
The results of UK general elections are always eagerly anticipated and can make for compelling television. Kevin Hilton talks to the BBCs head of media operations, Morwen Williams, about how such an involved broadcast is put together and the technologies being used to get those all important declarations on air
By Contributor
Published: July 4, 2024 Updated: July 5, 2024
The results of UK general elections are always eagerly anticipated and can make for compelling television. Kevin Hilton talks to the BBC's head of media operations, Morwen Williams, about how such an involved broadcast is put together and the technologies being used to get those all important declarations on air
target=_blank title=Share on LinkedIn class=share-linkedin> The results of UK general elections are always eagerly anticipated and can make for compelling television. Kevin Hilton talks to the BBC's head of media operations, Morwen Williams, about how such an involved broadcast is put together and the technologies being used to get those all important declarations on air
https://www.tvbeurope.com/features/election-night-connections-how-ip-bonded-cellular-and-satellite-will-be-in-play-for-the-bbcs-election-2024 title=Share via Email class=share-email>
Elections are major broadcast events in the UK, both for the viewing and listening audiences they draw in and the sheer logistics involved in covering the build-up and polling day itself, While there is now considerable focus on the debates between party leaders although British TV did not stage its first until 2010 along with gauging the mood of the nation by talking to potential voters in key constituencies, the real focus will be on election night after the polls close and the vote count begins.
For this year's election, the BBC is aiming to cover as many of the 650 parliamentary seats as possible, or at least have a presence at the ones most under scrutiny. We have an ambition to be at an awful lot of those, if not every one, in vision, comments Morwen Williams, head of BBC media operations. If not, we will definitely have someone editorially at every one. We are trying to get a significant amount of extra cameras out and that will range from mobile phones to full OB trucks.
BBC TV's first live broadcast of election results was in 1950, since then the coverage has grown considerably, with increasing numbers of live declarations from constituencies and ever more analysis in the studio of what they mean for the country. The obvious example of the latter is the Swingometer, a graphical representation of the shift in voting for the main parties. During the late 1960s and through the '70s this was presided over by Canadian politics professor and statistical analyst Robert McKenzie; a virtual version, with a background of the House of Commons chamber, is now in the charge of Jeremy Vine.
Morwen Williams Over the last ten years, the UK has had three general elections (2015, 2017 and 2019). Williams says incremental developments have been made in the technology used to get the results from the constituencies on air during this time. There's been a significant change since 2015 and some change since 2019, she comments. The big technical one has been in connectivity from the different locations. The places where the counts are held and announced are leisure centres and town halls, which all have good Wi-Fi these days. We can tap into that with a cellular bonded backpack and we'll be doing that at quite a number of places using different products because we know it will be rock solid with no contested bandwidth.
This year's election was called for 4th July, a snap announcement that set the date much earlier than many political commentators predicted. But in terms of the broadcast coverage, preparations were already underway before the date was known. It would have been too late to start planning things when the election was called, explains Williams. We knew there had to be an election this year and knowing that our preparations have been going on [for some time]. Originally the thinking was that it would be an autumn or November election and I'd been involved in talks about the debates and potential locations for them. You can't do something as complex as a presenter plus seven leaders being interviewed from scratch. Discussions about what we might want these to look and feel like started months ago.
The same pre-planning applied to covering the declarations of results on election night, whenever it should happen to be. It doesn't even matter when the election is, Williams says. As soon as it's announced that the count for a particular seat will be at a certain location, you try to see if it's a known place, whether we've broadcast from there before and can our colleagues who work or live nearby go and look at it for us? If not and it's a big one, we have to go and recce. You take decisions like that throughout the year.
Clive Myrie and Laura Kuenssberg will host the BBC's Election 2024 An example of this is where the count for Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer's Holborn and St Pancreas seat would be held, which has been moved from its previous location. We found out about that in 2023 and started to talk about what the IT and connectivity would look like, Williams explains. There are brilliant people who look at the 650 seats and rank the really key ones [to cover]. We absolutely have to be at the leaders' constituencies and there are certain other ones, like Sunderland, which was always the first to declare [rival northeast city Newcastle took over this position in both 2017 and 2019]. That gives you something to talk about while you're waiting for all the other results to come in.
