29 Mar ITV Saturday Night Takeaway

LiveU links from 3xScreen crews around the UK helped Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway involve audiences from the Scottish Isles to Land’s End.

Ant and Dec’s 2016 Saturday Night Takeaway reached ambitious new heights in 2016 as they sought to cover as much ground across the UK as possible.

To help make this happen, 3xScreen was initially brought on board to provide a tailored technical solution for episode one’s Sofawatch competition.  The competition involved four sofas placed in secret, remote outdoor locations across the UK, where Ant and Dec would cross live to during the live broadcast to select the winners.

Our brief was to provide ITV with four ENG crews who were to facilitate the four simultaneous live links. Initially booked for the first episode only, the roaring success of the segment cemented their place in the remaining episodes of the season.

The unique challenges presented each week included combatting adverse weather, providing power a solution for the kit at each location and most importantly ensuring the integrity of the live links in areas with little to no coverage. With the location of each live cross not being confirmed until the last minute, our experience and expertise in remote OBs proved invaluable in the six episodes of successful sofawatch segments.

3xScreen’s involvement culminated in the second to last episode (as the last episode was filmed in Spain) where we provided nine live links during the one show. In addition to the four sofawatch locations in Llanelli, Ballymena, Leicester and Aberdeen, we facilitated four live links in the ITV studios on London’s Southbank to cover the “On Yer Bike” segment. This involved two live camera links mounted in an elevator and one each on two electric motorcycles that Ant and Dec raced through the ITV studios and out onto the street. The final live link was

Kit

ENG Cameras

Various Bonded Mobile Uplink devices

Assortment of power & comms solutions

IFB comms/ audio between