Making History One Webcast at a Time

There was no time for a true technical rehearsal, and with multiple communication barriers, we had to stream on blind faith that, at go-time, there would be a signal with quality audio and video feeds to stream. We were not even sure if we would be able to get the signal from North Korea prior to the scheduled broadcast time, posing a challenge for the engineers in the truck and at Thirteen/WNET.

Results
The engineers sat with bated breath until the signal came down from the bird and flickered into focus at the scheduled time; two announcers appeared and began to speak in Korean.

The real "secret sauce" to pulling off a successful production such as this on a shoestring budget with flawless execution is to have access to industry partners that can be trusted, that are easy to communicate with, and that are available to take a call or respond to an email. The climates in the broadcast and streaming media industries are changing. The lines are being redrawn, and as technologists and engineers partner on these new broadcast models, they are reshaping best practices and defining the future of how we succeed and work together.

As for the measurement of success of this one webcast, nothing new was invented and there were no patents filed as a result of how this webcast was achieved. Rather, it simply happened, and we were there.

According to Tommasini, "The potential (if any) of this concert to thaw the icy relations between North Korea and the United States may have come through even better in the live relay that I watched at home on my desktop computer. It is hard to know how many North Koreans were actually able to see it. Still, that the performance made its way over the internet was nothing short of amazing."