DENVER—The Heartland Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences covers a large section of the western U.S.—Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Wyoming. When it comes time to honor the chapter with the annual Heartland Emmy Award presentations, galas are held simultaneously from venues in Denver and Oklahoma City. For the past five years Denver Media Center has produced live coverage of the presentations,
including pre-show edits and live direction.
DMC managed streams from the Heartland Emmy Awards in Denver and Oklahoma City with the help of TVU’s One IP transmitter.
To give attendees at both locations a look at what is happening at the other, we’ve been using a TVU transmitter in Denver and TVU Networks’ receive in Oklahoma City. This set-up allowed Oklahoma City attendees to see what was happening live in Denver, but it didn’t allow Denver attendees to see any of the red carpet action or award winners in Oklahoma City.
Last year, we decided to make our coverage more dynamic and more effectively reflect the dual-location of the gala with real-time live feeds from each location. To do this, we updated our TVU equipment to the TVU One Live mobile IP transmitter with integrated HEVC compression.
The new TVU One units feature TVU’s patented Inverse Statmux Plus (IS+) transmission algorithm, allowing it to deliver HD quality video with half-second latency over multiple mediums, including cellular, microwave, satellite, BGAN, Wi-Fi and Ethernet.
Using one TVU One in Denver and another in Oklahoma City, with a TVU Receiver in each location, we could switch coverage of the 2017 galas live between the two venues to air on the chapter’s Facebook page via Facebook Live.
The receiver in Oklahoma City took in the master feed from Denver. Using the TVU One transmitters, feeds from both locations were distributed to create the live master feed, which was switched and streamed to Facebook Live out of Denver. Adding a receiver in both locations and transmitter in Oklahoma City really opened up the back and forth creating a more exciting main show, including speeches from award winners and red carpet coverage from Oklahoma City.
The last couple of years had seen a dip in participation in the awards gala in part because of the challenges with simultaneous coverage. But this past year’s efforts helped flip the script and the amount of views on the Heartland Emmy Facebook page for this year’s gala back that up. We’ve received over 1,000 views on Facebook, which includes a growing number from areas that were not previously engaged with the event.
Since the Facebook Live stream from both locales this year, we’ve seen participation rise dramatically from the Oklahoma City chapter. The number of new members submitting work for award consideration has gone from very little to where they’re now a huge part of our membership. I strongly believe the use of the updated TV One IP transmitters was key for that growth.
Nick Arnold is co-owner of the Denver Media Center. He can be contacted at narnold@yghdtv.com.
For more information, please visit www.tvunetworks.com or call 650-969-6732.
