IBC2007 honored innovation in the industry Sunday (Sept. 10).
CNN came away with two prizes for its coverage of the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict in Lebanon in 2006, winning the Judges’ prize, which covers technology applications that combine content creation, management and delivery, plus one of three IBC Innovation Awards for content creation.
In the war, journalists filed hundreds of live reports, using portable backpack IP transmission in tandem with conventional satellite uplinks from remote locations close to the action, said the judges. The result was a new level of sophistication to on-the-scene reports. Technically, it is the first complete newsgathering tool that works over any existing IP infrastructure, giving the journalists immediate live and video FTP submission, real-time content monitoring, editing and voice communication, the IBC judges said.
“Without the tireless efforts of dozens of CNN staff and the help and co-operation of our partners—Apple, Galaxy-1 Communications, Hughes Network Systems, Inmarsat, L-3 Global Communications Solutions, Streambox and Vizada—we could never have made the DNG system and workflow such a magnificent newsgathering tool and a pre-eminent success,” said Dick Tauber, vice president of transmission systems and new technology for CNN News Group.
He also paid tribute to one of the members of the CNN team on the project, Dan Young, director of CNN/U.S. field operations and 24-year network veteran, who died in August 2006 of leukemia at age 47.
On the short list for the Innovation Award for Content Creation was a project involving basketball in high-definition 3D. In February, the NAB and Pace HD produced the NBA All-Star Game in “3D HD” and relayed it across Las Vegas to a private audience at the Mandalay Bay Hotel; In June, they repeated the trick, showing a playoff game played in San Antonio to 14,000 fans in Cleveland (see related story in the Sept. 19 issue of TV Technology).
The other Innovation Awards went to the instant tapeless production system at Luxemburg-based RTL-TVi, for content management, and to U.K.-based ITN’s NeMeSys, for content delivery.
The BBC Natural History Unit, celebrating its 50th anniversary year, received a special IBC award for its remarkable contribution to wildlife documentaries.
The Chairman of the IBC Partnership Board, Michael Bunce, presented the IBC2007 International Honour for Excellence to Steve Wozniak, one of the founders of Apple, during a conference session on Friday morning.
The prize for best technical paper went to Robert Porter and others from from Sony Broadcast and Professional Research Labs UK, for “Sports Content Creation With Intelligent Image Processing.”
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