In March 2015, Telemedia was again selected to be part of Lesotho Television’s
coverage of the country’s elections. This is the second time that the Rivonia-based
facility has helped cover national elections in the little mountain kingdom.
The election coverage consisted of two major event periods: party rallies the
weekend before the elections and coverage of the elections themselves.
The party rallies aspect involved four different political parties hosting rallies within
Maseru. In order to get coverage from the different venues Telemedia utilised
terrestrial microwave via a temporary repeater within the capital city that enabled
live coverage from all the venues into Lesotho Television. The rally programming
consisted of live speeches from the party candidates, comments from the public
that attended the events and crowd atmosphere.
The election day coverage had the challenges of getting news from the remote
areas of Lesotho; Thaba Tseka; Quthing; Leribe and Qacha’s Nek. These areas are
so remote they have little or no infrastructure. Telemedia used four SNG kits built
on hardy 4×4 vehicles to enable crews to negotiate the rugged Lesotho terrain.
Telemedia has always prided itself on building SNGs onto 4×4 chassis to overcome
these sorts of challenges in Africa.
The satellite used for this event was Gazprom’s Yamal 402 55° East. This satellite
was chosen for two main reasons: firstly, when transmitting from venues that were
located in valleys, the look angles were ideal for some of the remote locations
where the elevation to the satellite cleared the high mountains and the transmission
performance of the satellite allowed the SNGs to transmit and receive
programming. Secondly, the final programming output from Lesotho Television is
also available on Yamal 402; so this was ideal for the journalists in the field to use
as a confidence feed in the remote locations.
On election day, Lesotho Television had available to them six roving news crews;
four using SNG and two using terrestrial microwave. The entire day’s programming
consisted of live news feeds covering the election process around the country with
journalists in the field interacting with presenters and election specialists in studio.
“Special events like these highlight Telemedia’s commitment to providing innovative
solutions to enable clients to capture what they need in order to create an
informative and entertaining product for their viewers,’ says Telemedia’s Quentin
Barkhuizen.
