QuickLink allows ITV to do away with laptops for true end-to-end solution

QuickLink, empowering creatives to exceed modern-day standards of production, has been instrumental in easing the remote production challenges of ITV Studios’ popular Saturday Night Takeaway TV series.

ITV Studios, the largest commercial broadcaster in the United Kingdom, is of the opinion that QuickLink StudioEdge with StudioCall is the ideal solution for making complex remote production work not only easier but of the highest quality.

Lifted Entertainment is part of ITV Studios, producing some of the world’s most successful unscripted format TV shows, which translates to more than 500 hours of TV content for UK audiences every year. 

Saturday Night Takeaway is a hugely ambitious, family-oriented entertainment programme spanning seven weeks of live shows per season. This technically complex programme is a mixture of live and pre-recorded entertainment, with gameshow-influenced segments and regular surprise interactivity with viewers, including children facing health challenges and their families.

At the remote end, which could be literally anywhere in the country, laptops were initially used with either video capture cards or webcams. To take Saturday Night Takeaway remote segments to the next level, Lifted Entertainment needed a way to fine-tune audio and video signals coming in remotely to improve picture and sound quality.

StudioEdge with StudioCall Lifted improved this by introducing QuickLink at the remote sites for an end-to-end solution using QuickLink hardware. Doing so removed the requirement for laptops and capture cards. 

At the central location, QuickLink StudioEdge allows ITV to receive Teams, Zoom and other popular video call services but ITV opted to use StudioCall, a built-in feature within StudioEdge for its ease-of-use advantages.

David Williams, Technical Director for Lifted Entertainment, said, “Using QuickLink hardware both out on location and in the studio enabled us to have a true end-to-end solution.“Monitoring and managing all connections from the QuickLink web UI enabled us to quickly trouble-shoot issues and ensure every item went smoothly, from Ring My Bell to Singalong Live.”