee.

Howe, the 44-year-old broadcasting engineer who was the architect of Red Bee's hi-tech production facility in London, has the job of designing a similar centre in Sydney, which could become the national hub of playout, the process of stringing together separate programs, advertisements and promotions into the integrated stream of material that goes to air as a television channel.

"This is the most advanced broadcast facility in Europe, if not the world," Howe said during a tour of the west London facility, "and the one in Sydney will be a smaller version with similar technologies, plus what we have learned running this centre.

"There is certainly nothing like it in the Asia-Pacific region and I'm not aware of anything as advanced anywhere in the world."

Howe, Red Bee's director of emerging technologies, says the goal when planning the London centre was "designing technological architecture and working systems that would be future-proof".

"And I think we managed to do it. It is not restricted to any single technology or any single platform, and it was put together right from the start as a multi-client facility."

That means it can make content available to any platform, from traditional TV to mobile phones or broadband internet services, and it can churn out services for any number of competing broadcasters.

"We could see then that an era of delivering content to multiple platforms was coming, and that era has arrived," he said.

Technicians and editorial managers in two playout suites at the west London centre put together the best-funded public broadcasting TV channels in the world, BBC1 and BBC2, while other specialists use 12 editing suites and scores of workstations to create promotions, advertisements and access services such as subtitling, signing and audio description.

Howe has already visited Australia half a dozen times in the past year and will spend a lot more time in the country as the new facility takes shape in a five-storey building at Gore Hill. It will be based on the layout of the west London centre, which has teams of editors and producers working one floor above a technological warehouse crammed with row after row of racks holding the equipment that stores and processes their material.

The people producing BBC World's TV broadcasts, for instance, are directly above the databanks and other equipment they use, a system that allows more than 70 channels to be produced side by side and minimises the length of the cables linking each team to its equipment, thereby helping to maintain the quality of the internal links.

In another room a large bank of electronic archives stores hundreds of thousands of hours of programming in digital form, allowing editors to call up material instantly, rather than sending couriers scurrying into distant storage centres in search of old-style tapes.

"We are now ingesting 26,000 hours of programs for Virgin Media from old Beta tapes into the digital databanks," Howe said.

"Once it is in digital form it will be easily searchable and accessible and totally safe, and we will be able to do automatically a lot of things we have to do more laboriously now, like check before broadcast whether the flashing lights in a certain segment will cause problems for epileptics.

"In Australia we will get all of SBS's old tapes digitised and into new archives."

The Australian venture is the first big expansion for Red Bee, which has 1400 employees in Britain and plans new operations in Europe, Asia and the US. Macquarie executives say they are happy with Red Bee's financial progress, which in the six months to December 31, 2006, saw a 12.3 per cent year-on-year increase in revenue to pound stg. 62.1 million ($153 million).

Red Bee's unusual name is a nod to its heritage. As the BBC's in-house production department it was known as BBC Broadcast or BBCB, and it always used red as its corporate colour. An in-house brain-storming session came up with the idea that part of the group's role was to help viewers navigate their way through the digital world, hence the rather tenuous link to the bee, one of nature's great navigators.

['ct']

Indeed we do...

Anyone care to speculate as to whether the ABC or any of the commercial networks will follow SBS's lead.

All I know, is that approaches have been made.

And that yes, Nine and ABC are the next logical candidates, as TEN has newly installed playout facilities in house that will serve them for a while yet, and Seven is staying put at Docklands for a long time to come, too much money has been spent there already to waste it. Whereas Nine and the ABC's playout operations are now very aged by today's standards, plus are ripe for centralisation when and if that ever occurs. I am guessing that Nine will jump aboard next, as rumoured moves to North Ryde have not occured yet for TCN.

Things are changing very quickly these days.

ct

[dtvone]

All I know, is that approaches have been made.

