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GlobeCast Australia — YEAR IN REVIEW


GlobeCast Australia group photo

GlobeCast Australia is reflecting proudly on 2009 — and moving confidently in to 2010 — after a year of significant technical expansion to meet the needs of new clients and provide new services for reliable global delivery. The company continued to deliver the hourly requirements of some of the biggest broadcasters in the world and to service some of the biggest annual events globally. As a result, several major announcements about the company’s key projects for 2010 are pending over the next few months.

In 2009, both the Teleport and Master Control received major enhancements and re-designs. Partly to cope with ever increasing business expansion, and partly to offer even higher levels of service to valued clients. The Master Control is increasing in size by 100 percent to ensure GlobeCast Australia continues to “reach the world” for its clients. Rapid growth in global demand for high-end content distribution has seen GlobeCast Australia quadruple its annual bookings volume for occasional use services, in addition to its growth in full time services. GlobeCast Australia uses its global fibre network — complemented with owned and operated satellite space — and is the provider of choice to deliver content to and from broadcasters throughout Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands.
 
Big Events 
The company cemented its reputation as a global sports distributer with the biggest events beaming in and out of the Southern Hemisphere in 2009. To name just a few: Wimbledon for Fiji TV and TVNZ, Le Tour De France for SBS and the Ashes in HD for SBS with unilateral coverage for FOX Sports. There were several months of Rugby Internationals as well for BskyB, J Sport, FOX Sports and Sky New Zealand, some in HD. Plus, various northern hemisphere sports including U.S. Golf, NASCAR and baseball live in HD for Network Ten’s ONE HD channel and Moto Cross in HD for FOX Sports and TVNZ.

The company played an integral role in covering the Australian bushfire disaster for broadcasters on every continent and delivered coverage of the Samoan tsunami and the Indonesian earthquake. From the reality of life to reality television, and GlobeCast Australia is repeating its global distribution of I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here for Granada to broadcasters including NBC and ITV — GlobeCast Australia engineers were also in Costa Rica for the show, as well. This ability to “take Australia to the world” was also evidenced with Tourism Queensland’s Best Job in the World promotion, with more than 100 unilateral live crosses and tape feeds over three days to more than 20 countries, using GlobeCast Australia’s DSNG, satellite and fibre capabilities.
Tech Expansion
From its newly expanded Sydney based Teleport, GlobeCast Australia offers total broadcast solutions to global customers including backhaul, uplink, downlink, encoding, multiplexing, encryption, time-delay, local play-out and insertion, 24/7 monitoring, IP monitoring, transcoding to 3G phones and SMS Services. The facility draws together an international fibre and satellite network that offers attractive solutions with downlinks on AsiaSat, Intelsat, Thaicom and New Skies satellites. 

The master control and teleport upgrade increased power on uplinks and increased rack space and floor space — by double — and monitoring screens were tripled.  This technical network supports the company’s occasional use and Direct to Home services — of which there are more than 120 — and its event coverage is delivered via Australia’s largest DSNG fleet of 10 vehicles and flyaways. The teleport now offers 13 satellite dishes, ranging from 4.5m to smaller 2.0m antenna, five of which are uplinkable to both domestic and international destinations as far afield as Cyprus in the Mediterranean and Los Angeles. This broadcast center upgrade comes after five years of general growth and innovation, which saw the company conduct 2004’s entire level of business in just the first five months of 2009. 
 
New Services + Clients
The company launched GlobeCam in early 2009, providing miniature camera technology for live onboard coverage of various sports including V8 Supercars across Australasia and the Middle East, World Games Parachuting in Taiwan, Macau Grand Prix cars and bikes, Cycling and Horse Racing. Also expanded in 2009 were live broadcasts to cinemas nationally and overseas — the  innovative transmissions involved GlobeCast Australia equipping more than 50 Cinemas with 1.5m Johnsa antennae to receive various broadcasts live on to their big screens. GlobeCast is also distributing international brand channels such as Cartoon Network, Sky News Australia, Fox Sports, CNN and BBC in to the New Media smaller screen environments. 3G, IPTV, and simultaneous broadband streaming, are an integral part of reaching audiences in 2009.

Inventive use of satellites for major tourism promotions, annual general meetings, corporate dinners on live hook up, and prize draws are all part of a growing transmission demand drawing new clients to GlobeCast Australia. Business TV satellite transmissions nationally and internationally for major clients were successfully delivered by GlobeCast Australia in 2009 across the southern and northern hemispheres. The company now works with all four of Australia’s Big Four Banks and covers Annual General Meetings for blue chip clients including BHP, Westpac and Lihir Gold. In 2009, more companies were choosing these technical solutions as a cheaper and highly effective alternative to road shows or national conferences, supplementing broadcast with streaming and interactive meetings.

In a major global event, GlobeCast Australia beamed HD coverage of surgeries from Germany, Saudi Arabia, India, Malaysia, South Korea and Japan to a three day convention in Cairns. All feeds were successfully monitored by GlobeCast Australia’s 24/7/365 Master Control and Teleport, which supports the company’s broadcast and corporate clients around the clock. 
 
In 2009, the GlobeCast Australia Broadcast Centre moved more than one million hours of content for various clients: channels, networks, platforms, sports bodies, production companies, corporate clients and organisations — and the team is ready for one million-plus hours in 2010!