We’re nearly halfway through Wimbledon and I wanted to round up a few of the things I’ve noticed thus far – as usual mostly concerning technology, broadcast coverage and nothing much to do with actual tennis.
BBC TV studio
The BBC studio is situated in the curved-bit of the media centre, directly next to Court 18, with a view across to the new No. 1 Court and the hill (Aorangi Park.)
The BBC have used a number of set designs over the years, typically the desk changes but they retain a number of plasma screens onto which are cut animated tournament logos or beauty shots such as the image from the hoist parked in a car-park at the bottom of Somerset Road or a locked-off camera attached to the (disused) water tower by the outside courts.
This year, its suddenly all very “modern” and “minimalist”. Rather than curved desks filled with yellow tennis balls, we have a big round circular one with a glass centre containing the championships logo, and a white/purple theme for the rest of the studio, metal, rather uncomfortable looking chairs with plenty of right angles and not a plasma screen in sight. Instead, there are projectors* on either side that are visible in occasional wide shots.
The other thing I noticed is that, like the studio, the Order of Play graphics have been restyled in purple and green with no BBC branding visible. BBC Sport are still branding the smaller astons and the score, but it occurs to me, given the OoP matches the look of the ‘official’ website etc, does this mean the BBC have agreed to change the graphics to simplify things for the international TV feed?
Likewise, the studio would now be suitable for coverage by any broadcast – it doesn’t feel very “BBC”ish – although it is closer to the look and feel of TC5, so have BBC Sport reached a deal with the US or other networks whereby they can use the flagship studio during what would otherwise be downtime? E.g. any time after 8pm now that Today at Wimbledon, as for the last couple of years, originates from directly above on the media centre roof.
Obviously this would depend on what is available in the way of gallery space and OB trucks, as you still need to drive the programme from somewhere, so my theory could be complete rubbish, but if anyone reading this is/was working at the championships and happens to know, I’d be very interested.
To the best of my knowledge, whilst all the kit is obviously removed straight after the tournament, the set is usually left constructed ready for the following year.
* They may not be projectors, I haven’t looked that closely or long enough to be honest, and there hasn’t been much any discussion of the set on TVForum or DigitalSpy this year (besides a discussion on the shortening of programme title sequences to fit in more trails, which is an old and depressing argument but sadly accurate.)
Radio Wimbledon on itv.com
Bit odd this one. ITV have bought rights from IMG (on behalf of the AELTC) to the (existing) live streaming from Radio Wimbledon (which has three channels, the 7am-10pm main broadcast with Nick Dye and Sam Lloyd, plus uninterrupted commentary from Centre and No. 1 courts.) However all of these already go out online free of charge (they experimented with charging for Centre and No. 1 a couple of years ago – clearly it didn’t work) globally on the internet anyway. So its difficult to see exactly what benefit this will be to fans, except perhaps making more people aware of the coverage who otherwise wouldn’t have known about it.
Err, tennis fans, presumably.
Who aren’t already using the Wimbledon website.
And haven’t heard of Radio Wimbledon before – despite the fact its been broadcasting annually since 1992.
ITV haven’t exactly put a huge effort into their online offering either – it apparently consists of links to the three feeds (which are, incidentally, exactly the same ones as used on the main site, so no scope for running targetted ads/trails within the coverage, even if the AELTC included advertising – which they don’t – although the RW playlist is always a little unusual…) a couple of slideshows entitled ‘Backhand Beauties‘ and ‘Phwoarhand Fellas‘, with a link to a recipe for strawberries and cream. Oh, fantastic stuff ITV, what superb coverage of one of the country’s biggest annual sporting events. (And why exactly are you doing this anyway?)
Adam Bowie has some thoughts on this in his blog too.
The new scoreboards
AFTER: Ugh.
The story here, if you didn’t know, is that since they put the roof back on Centre Court (I can claim to have been a spectator at the one year Centre didn’t have a roof at all, and was really a building-site that had been made safe for two weeks) there is no room for Hawk-Eye replay screens at the back of the stadium seating, so they’ve swapped out the old dot matrix screens for two Barco OLite 612s each on Centre and No.1
The Championships will feature a total of 10 displays using Barco’s OLite 612 LED panels. In addition to the 4 on court scoreboards, 4 IBM ball speed indicators will also be upgraded using the same full color OLite 612 LED panels. The traditional IBM “Match Information Displays” outside Centre Court and in the newly redesigned Tea Lawn Area overlooking the new Centre Court balconies will also use the Barco OLite panels.
Why? OK, so I’ll begrudgingly accept that the players and umpire have to be able to see the Hawk-Eye footage (who cares about the crowd, really), but please tell me what is the point of replacing a simple box that only ever show’s a tennis ball’s speed in mph with a sodding LED panel. Likewise, there was absolutely nothing wrong with the displays around the grounds – they just display the scores from each court on a carousel with occasional crowd messages – indeed they fitted in really well with the trailing ivy and the colour scheme of the buildings.
And I can’t imagine this is terribly green either – exactly how much more electricity is needed to power a display “with a 12mm pixel pitch, 6,000NIT light output and 15 bit processing”?
I’m sorry, I’m well aware of Barco’s reputation and don’t wish to slag them off – particular as there are some great examples of their work in TV studios (and galleries), but I think these things just look horrible. (And the Wimbledon logos are far too big.)
BBC Radio 5 Live
A few minor changes from last year:
- Centre Court webcam dropped. (They always had trouble setting it up anyway.)
- An experimental Google map thing on the website to link to their photos and video.
- Clare Balding and Simon Mayo have been split up – Clare’s now doing commentary in addition to presenting duties from various parts of the SW19 ‘village’ (something Phil Willliams did last year.)
- The 5 Live position on the roof, next to the media refreshment tent, is now what I can only describe as what looks like the inside of a shipping container – presumably they asked for/brought this after getting rained on in previous years.
Worth mentioning that the World Service are at Wimbledon each day, a 90 minute show at 1430 GMT and a half-hour roundup at 1830. They share similar jingles to 5 Live.
Wimbledon.org webcam
Finally we have a decent quality picture and a nice angle – attached to the side of the tower block that overlooks SW19. I’d be interested to know how the picture is getting back – a helpful resident with ADSL, or a camera with a built in modem of some description?
In the foreground is the media
Click for live shot (refreshes every 10 minutes, at time of writing clock 10 mins fast)
Very nice – wish IBM would bring back the remote-controlled ‘Slamcams‘ though..
BBCi Live scores
Finally, in other news, BBCi are now taking a IBM feed and repurposing it, with a single application, for Ceefax, various flavours of digital TV and the BBC homepage. There’s a new BBCi blog – an official version of Andrew Bowden’s occasional posts, if you will, which has more details about this.