And that yes, Nine and ABC are the next logical candidates, as TEN has newly installed playout facilities in house that will serve them for a while yet, and Seven is staying put at Docklands for a long time to come, too much money has been spent there already to waste it.

ct

I think you are on the money, TEN and SEVEN are not likely to be candidates... at least ATM

http://www.smpte.org.au/industrynews.asp#607

TEN Signs with Vizrt for US$6.7 Million deal to provide a comprehensive Media Asset Management

I suspect that if a broadcaster only wanted/needed to broadcast their free to air product then in-house presentation would offer the best economics. If however they need/want to an internet presence for vodcasts etc then outsourcing as SBS is doing makes more sense, the size of the internet pipe needed is very hard to predict, underestimate and your viewers would only get timeouts, I understand the ABC has run into this problem with their podcasts and overestimate and you could wasting significant money.

I suspect at least one commercial network would need to join RED BEE before it becomes a viable proposition.

['ct']

I think you are on the money, TEN and SEVEN are not likely to be candidates... at least ATM

I suspect at least one commercial network would need to join RED BEE before it becomes a viable proposition.

The contract with SBS is yet to be finalised and signed.

As of last week, Red Bee still has not found a building, despite talk of buying the old ABC Fort Knox building at Gore Hill.

They are working out of an office in Haymarket at the moment.

[dtvone]

The contract with SBS is yet to be finalised and signed.

Not according to The Australian and it would appear that Channel Nine is about join SBS with a move to outsourcing its On-Air.

Nine will also move from its present headquarters in Sydney's northern suburb of Willoughby and Melbourne's Richmond for the first time since it was founded in 1956, Nine's new chiefs told Media yesterday.

A range of new business models are being considered, including a move to a more automated delivery platform and the outsourcing of its playout functions, as has already been done by SBS.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story...56-7582,00.html

[digitalj]

Not according to The Australian and it would appear that Channel Nine is about join SBS with a move to outsourcing its On-Air.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story...56-7582,00.html

You do realise the post you replied to is 1.5 months old?

['ct']

Not according to The Australian and it would appear that Channel Nine is about join SBS with a move to outsourcing its On-Air.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story...56-7582,00.html

I wrote that weeks ago. Apart from The Australian which makes no mention of contract finalisation, Red Bee have begun advertising to fill vacancies, which is a sure sign that SBS may well have signed contracts with Red Bee since my post in late April. I have had no update on Red Bee for well over a month now anyway.

There is no guarantee that Nine will contract Red Bee to take over program playout. There has been whispers around for well over the past year, that Nine program playout is to move in with Foxtel at North Ryde.

Anything can happen at the moment, as yet the new owners of Nine (CVC) have yet to show their hands at what is going to happen, as the deal has only just happened.

I think Nine is a bit pre-occupied corporate wise with what it is going to do with NBN first, and the continuing sage over WIN's affiliation renewal and then move on from there, just a guess. The current managment of Nine is still in place, and will most likely stay in place, even with the new owners in charge. Even though PBL no longer has majority control, they will still have seats on the Nine Board, including James Packer, thus meaning PBL will still have some influence for some time to come at Nine still.

['ct']

contracts are still yet to be signed between red bee and sbs i believe

still not a done deal

[lizclinton]

Is it just me or is SBS,s PQ a lot better lately. I thought they may have started play out from Gore Hill already.

['ct']

Is it just me or is SBS,s PQ a lot better lately. I thought they may have started play out from Gore Hill already.

SBS has still not finalised contracts with Red Bee.

Red Bee only announced last week the building of a playout centre near Sydney Airport at Rosebery.

This is not due to open until at least June 2008.

ct

[dtvone]

SBS has still not finalised contracts with Red Bee.

Red Bee only announced last week the building of a playout centre near Sydney Airport at Rosebery.

This is not due to open until at least June 2008.

ct

Newspaper article from the australian outlining the current state of play, confirming CTs comments.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story...03-7582,00.html

['ct']

The deal has fallen over, contracts never finalised, SBS is now not outsourcing to Red Bee as announced today by SBS.

Edited February 28, 2008 by 'ct'

[digitalj]

The deal has fallen over, contracts never finalised, SBS is now not outsourcing to Red Bee as announced today by SBS.

will they still be doing 720p?

['ct']

will they still be doing 720p?

Who knows, doubtful as the current playout centre is way past its used by date.

