The Royal Wedding

The Requirement

The Links Broadcast team were all very excited to be asked by client, Arqiva, to supply our outside broadcast trucks to Fox News, Mediaset and HBO to cover the Royal Wedding of HRH Prince Harry and Meghan Markle

We also provided a KA flyaway dish for Prolink TV and a four camera event with crews for an Australian breakfast news programme was also deployed along with our production truck for our client AT1 Media.

As with any event the pre-planning was meticulous but for the event of the year it was even more so than usual!

Following an exchange of a few hundred emails, many internal meetings and various conference calls across the globe later, we were ready to roll.

Arrival at Windsor Castle

Our engineer, Mark Coulthurst set off in S700 SNG to drive to Windsor plus our Gary Peacock with our KA Flyaway kit and S300 SNG was heading for Tower Bridge for HBO. We even had a ready to go standby truck for Mediaset (Italy) as a just in case scenario if their kit failed.

We arrived bright and early on site amongst the mist at The Long Walk on the 16th May 3 days ahead of the event. With glorious sunshine forecast it looked to be a fabulous and momentous few days.

S700 SNG our HD OB truck was set up along with the ever jolly Fox News crew that had travelled to join us from the USA.

A three camera live location was installed with cables running back to our truck ready for the live broadcasts. The day consisted of testing the 3 camera mux for the remote production from The Long Walk OB compound for Fox News. Each camera was separately encoded and sent as a mux back to the studio in America.

The KA dish located on our truck provided 70 hours of continuous bandwidth for Fox’s Dejoro back packs to stream live to the affiliate Fox stations across the USA. Our man Gary was located next to S700 SNG working for our client Pro Link providing a KA Flyaway for internet access and dedicated bandwidth for LiveU use.

Madness ensued as hundreds of different crews got busy from OB truck operators like us to TV presenters, news agencies, caterers and security all preparing for the biggest calendar event of the year which was to be viewed all over the world.

From day one’s early morning arrival, our day crews continuously swapped with the night crews, continuing the rigorous 24 hour operation ensuring that all services were stable and clean to air right through to the close of the event on Sunday 20th for the post wedding interviews and live content.

City Hall/Tower Bridge Location

Our man Rob was in our truck S300 SNG from the day before the wedding to uplink the HBO temporary studio output back to the USA from City Hall with the iconic backdrop of Tower Bridge in view.

HBO Studio City Hall

Also to report - our Pre Wedding Build Up job for AT1 Media.

This was a four camera set-up in different London locations each day of the event. Our production truck S100 SNG was deployed including all cameras, comms and sound facilities at each of the four locations.

The challenge here was to coincide with the time difference between the UK and Australia meaning that the crews were having to double crew for set up and live transmission making a huge logistical challenge and some very tired engineers!

All four locations day and night went swimmingly with lots of Australians watching early morning Royal Wedding fever courtesy of Links Broadcast.

Harte & Garter Hotel, Windsor Location

Four camera ops and two full ENG camera kits were provided for BBA TV and Eurovision who had an amazing prime location from the balcony of the Harte & Garter which overlooked the Castle grounds. The Royal Wedding Outside Broadcast event was a 3 day operation.

The Wedding Day

As time ticked by and tons more double-checks and tests than we care to remember, it was time for the moment the world was waiting for...

With full coverage of the Royal Wedding being beamed across to the United States in its full glory, we finally caught our breath and enjoyed the wedding – all whilst keeping a close eye on the transmission of course!

After a touch of celebrity spotting (which was fabulous) we were ready to catch a glimpse of Prince Harry & Meghan.

Not all of the Links crews were involved in the Royal Wedding – we also had Andy covering the FA Cup Final at Wembley for East Productions (maybe more important for a very small number of the world population) and Dave who was in Hull covering the ALLAM British Squash Open in Hull (we are sure he managed to watch the wedding too somehow!).

All-in-all, a frantically busy but ultimately rewarding few days. Congratulations Prince Harry and Meghan!