By Bruce Arditte, Senior Account Manager, GovTV

The Importance of Professional Video Coverage today, more than ever, image on television does count. The visual impression a government broadcast provides its viewers can impact the viewer’s opinion about government effectiveness and its intent on being transparent.
Professional television coverage of government meetings is important to large and small governments.

Early in the development of motion pictures, it was recognized that by varying
the distance of the subject from the camera – and by controlling what objects
appear in the frame, various views or “shots” could be achieved.  The same techniques and terminologies are still in use today in just about every aspect of film and TV production that occurs.

In early television, the advent of the video switch enabled a television program to be broadcast using multiple cameras – each with the ability to achieve different frame compositions and camera angles under the command of a director who is also instructing an engineer to instantly switch any one of the available cameras to the “on-air” position at any given time.

The use of multiple video cameras to cover a scene goes back to the earliest days of television; three cameras were used to broadcast The Queen's Messenger in 1928, the first drama performed for television.[1] The BBC and NBC routinely used multiple cameras for their live television shows from 1936 onward.[2]

Even today, most commercial television programs are still produced in this manner. The complexity of producing a professional television broadcast is enormous, and very personnel-intensive. Each camera requires an operator – and if the camera is mobile, a grip is required to help move the camera, and a cable puller is required to kept the cable from tangling and out of the way.

Modern State State- of-the-art video production Switcher
(Source: Grass Valley Group, Inc.)

Lighting technicians and engineers must design and wire specialized lighting, gaffers must climb into the rigging and hang and set these lights, and yet another technician will control them. Audio technicians and engineers must design and wire the microphones, and often control booms to allow dynamic movement of microphones to follow action on the set. A producer must secure funding, arrange all scheduling and pay all personnel – including the director – who controls the work that the cast and crew will perform.
In short, typical television productions have potentially hundreds of people involved and can often cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce.

Providing professional mulitple camera coverage for government is less complex and costly than in commercial productions, but they still can be quite costly and personnel intensive.   So much so, that many governments simply cannot often justify the cost of equipment, production, and personnel.

GovTV has emerged with “virtual remote technologies”.   The key advantage to the GovTV approach is that government investment in extensive staff and technology is not needed – the IP based broadcast infrastructure installed by GovTV, is remotely operated. The government broadcast is remotely produced by GovTV specialists---leaving government free to do what it does best - govern.

The suite of GovTV’s “Virtual Remote Technologies” makes extensive use of emerging Internet technologies and begins with the installation of roboticallycontrolled cameras which require no personnel inside the government meeting room to operate. Instead, they can be operated across the country over the Internet.

Broadcast-quality television production, however was merely the beginning of the development of integrated services delivered to government with Virtual Remote Technologies. The application of GovTV’s remote Internet-based technologies allow solutions to be implemented and made available at a fraction of traditional government operational costs.