ARD consolidated the production management of its major sporting events centrally at broadcaster WDR’s Sportschau Campus in Cologne earlier this year with the creation of Sportshub. This means the broadcasters under the ARD wing, including WDR and Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR), are more easily able to coordinate and work smoothly and effectively with ZDF through the centralised facility, as well as benefitting from cost reductions and the smarter use of technology, such as cloud solutions.
Live ARD Women’s Euro coverage is appearing on ARD’s nationwide Das Erste channel. Das Erste broadcasts nationwide 24 hours a day, but the schedule includes four and a half hours of joint programming with ZDF each weekday, in the form of the news programmes Morgenmagazin and Mittagsmagazin, which the two organisations take weekly turns to produce.
ARD host presenter Claus Lufen and ARD expert Almuth Schult are leading the programming from the studio in Germany, supported by commentators Stephanie Baczyk, Christina Graf, and Bernd Schmelzer directly from the stadiums in Switzerland.
A cross-media editorial team is producing ARD’s Women’s Euro content from the SportHub base and venues and hotels in Switzerland, including audio commentary and content for Sportschau.de and social media. Content for ARD Mediathek, ARD Audiothek, and other third party platforms are also managed from the SportHub.
Presentation for the semi final between Germany and Spain in Zurich on 23 July was based on-site by ARD’s hosts from a tribune presentation platform overlooking the pitch and stadium. However, the production was still handled remotely from Cologne.
Speaking to SVG Europe, André van Lengen, technical director at NDR, one of the broadcaster members of ARD and the lead on the Women’s Euro production for the group,
says: “Now we have for the German matches an OB van there, which is connected remotely to Cologne for each day. For the [German quarter final match] for instance, we had two cameras on the pitch position. One of those cameras was a wireless steadicam, which did the pres shoot on the centre of the pitch. And we had a reverse camera and also flash camera and tunnel flash, so altogether four cameras [with four operators]. These were run by a small team [onsite], with only three people in the OB van because it’s all connected remotely [to our base in Germany]. Only the shading is made on the OB van.”
On how the SportsHub operation for ARD works, Lengen says ARD’s studio uses three Ikegami HDK 79EX III cameras. The studio has three LED walls (Aoto M1.7, 1.78 mm pixel pitch) that are powered by Watchout from Ikarus.
At SportHub in Cologne, ARD’s crew for the Euro from NRD is using eight Quantel systems for editing. Adobe Premiere stations handle social media content.
Due to system differences, the ingest infrastructure is split with: 25 ingest channels on Quantel servers; and 34 channels via three EVS Via servers for Premiere editing and clipping.
In control room B at the SportHub, three additional EVS Via servers are used for highlights, interviews, analysis, and reviews.
Importantly for ARD, its radio team delivers a wide range of daily content from the Women’s Euro, including news and live match reports.
Live from Switzerland
For matches involving the German team, ARD and ZDF both deploy additional cameras (Grass Valley LDX 135): there are two pitchside cameras for interviews, a superflash camera for post-match interviews, and a wireless Steadicam (Grass Valley LDX RF 135) for midfield shots. They also use a reverse-angle camera (99x zoom) and an extra flash camera in the player tunnel when possible.
To produce the onsite feeds live from German team matches, both broadcasters use ARD OB truck, the Ü2, which was developed by Broadcast Solutions. From Switzerland Ü2 is remotely connected to both ARD’s remote operation in Cologne, and ZDF’s in Mainz.
The OB van is based on Riedel’s Micron HD platform and is operated using a Human Interface control system. It records in 1080p50, but to make it compatible with both ARD and ZDF’s remote German operations, the output is sent in 1080i25.
ARD has one presenter and one flash reporter attached to the OB van. For the Germany versus Spain semi final on 23 July, the studio anchors went out to Switzerland to bring fans at home all the excitement from the stadium.
On site, ARD has been using five ENG crews, each of which are equipped with LiveU solutions using LiveU servers to send content back to Germany. Routing of cross-network content is handled via LiveU Matrix.
All stadium interview spots include data lines for stable LiveU transmission, rather than rely on busy mobile networks.
Audio control for the joint ZDF and ARD production is hitting a new first with standardised Open Sound Control (OSC) commands this year. Using OSC commands means existing production tools can be flexibly integrated, making it cost effective and efficient.
During the German team games, a Stagetec Avatus audio console is operated remotely by both broadcasters; the audio console is located on behalf of the ARD partnership in an NDR OB van – Ü2 – on site at whichever stadium the game is being held at. ARD remotely operates the audio console using its Stagetec Aurus console in the control room in Cologne.
This use of OSC enables the broadcasters to use mic activation and self-monitoring for reports on location, as well as enabling failover switching.
Both ZDF and ARD are using UEFA’s fully equipped commentator position offerings in the stadiums, which use Glensound systems. Both broadcasters commentator feeds are sent to the NBC before being pushed onto ARD’s location in Germany, at the SportHub in Cologne.
Behind the scenes, all interviews and audio content are bundled at the SportHub in Cologne, processed in the cloud, and made accessible to editors in Switzerland to allow for fast publishing across radio, web, and social.
Lengen concludes on how the planning for this joint production has gone: “I mean it’s always a long process because there are many different steps, from the rights being awarded, to the broadcaster meeting, which was in March. So mainly we started in January or February, but in between I personally had time to make different productions, so for example other football games. It’s been really good.”
