November 2007: BBC Outside Broadcasts has supported a live webstreaming project for Eurostar France. A first of its kind, it involved live interaction between the French public and the Eurostar 'Your Personal Experts' (YPE's) team on the streets of London.

Les YPE's is an information service targeted specifically at young French people, encouraging them to come to London and visit new places. It promotes the most fashionable areas of London for a youth audience, such as Brick Lane, Covent Garden, Spitalfields, rather than the traditional and more staid tourist attractions like Buckingham Palace. It involves four characters, each with their own area of expertise to cover; Shopping, Nightlife, Business, Arts & Culture.

Eurostar's advertising agency in Paris, Milk, created and developed the YPE's campaign, which ran on the website www.newlondon.fr, developed by interactive and relationship marketers Fullsix. The website kicked off two days before the live broadcasts launched properly, using pre-recorded clips to generate interest with the audience. In the first couple of weeks there were over 130,000 hits on the website.

There are two parts to the Les YPE's campaign: Lá serie and Les LIVE. Lá serie were the series of clips that tell the story to the YPE's campaign, for which BBC Outside Broadcasts provided the playout facilities. BBC Outside Broadcasts' main role was supporting Les LIVE, where the characters hit the streets of London every Thursday between 16:00 and 18:00 French time, to seek out answers to questions posed live by members of the French public.

Central to the production was the desire to do it for real, without compromise. They relied heavily on BBC Outside Broadcasts' experience in working in live television and amongst an unpredictable public, plus its knowledge of potential weather issues.

BBC Outside Broadcasts was involved right from the start of the production, advising on what was possible from a technical perspective in terms of satellite and high speed bandwidth and which locations would work. The production team then constructed a story around these locations. One camera and four radio mics were used, plus multiple talkbacks with the people involved. As there was only one camera for all four locations, communications were crucial to ensure people were in the right place at the right time.

How it worked. People logging onto the website could send an SMS or email with a question for the YPE's team. Streampower, the platform provider and Full Six, the Internet design company, then forwarded the question on live to BBC Outside Broadcasts' R16 production vehicle using a Blackberry plugged into a laptop to provide internet connection, as well as sending it to the PDA of the relevant 'Your Personal Expert'. The people in the production truck would then call the person who submitted the question and put them through live to the 'Your Personal Expert', who has a conversation with them on camera and provides an answer.

The truck also had the digibeta tapes to playout Lá serie onto the web, which acted as introductions and breaks for the new live material. The content was sent back via satellite to Television Centre, encoded onto a server which BBC Outside Broadcasts set up in the building and then sent out at 40 mg/s (faster than broadcast video) via the internet to Streampower in Paris, who hosted the website. The time from the content being captured, to hitting the website was just 15 seconds.

The New London website really took off in France. It was the page of the day on Yahoo when it launched and there were write ups in La Monde and other French nationals.

For further information, please contact:

Georgie Hollett, Head of Communications, BBC Studios and Post Production
Tel: +44 (0)20 8624 9495
Mobile : +44 (0) 783484 5612
Email : georgie.hollett@bbc.co.uk

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