Sky Leads the Way
Electronic News Gathering
In the late 1980s, Margaret Thatcher's government was determined to reform the system of local taxation and introduced a controversial scheme where each person paid an identical amount in tax, regardless of income. It was officially called the ‘Community Charge' but was better known as the ‘Poll Tax'.

The Poll Tax was unpopular and, in the spring of 1990, a series of demonstrations erupted around the country. They culminated in a large demonstration in Trafalgar Square on March 31 st., when a peaceful march turned into one of the biggest riots ever seen in central London.

According to old hands at Sky News, Rupert Murdoch was in Central London at the time of the demonstration. It is said that he watching television in his hotel room and rang Sky's Head of News to ask why there was no live coverage of the riots on his news channel. When he was told that Sky did not have the necessary facilities, the story goes that Murdock gave succinct instructions to expedite the purchase two terrestrial links trucks.

The origins of Sky News date back to 1989 when three channels, including Sky News,first went to air at 1700 on 05 February using the Luxembourg owned and operated ASTRA 1A satellite. According to a report published in March 2003, Sky News is now attracting three times as many viewers as BBC News 24, strengthening its reputation as the channel for breaking news.

The Sky News production team has always pushed the frontiers of science and, on many occasions, especially in the early days, found it difficult to understand why it was not possible to get live images from any location as and when they wanted them. For the links engineers, working for Sky News has been a huge learning curve.

When the new links trucks arrived in mid 1990, Sky News established a ground receive site at Fraser House in West London. This site offered only limited coverage, and was soon augmented with a second site in Croydon. Finally, Sky negotiated a lease for a permanent ground receive site on the roof of Millbank Tower, overlooking the Houses of Parliament. This is now their principal ground receive site for Greater London.

In November 1990, Sky ‘merged' with British Satellite Broadcasting to form BSkyB, following the demise of BSB. At that time there were just four links engineers to man the two links trucks on a 24x7 basis. It was hard work and long hours. To compound this, tall buildings and other obstructions sometimes blocked the link path. In order to overcome this problem when using analogue links, engineers would resort to ‘bouncing' the signal (microwaves are reflected in the same was as light) off a convenient building.

Bouncing signals would normally would get them out of trouble as long as they remembered to change the polarity of the receive antenna. However, on one occasion, Sky engineers were using an office in Central London to ‘bounce' the signal back to Millbank Tower. It was a hot summer's day and all the windows were open when the engineers tested the link during the afternoon. However, come five-o-clock, the office staff started to leave. As one by one they closed the windows the link path faded into noise.

By 1993 the there were six full time links engineers, and Sky News had taken delivery of their first SNG truck. Prior to this, Sky rented in bulky ‘fly-away' systems for all satellite up-links. UKI34 (Sky identify all their SNG trucks with the Eutelsat Dish Registration number) was the first SNG truck to be built by Advent Communications. UKI34 featured a dish that swung out from the rear of the truck on a heavy-duty arm and was designed so that the up-link equipment could be taken out of the truck and used as a ‘fly-away' system. For the first year of operation, Sky had to use a BT ‘minder', one of whom was heard to comment, ”These SNG trucks will never catch on!”

UKI34 and the two terrestrial links trucks served Sky News well until April 1995 when Sky signed a five-year contract with Reuters to provide Sky with all newsgathering facilities. This was a very good deal for Sky as it gave Sky access to Reuters' news agencies around the world, whilst still retaining editorial control. The deal marked a major step in the evolution of Sky News as a major news provider.

As part of the deal UKI34, the two terrestrial links truck and all newsgathering equipment were transferred to Reuters Television's (formally Visnews) base at Park Royal. This gave the Sky engineers access to maintenance facilities and point-to point links for the first time. In addition to Sky, Reuters also had a contract with UK terrestrial broadcaster, GMTV (Good Morning Television), who shared their predecessor, TVAM's love of SNG.

Despite the advantages of Park Royal, Sky News wanted its ENG/SNG facilities be based at Isleworth in West London, along with the rest of the production team. So the Links Department moved and its home for the next few years was to be two ‘Portacabins', and a 20' ISO container used for storage of equipment. At this time the UKI34 truck was getting overloaded with equipment and was replaced by UKI316, a DSNG truck with a roof mounted dish.

