Archive Services – Gravity Media

Gravity Media’s Frank Callaghan, Director of Live Programming and Production and Nick Symes, Technical Director – Production & Content, caught up with SVG to discuss how the team has rapidly adjusted to remote working from home at a time of unprecedented demand for archive content over the last couple of months.

Here at Gravity Media we continue to do what we can to help our clients during this difficult time. With the lack of live sporting events to cover, broadcasters are looking for alternatives to fill the empty hours on their channels. You can find out more in our recent blog here.

Our centrally managed digital archive management system is in big demand at this uncertain time, and allows our clients and their partners to simultaneously search, view and ready footage in any format from any location, for any purpose.

A number of our major clients – including The FA, the International Paralympic Committee, the International Hockey Federation and Tottenham Hotspur FC – are using their Media Archive Director (MAD) systems to generate content during the Covid-19 lockdown.

The SVG article is available to read in full here.

Classic matches and programming are certainly en vogue at the moment, and we’ve been in constant communication with our clients, offering solutions to assist them in delivering programming for their broadcast partners suffering from empty schedules.

The major difference from before the lockdown is that now the majority of requests are for entire matches with full commentary and graphics as broadcasters look to fill their schedules and make up for the lack of live sport, whereas before Covid-19, it was always clean clips to be inserted into programmes.

In partnership with UEFA, we’re producing a weekly series of programmes, showcasing the best action from the substantial riches of the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League vaults. This classic series consists of commercial one-hour programmes, ready to air, fully voiced and packaged. As well as this series of shows, we’re repacking a number of classic matches with commentary and graphics, ready to air for broadcasters and available for their online service, UEFA.TV.

We have also been servicing a huge global demand for UEFA’s content with inquiries coming into Gravity Media from all corners of Europe as well as China, Australia and the US. These vary from last year’s Champions League Final to a first-ever request for the 1987 Cup Winners’ Cup Final between Ajax and Lokomotiv Leipzig – certainly the most diverse range of requests we have ever experienced.

For The FA, we have produced a series of classic matches, giving their broadcast partners replacement programming across their postponed quarter final weekend. All production, editing transmission, playout and delivery services have been in full operation for the past fortnight.

The FA downloaded almost 150 hours of their content during April, three times the number of hours from the same time last year. One unique – albeit sad – request from The FA’s MAD system was for BT Sport’s tribute to Norman Hunter who passed away recently. We were able to find footage from the 1972 FA Cup to show Hunter both in action for Leeds United and collecting his winners’ medal.

And this heightened demand for archive content isn’t just limited to sporting federations – Tottenham’s download volume over a similar period was double last year’s levels.

So, if you have archive footage that you would like to exploit or other programming needs, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. You can find out more at staging.gravitymedia.kastage.co.uk or contacts us directly on enquiries@gravitymedia.com or 020 3104 0000.

Here at Gravity Media we are doing what we can to help our clients during this difficult time. With the lack of live sporting events to cover, broadcasters are looking for alternatives to fill the empty hours on their channels.

As well as this series of shows, we’re repacking a number of classic matches with commentary and graphics, ready to air for broadcasters and available for their online service, UEFA.TV.

So if you have archive footage that you would like to exploit or other programming needs, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. You can find out more at staging.gravitymedia.kastage.co.uk or contacts us directly on enquiries@gravitymedia.com or 020 3104 0000.

Our centrally managed digital archive management system allows our clients and their partners to simultaneously search, view and commercialise footage in any format from any location. This fully serviced model is supported and maintained by our professional broadcast IT staff, providing a cost-effective solution that can be scaled up as their digital archive requirements grow.

We’ve invested in the expertise and technical support necessary for creating a cutting-edge digital archive management system so they don’t have to. Our clients who prefer this outsourced solution include The FA, the International Hockey Federation and the International Paralympic Committee.

Gravity Media’s forward-thinking creatives shape inspiring programming solutions for clients who have original content requirements and sometimes their own TV channels. Together we brainstorm, storyboard and explore to bring their vision to life and create remarkable content. Any idea, big or small, executed to perfection across multiple platforms.

We produce programmes that turn heads. Our highly creative production team makes hundreds of hours of programmes, promos and digital content for some of the world’s leading broadcasters, sports federations and corporations.

So if you have archive footage that you would like to exploit or other programming needs, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

As videotapes have become increasingly obsolete, it has become important for federations, rights holders and broadcasters to modernise their video archive and preserve their history, allowing it to be accessed and enjoyed by future generations.

While many of our clients move away from videotape-based workflows, they have seen the value of our cutting-edge digital archive management system, the perfect outsourced solution to suit their video archive needs.

It’s a cost-effective and scalable service which allows clients, and their partners, to use a customised web portal to search, view, deliver and commercialise their footage in any format from any location. This delivers savings on resource and time through improved workflows. It also means they can control the centralised store of their digital archive, and distribute content to other partners from a single managed point.

This system already stores and manages over 10,000 hours of content which, using rich metadata, is all available to search and instantly view at the click of a button.

Clients who have already entrusted us with their content – effectively their legacies – include The FA, the International Paralympic Committee, Federation of International Hockey, Tottenham Hotspur FC and sports marketing agency Pitch International – making us the custodian of some of the greatest moments in sporting history.

Behind this serviced solution lies EVS – a technology provider for sports and live production broadcasts worldwide. We’ve installed the premium EVS archive system – Media Archive Director – which is also used by many of the world’s top broadcasters and federations, including UEFA, FIFA and Al-Jazeera. But our EVS setup has been custom built and configured to create a shared, serviced-based solution, meaning the cost to access this premium product is significantly reduced.

Why not give us a call to find out more?