30 Jul Royal Baby Coverage for the Press Association Attracts 5.5 Million Views
The whole world was watching, waiting with bated breath for the birth of the Royal Baby. Incredibly, more people tuned in to watch the coverage around the birth of the Prince of Cambridge than for the nuptials between William and Kate just over two years earlier.
Alongside the rest of the world’s media, 3xScreen was camped outside the Lindo Wing of Saint Mary’s Hospital in Paddington along with the rest of the world’s media, to live stream every moment of… erhhh a doorway which baby George finally greeted the world from.
Unsurprisingly, the interest in the birth was staggering – 3xScreen Media’s Press Association live stream attracted over 5.5 million views as the public hunted for the first live video of the royal baby.
Confident in their ability to deliver world-class coverage of the historic event, the Press Association presented 3xScreen Media with a challenging brief that saw 3xScreen respond with a fault-less, tailor-made solution. The result surpassed all expectations as 3xScreen effortlessly managed to facilitate the unanticipated Internet traffic that the event attracted.
Over two days, the Press Association’s camera crew located at Saint Mary’s Hospital sent a constant live feed to 3xScreen Media’s Master Control Room in central London using their “magic backpack”, LiveU LU70. From the MCR, 3xScreen encoded the video stream, which was accessed by viewers in over two hundred countries from around the world.
3xScreen Director Scott Robinson says, “we knew there would be challenges involved in such a momentous occasion but with the LU70 we were confident that we’d be able to cope with whatever came our way.”
The solution provided by 3xScreen saw them create a special Royal Baby Edgecast stream as well as broadcasting to the Press Association’s YouTube channel.
The statistics from the event were truly staggering with five thousand people joining the live stream per second. To top it off, in addition to our live stream for the Press Association, we also did 40 Italian TV live crosses for Mediaset.