In 1997 Nick Pollard joined Sky as Head of News. Prior to this, Pollard had been with London-based ‘Channel One Television' where he had first used SISLink SNG trucks and had realised their potential. In August 1997, Sky News augmented their own SNG truck, UKI316, with four regionally based SNG trucks provided on contract by SISLink. This was to be the start of a long-standing relationship between Sky News and SISLink, which continues today.

Two years later, Sky acquired a new SNG truck after UKI 316 was damaged beyond repair. UKI511 represented a major technical advance on previous SNG trucks and was able to accept analogue signals from four standard ENG cameras, convert the signals to SDI, and mix them, before up-linking the programme feed.

The start of the new Millennium was an important milestone in the development if Sky News. The first major event to be covered was the Millennium celebrations in London. This involved feeding thirteen terrestrial microwave links into Millbank Tower, plus a link from Trafalgar Square to South Africa House, plus a downlink from a Wescam equipped AS355 helicopter. At the time, the Millennium was the biggest event covered live by Sky News. It involved renting half of the links equipment from UK based rental specialist, Broadcast RF.

In 2000, the contact with Reuters came to an end and the two terrestrial links plus UKI511 were returned to Sky. Unable to call upon the resources of Reuters, Sky continued to rent Gigawave analogue links from Broadcast RF, and was sufficiently impressed with their performance and reliability to purchase their first Gigawave link in 2001. This consisted of a 3.5GHz analogue ‘Mini' transmitter with PTV receiver with a variety of antennas, which allowed the link to be used in ‘Pit Lane camera' configuration, or as a fixed link.

Sky used their newly acquired 3.5GHz link for Her Majesty the Queen's Golden Jubilee in 2002, along with eleven analogue links rented from Broadcast RF. Sky's live coverage of the Golden Jubilee included a 21 camera outside broadcast from Canada Gate (using an OB truck rented from ‘021' for the occasion) and a 5-camera SNG truck at Windsor. A second SNG truck was used to present Sky's ‘Sunrise' programme from Canada Gate.

The most recent phase in the evolution of Sky News has been the acquisition of a newsgathering helicopter. Based at Redhill aerodrome, just south of London, the twin engined AS355 helicopter has a crew of four: including pilot, reporter, camera operator, and engineer. In addition to a 'FLIR Ultramedia' gyro-stabilised camera platform with 36X lens the helicopter is equipped with internal and external POV cameras.

Partly as a result of their long-standing relationship with Broadcast RF, and partly due to their own experience of using Gigawave equipment, Sky awarded Gigawave a contract to supply and install a digital downlink in the helicopter. This included a DC/DC power supply MTV-D transmitter, digital power amplifier, and GPS controlled auto-tracking antenna

Signals from the helicopter are received using a GPS controlled auto-tracking antenna system, also supplied and installed by Gigawave. This high-gain parabolic antenna, on the roof of Millbank Tower, replaces the CML system installed in the early 1990s, and is capable of receiving both digital signals from the helicopter and analogue signals from the two terrestrial link trucks that are still in service.

In addition to the ground receive site at Millbank Tower, which provides Sky with live coverage of the whole of Greater London, Gigawave supplied three portable versions of the GPS auto-tracking ground receive antenna systems. One will be carried in the helicopter, whilst the other two will be deployed at other strategic locations in the UK. All ground receive sites use GPS data from the helicopter, transmitted using a VHF data link to track the helicopter.

For more information see: The Sky is the Limit for Sky News

Sky News is delighted with the performance of the system, and the production team are busy dreaming up new and innovative ways of using their ENG helicopter. One of its first official appearances was the ‘Official Launch' of the Queen Mary 2 in Southampton. Here, aerial shots helped to put the size of the new liner, which is twice the size of the original 'Queen Mary', into perspective.

Over the past few years the original contract with SISLink has been constantly extended and increased to provide additional SNG facilities for the 24/7 news channel. By 2003, the contract had been increased to nine SNG trucks, with two based in London, six based at regional locations in the UK, and one in Brussels. In addition, SISLink provide Sky with one' fly-away' system. During 2004, Sky plan to further extend their contract with SISLink to include a Rapid Response DSNG Truck, plus a second ‘fly-away' system

The ‘fly-away' system has been used many times on the roof of the Brighton Conference Centre and the roof of the Winter Gardens in Blackpool for political party conferences. It has also seen service in the Gulf during the first Gulf War, Afghanistan (Kabul), and the recent Iran earthquake disaster, which killed more than 40,000 people.