It was only ever designed and equiped for SD, with no HD playout of any kind, with the current 576p so-called HD upconvert being a fulltime downconvert of the 576i streams. For SBS to even do HD now would require lots of native HD switching infrastructure which they do not have, plus HD servers, HD vtrs, etc, very unlikely at the moment.

Edited February 28, 2008 by 'ct'

[redgum21]

The deal has fallen over, contracts never finalised, SBS is now not outsourcing to Red Bee as announced today by SBS.

Shame. It will now become a boring technical dialogue, rather than some of the good stuff they could have done like Red Bee do in Europe - Soccer on TV etc.

SBS - 'same boring service'?

['ct']

Shame. It will now become a boring technical dialogue, rather than some of the good stuff they could have done like Red Bee do in Europe - Soccer on TV etc.

SBS - 'same boring service'?

Don't give up yet, as SBS may still outsource, but not to Red Bee. The BBC way of doings things and the way SBS do things would been a messy recipe.

Edited February 28, 2008 by 'ct'

[redgum21]

Don't give up yet, as SBS may still outsource, but not to Red Bee. The BBC way of doings things and the way SBS do things would been a messy recipe.

Cant see any announcements on SBS website - anyone else?

['ct']

Cant see any announcements on SBS website - anyone else?

Was announced via internal sbs memo.

The corporate sections of the sbs website has not been updated for many months now, maybe there is no-one left at sbs to do it anymore?

And anyway, go look at the redbeemedia.com.au website, all mentions of the now axed sbs prefered supplier contract have been removed from their website as well today, that too is another confirmation the deal is off/dead.

Edited February 28, 2008 by 'ct'

[dtvone]

Cant see any announcements on SBS website - anyone else?

the deal is off/dead.

No doubt about it, and as always google is our friend, found a copy of the press release @

http://www.tvtonight.com.au/2008/02/sbs-dr...dcaster_28.html

also listed in the Media section of The Australian

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story...16-7582,00.html

Edited February 28, 2008 by dtvone

[1.21gW]

Don't give up yet, as SBS may still outsource, but not to Red Bee. The BBC way of doings things and the way SBS do things would been a messy recipe.

Well I say good ridence....about time people in this country got wise to the weakness of outsourcing everything

[redgum21]

Well I say good ridence....about time people in this country got wise to the weakness of outsourcing everything

If you look at the Red Bee .com Website for what Red BVee does - I think its actually a great shame that SBS won't be using the Red Bee model. It isnt just about outsourcing facilities, equipment and boxes. It's that, but it would also have given the SBS the ability to provide content across different platforms (MobileTV, Net etc), and to really syand out and be different. This would have also given support to SBS's own income - people would pay for SBS content/downloads, it would have attracted significant advertsing opportunities, etc. etc.

In turn, this would probably have created more SBS jobs, and given SBS the ability to service even more types and styles of multicultural viewers.

Someone wants shooting at SBS - a whole year wasted, thats Government and public money, and now all this will be lost in quick decisions on boxes and equipment based on technical crieria only, rather than business.

A victory for the for the engineers in cardigans.

['ct']

If you look at the Red Bee .com Website for what Red BVee does - I think its actually a great shame that SBS won't be using the Red Bee model. It isnt just about outsourcing facilities, equipment and boxes. It's that, but it would also have given the SBS the ability to provide content across different platforms (MobileTV, Net etc), and to really syand out and be different. This would have also given support to SBS's own income - people would pay for SBS content/downloads, it would have attracted significant advertsing opportunities, etc. etc.

In turn, this would probably have created more SBS jobs, and given SBS the ability to service even more types and styles of multicultural viewers.

Someone wants shooting at SBS - a whole year wasted, thats Government and public money, and now all this will be lost in quick decisions on boxes and equipment based on technical crieria only, rather than business.

A victory for the for the engineers in cardigans.

Hingstra has long left if you are speaking of cardigans. And where are the engineers thesedays anyway, long, long gone, sad to say. Mostly IT poeple nowadays.

SBS can do better and outsource partner with someone else.

Edited March 5, 2008 by 'ct'