ARD Radio uses Lawo equipment for the world championship
Published: MEA
SOUTH AFRICA: Lawo consoles and routers are being used to produce the TV and radio feeds for German network ARD at the Fifa World Cup in South Africa.
Fellow German broadcaster Südwestrundfunk (SWR) is responsible for all organisational, technical and logistical matters for ARD, and is a customer of the World Cup’s host broadcaster, Swiss Host Broadcast Services (HBS). HBS is responsible for the entire technical infrastructure used for the production of international video and audio feeds of the world championship.
For ARD’s radio studio control room, SWR rented a total of seven Lawo crystal consoles plus a mc²56 console from Audio Broadcast Services (ABS). Most of this equipment had already been used at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. ‘The cooperation with our colleagues from ABS covers far more than just the rental business. For the system integration, for example, we needed to cooperate very closely,’ explained Gerhard Rieber, head of technology for ARD radio in South Africa. Technical preparations for South Africa were very similar to the planning and implementation of the Vancouver Winter Games broadcasts.
Notwithstanding the material produced by SWR, including live recordings and self-recorded sound bites, both of which are edited within the mobile production network, saved and sent to Germany via audio file transfer, HBS sends all relevant feeds from the stadiums to SWR’s HD Core via ARD’s and ZDF’s master control room using a Madi link. Again via Madi, SWR then distributes these feeds to the various other studios.