Gearhouse Broadcast delivers switching centre for NATO Summit Wales 2014

Gearhouse Broadcast provided a complete switching centre for the broadcast of the NATO Summit Wales 2014, the largest gathering of international leaders ever to take place in Britain. The two day event took place in September at Newport’s Celtic Manor Resort and featured leaders and senior ministers from around 60 countries.

Event agency M-is commissioned PROTECH as its audio visual specialist, who in turn tasked Gearhouse with taking two host broadcast feeds from CTV as well as 12 separate camera feeds from the summit into its onsite switching centre. From there, using a Snell Cygnus router with 288 inputs and 384 outputs and Evertz glue, the feeds will be distributed to all of NATO’s broadcast clients, who can either opt for the main host feed, or individual camera feeds.

“At an event like this where the eyes of the world are on us, we couldn’t afford to take any chances. So we opted for Gearhouse because of its experience in delivering proven solutions at high-profile occasions,” said Neil Papworth, director at PROTECH.

“This is yet another major event for Gearhouse, and highlights our ability to deliver a first class service for global broadcasters, just like we did at the World Cup in Brazil,” said Kevin Moorhouse, COO at Gearhouse Broadcast.

Simon Atkinson, technical project manager for Gearhouse, added: “The NATO Summit Wales 2014 has its own challenges in terms of the increased levels of security we faced on site, so setting up has taken more planning than usual. Our skilled team is experienced in working in a wide range of difficult environments, meaning we could hit the ground running.”