The ‘fly-away' SNG system was also located on the roof of the Ministry of Information in Baghdad, immediately prior to the US-led invasion of Iraq. However it was quickly moved to the roof the Palestine Hotel after US forces had threatened to bomb the Ministry of Information.

During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Sky News upstaged other news networks when it was the first TV channel to broadcast live from the streets of Baghdad after American forces swept into the centre of the Iraqi capital. Sky News correspondent David Chater and his crew (Josh Mainka, Milan Antic and Velko Djurovic) interviewed US troops and Iraqi civilians, using a digital wireless camera system - which had been smuggled into Baghdad and had been kept hidden from the Iraqi authorities for three months.

The remarkable scenes of David Chater broadcasting live from the streets of Baghdad, which were also screened live across the United States on Fox News, won Sky News a Silver Medal in the ‘Coverage of Breaking News (longform)' category at the ‘International Film and Video and Television Programming and Promotions Awards' held recently in New York.

The reaction from the Sky News production team (and indeed other networks) was, “How did they manage to do that?” Suddenly, wireless camera systems were a ‘must have' item and Richard Westwood, Sky's Head of Links, was despatched to IBC to identify the wireless camera system that best suited Sky's ENG/SNG operations. Subsequently, Sky placed an order with Gigawave for nine D-Cam ‘Clip-on' wireless camera systems, complete with MVL-D receivers, plus two MTV-D digital transmitters, for delivery in early 2004.

Seven of the nine Sky SNG trucks are now fitted with roof mounted omni-directional receive antennas, MVL-D receivers and D-Cam ‘Clip-on' transmitters. These are now so reliable that Sky News crews rarely run cables these days. This has made newsgathering in Central London and other cities much easier and a lot safer. The other two D-Cam ‘Clip-on' systems are based at Isleworth, and deployed as required.

To further enhance their reputation in terms of the live coverage of events, Sky are actively considering installing a Gigawave ‘Rebro' unit in their ENG helicopter. This would allow the helicopter to relay live images from ‘Clip-on' equipped ENG cameras on the ground back to the Sky news studio, without adding any additional delay.

News crews have already become very adept at using the D-Cam ‘Clip-on' to get images out of difficult locations. One resourceful cameraman clipped his ‘Clip-on' transmitter to a balcony railing and ran a coax video cable inside to where the ‘Soham Enquiry' was being held. It worked perfectly and once again Sky was the only news network to have live coverage.

For more information see: Queen Mary 2 Launched in Southampton

For more information see: Sky Covers BA223 Flight Delays

In an interview with the Observer newspaper, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said he had wondered whether it would have been possible to evacuate 300,000 troops from Dunkirk under the scrutiny of 24-hour rolling news. Using modern technology live coverage of the event would certainly have been possible, and in 2004 Sky will be doing everything to prove Jack Straw wrong with extensive live coverage of what may possibly be the last D-Day anniversary celebrations.

Sky News has come a long way in the past fifteen years, but the past three years have seen the most dramatic changes. Sky News now employs eight full time links engineers and regularly employs additional free-lance engineers. According to Links Manager, Richard Westwood:

“Sky News is a great place to work, and we now have the right technical resources in place. Above all, we get a real ‘buzz' from working in a live news environment and getting breaking news stories live to air whilst other news channels are still thinking about it.”

The reputation of Sky News has been built on its fast and accurate coverage of breaking news.  The channel saw its ratings peak at 1.21 million viewers on the evening of March 21 2003, during the US "shock and awe" bombardment of Baghdad, and in February 2004 Sky News was named ‘News Channel of the Year' for the third successive year.

In their citation, the RTS judges noted

“…that this sector of the TV news business had witnessed significant change and innovation with all the players striving – with some success – to raise their game. However, in spite of the presence of much they wished to commend on the other channels, the judges were unanimous in their view that none yet matched the winner who had continued to innovate in their coverage of the war and elsewhere and, as a news channel, remain - simply the best!”  

In response to the award Nick Pollard, Head of Sky News, said:

“Sky News is made up of a dedicated and talented team whose hard work and creativity has comprehensively earned these awards. Our team really is the best in the business and these awards underline that fact.”