Football fever

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Showtime’s warehouse at its headquarters in Dubai Media City was converted into a modern HD-ready production and playout facility for the Premier League coverage.

Early this year, Showtime Arabia wrested power from long-time regional English Premier League (EPL) rights holder and rival pay TV operator, ART by outbidding it for the broadcast rights to the next three seasons of the Premiership starting August/September 2007. The battle, however, is only half won. To win the other half, Showtime will have to provide a Premiership coverage that will far outdo anything that ART has ever produced in order to win the rival's subscribers over to its own platform.

Heading Showtime's production team is Charles Balchin, a 30-year TV veteran, who was brought in from the ART fold. "The best two times of my life in TV were when I did start ups. I set up Sky Italia in Milan, for instance. This project at Showtime is also essentially a start up. The pressures are amazing in such cases because you are given a blank sheet of paper and you have to create everything from scratch. When I went to ART, there were some things I could not change even if I wanted to because ‘that's the way we did it'. Here, we were able to sit down and say ‘what's the best way to do it'," says Balchin.

Showtime had a little less than six months to implement the team's plans. Within that time frame, the pay-TV operator planned to put in place a whole new HD-ready production and playout facility to cover the English Premier League and also put together a well-qualified team that could run the show.

The immediate task for the operator was to identify an area within its headquarters in Dubai Media City, from where it could run the show. Its best bet was a huge warehouse.

"We had a warehouse and a dream. Now the dream is taking shape every moment. Within a period of two-and-a-half months, we took what was our warehouse filled with satellite dishes and decoders and have built two identical studios - one for the English coverage and one for the Arabic, two audio control rooms and two gallery control rooms," says Balchin.

The two studios are equipped with four HD-capable Sony cameras - three on the floor and one, mounted on the ceiling. "We have put in high definition equipment but we will be transmitting in SD this year. We think it might be HD next year. We have ensured that with everything we have bought - all we have to do is either add an extra chip or flick a switch and we will able to transmit in HD. There was no point in doing it any other way," comments Balchin.

The entire project in terms of design, supply and integration was undertaken by Sony Professional Solutions Middle East along with Showtime's technical team, headed by ex-BBC veteran, Mike Whittaker. Lighting for the studios was supplied by Dubai-based distributor, DST.

At the time Digital Studio interviewed Showtime, the broadcaster was nine days away from its first programme. People were still drilling holes and knocking nails in.

But what one got to see was a plethora of state-of-the-art equipment across the board. It was obvious that several millions of dollars had been invested into just acquiring the equipment. Sony High Definition cameras and vision mixers, a six-channel EVS for slow motion, Vizrt systems for graphics and Telestrator's Point system for on-air sports commentators are only a small portion of the technology that has been purchased.

Balchin, however, adds that while Showtime hasn't skimped on equipment, it has also been careful to hire industry professionals. "In my experience in the Middle East, one of the major problems with broadcasters is that they buy equipment worth millions of dollars but do not spend a few extra thousand to have the best people operate it. If I drive a Ferrari Formula One car, I might go around in six minutes but if Michael Schumacher drives it, he will go around in one-and-a-half minutes. We need to hire the best and I can confidently say that Showtime has the equipment and the people."

At the time, the pay-TV operator had already taken on board a full time team of more than 32 people to handle its sports broadcast operations, and this did not include the engineering team, the commentators or the additional freelance staff.

What Showtime has attempted to do is create a rapport with its Arabic audience and also build up the excitement by producing a reality show just before the start of the Premier League. Dubbed Hezz Al Malaab, the show would allow the winner to be part of Showtime's Arabic commentary team.

Several thousands of Arab football fans from across the region participated in the competition, claims Balchin. "There were five programmes; the first of which was held in Egypt. Eight were chosen. They were then put up at a villa in Dubai and they had to go through some competitions. As the people who were going to work with the winner, we needed to ensure that whoever won this competition was truly capable of being a good commentator. Their knowledge of the EPL and voice testing were also important."

The final three contestants were sent to the UK to meet with some of the players, watch them train, look at new interview techniques at Sky Sports and so on.

The winner of the contest, Khalid Al Fahid, a Saudi Arabian national, who received the maximum number of audience votes joined the Showtime Arabic commentary team where he was asked to commentate on the Middlesborough V Blackburn Rovers game on the first day of the English Premier League season.

"This is the first time we have done something like this and we hope to encourage audience participation for some of our other content as well- maybe have a movie chat show, a weekly roundup etc," explains Balchin.

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