As the first quarter of 2014 reaches its end, the business of television outside
broadcast in South Africa celebrates its 38th year. Starting as a small division
within the national broadcaster, OB now boasts a number of operators – large
and small, corporate and independent – across the country’s television
production hubs. While there are a number of challenges facing the industry, it
certainly has come a long way.
The changes in technology in outside broadcast over the past three decades has
been so drastic that anyone who has only entered the industry within the last
ten years or less, would look at the way things worked back then and wonder,
“how did they do that?’ When television first took to the air in South Africa back
in 1976, the entire OB industry in the country amounted to three four-camera
units (big by the standards of the day) owned by the South African Broadcasting
Corporation (SABC) – two in Johannesburg and one in Cape Town – plus one
three-camera unit in Cape Town. In a world where solid-state, tapeless video
recording had yet to be heard of, let alone video servers and VSMs, the all-
analogue equipment in these units required a considerable amount of labour
intensive preparation.
Warming up
About three or four hours before an event was due to go out live, the crew of an
OB unit would have to switch on all the equipment to make sure everything was
operational when showtime came around. The cameras had to be warmed up to
an operational temperature, as did the two-inch quadruplex tape machines on
which the footage was captured, and the monitors, which of course, still ran
good old-fashioned cathode ray tubes.
Expansion and integration
The sole purpose of the OB unit in those days was to be on location to capture
the necessary footage. All titling, running of slow motion replays and other
extras were done in the studio. This required a great deal of coordination and
the synching of the OB and studio, which was done via the uncertain medium of
telephone lines. Today things are very different, with all aspects of the
production now being facilitated within the OB unit. When producers step into
fully equipped OB units, they have everything from cameras (now in the region of
18 or 24, rather than a maximum of four in the old days), six video servers (each
capable of playing out six channels of video), slow motion replay and on-air
graphics at their fingertips.
In the early days, the skills required by engineers operating OB units were
component-based. This would enable them to set up the unit and troubleshoot
on a piece-by-piece basis. Now the kind of expertise required is more system-
oriented. VMS controllers hold the entire system together and the engineers
need to have the IT-based systems knowledge to operate that. While the
equipment incorporated in each unit has grown massively – and the technology
being used is sufficiently scalable to allow even further growth – it has become
relatively more manageable, provided that the unit managers have the
necessary systems skills.
Industry growth
Aside from the growth that has taken place within the individual OB unit, the OB
sector has grown tremendously since its beginnings in the 1970s. The SABC
maintained a monopoly over it until the mid-1980s, when M-Net first launched.
M-Net and its sister channel SuperSport then built up formidable fleets which
offered stiff competition to the national broadcaster. In addition, a number of
independents sprang up which have all taken their own bites out of the market.
Some of these were founded by SABC-trained veterans who struck out on their
own. Others – the more recent additions – are the creations of younger
entrepreneurs who have entered the industry in a newer world in which not all
roads lead to the national broadcaster anymore.
Production content and output has increased significantly over the years,
especially since 1994, meaning that there is sufficient work to necessitate the
industry’s growth and diversification. The major broadcasters now occasionally
have to outsource to one another and to the smaller operations in order to stay
on top of their workloads.
Challenges
While the evolution of technology may have improved the performance and ease
of use of outside broadcast, it can’t solve all problems. Like the television
industry as a whole, the OB sector faces a number of challenges today.
Travel costs are a natural and unavoidable part of OB work and, with increases
in fuel prices and the implementation of e-tolls on Gauteng’s highways, the
logistical aspect of these operations have become pricier than ever. Another
cause of escalating costs is the weak rand, with the majority of the hardware
being used in OB units being imported.
Another problem identified by several industry players is a shortage of training
and the worryingly high average age of OB technicians in South Africa. There is a
group of operatives who have been working in the industry since the 1970s and
the knowledge and experience base they have gathered is vast. The extent to
which their skills are being passed on to the next generation has been
questioned by some. Of course there are younger experts already making their
mark but the industry is growing and is set to do so even further and the
question is whether the skills base of the new generation is sufficiently deep
and wide to fill the specialised labour demands of the OB market.
South Africa’s economy is unique among those of African nations in that it is on
the verge – at least in some sectors – of evolving from an industrial base to one
centred around services and information, much like in developed nations.
Practitioners in the OB sector would do well to keep this in mind. As one member
of the industry told Screen Africa, “We all have the same toys. It’s how we use
them that sets us apart from one another.’
