VT Communications (VTC) in partnership with the BBC World Service has won the prestigious Team of the Year – Professional and Support Services at the BBC Global News Reith Awards.
The partnership between the two organisations was rewarded for its dedication and commitment in the re-engineering of the BBC World Services Control Room and establishing a new Network Operations Centre (NOC) within timescales whilst maintaining high levels of service availability. This was the first time an external supplier has won an award at this event.
These internal awards celebrate excellence, innovation and creativity across BBC Global News. Sir David Attenborough presented the award at a ceremony in London on 11 March.
BBC World Service needed to meet the growing needs of its global audience of 182 million listeners, and prepare for its delivery of its first television services in Arabic and Persian.
At the same time, VTC was looking for an opportunity to broaden its service offering to a wider range of broadcast platforms and invested in a state-of-the-art Media Management Centre (MMC) in London.
VTCs strong heritage of connecting broadcasters with their global audiences, and its long term relationship with the BBC World Service meant that the success of each project was reliant on a partnership approach to deliver successful results.
Throughout 2008, the companies worked together to implement the technological, operational and structural changes required. Despite the physical disruption, service availability reached its highest ever level never less than 99.99%.
The BBC NOC is now jointly staffed by a team of dedicated BBC Duty Operations Managers with round-the-clock support from highly-trained VTC Operational and Broadcast Support teams, providing the best ever programme availability to the BBC World Service audience.
Mike Cronk, Controller Future Media, Technology & Distribution at BBC Global News, said: This was the largest re-engineering of the BBC Control Room in 15 years and was only possible through the close collaboration of the BBC and VT teams. Its been a period of huge change with the Network Operations centre now handling BBC World Service Arabic TV and Persian TV services. The new technology coupled with the way the teams are now working means output performance is at an all time high.
Bryan Coombes, Director of Broadcast at VT Communications, said: At VTC we work in partnership with broadcasters to manage their current needs, and plan together for the future. This project is a great example of how effective the partnership is with the BBC World Service and how it delivers mutually beneficial results. We were able to provide staff to the BBC to allow for peak workload periods, training, leave and other ad hoc projects, something that could only have succeeded with complete dedication on both sides.