While some constituencies are logistically difficult to cover Williams
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
07/08/2025
July 8 2025, 22:30 (PDT) Tata Motors & Dolby Bring Dolby Atmos to Harrier.ev, R...
18/07/2025
Blanche Barton, Peter Gilmore, Scott Cummings, Sundance Institute Director of Programming Kim Yutani, and Peggy Nadramia throwing horns. (Stephen Lovekin/Shutte...
18/07/2025
By Jessica Herndon
One of the most exciting things about the Sundance Film Fest...
18/07/2025
BOSTON Sports network NESN today relaunched the NESN 360 app with a redesigned user experience and upgrades....
18/07/2025
Berklee Singers Wow the Competition on Netflixs Building the Band Netflixs new music competition show features two Berklee artists looking to make their pop b...
18/07/2025
As the House of Representatives voted early Friday morning to eliminate federal funding for public broadcasting, advocates warned that the elimination of $1 bil...
18/07/2025
DENVER Imagine Communications has announced that it is deepening its commitment to the North American sports and live events market with investments in its prod...
18/07/2025
LOS GATOS, Calif. Netflix once again reported strong financial growth, with revenue increasing 16% year-over-year to $11.079 billion in Q2 2025 as net income s...
18/07/2025
Live from the 153rd Open Championship: SMT Enhances Video Board Experience; Enab...
18/07/2025
ShotTracker's Davyeon Ross on Revolutionizing Basketball On the Court and ...
18/07/2025
Home Pitch: How the Danish League Brought Its Live Match Production In-House Matchday Production produced 800+ matches across Denmark in its first year By Geor...
18/07/2025
Live From the 153rd Open Championship: EMG Debuts Spidercam for Golf, Expands Su...
18/07/2025
Usyk vs Dubois II: Bringing the fight to life with state of the art cameras and ...
18/07/2025
Usyk vs Dubois II: DAZN's head of boxing Chris Glanville talks helicopters, ...
18/07/2025
Live From the 153rd Open Championship: NBC Expands Unilateral Effort; Shared Stu...
18/07/2025
Warner Bros. Discovery's Anne Graham on Training New Professionals to Ensure...
18/07/2025
Live From the 153rd Open Championship: How R&A Spidercam Became a Reality for Go...
18/07/2025
ESPN Bulks Up Onsite Studios, Cameras, Player Mics for WNBA All-Star Weekend Besides the game, four studio shows will be produced onsite By Jason Dachman, Edit...
18/07/2025
Friday 18 July 2025
Credit: Marc Sethi
The Sky Arts Awards will return on 16 September, once again taking place at the iconic Roundhouse in London. Produced b...
18/07/2025
This month, players can dive into special crossover events featuring SpongeBob SquarePants in Snake.io+ and Crossy Road Castle, available exclusively on Apple A...
18/07/2025
Up for the Match brings the fun, the passion-and a bit of Riverdance- tomorrow n...
17/07/2025
Blanche Barton, Peter Gilmore, Scott Cummings, Sundance Institute Director of Programming Kim Yutani, and Peggy Nadramia throwing horns. (Stephen Lovekin/Shutte...
17/07/2025
Spotify's goal with audiobooks is to help grow the publishing industry and create the best possible experience for booklovers, which is why we're launch...
17/07/2025
An advanced large solid rocket motor hot fire test conducted at L3Harris' Camden, Arkansas, site....
17/07/2025
L3Harris payloads and components have been on board every U.S. GPS satellite-more than 70 missions since the 1970s. Our technology is at the core of GPS availab...
17/07/2025
L3Harris' pack of launched effects is comprised of multi-role vehicles that ...
17/07/2025
NEW YORK - July 17, 2025 - Gracenote, the content data business unit of Nielsen, has announced the appointment of Ryan Moore to the new role of Chief Business O...
17/07/2025
READING, Pa. Network technology startup Miri Technologies has added David Cohen as vice president, business development. He'll be tasked with expanding the ...
17/07/2025
Berklee Wins CASE Award for Standout Digital Campaign The Alumni Affairs team's Variations Signature Series earned recognition for offering an authentic p...
17/07/2025
Early Thursday morning, the U.S. Senate voted to cut federal funding for PBS and NPR in a bill that also included cuts for foreign aid. In a 51-48 vote, the act...
17/07/2025
GREAT Britain and Northern Ireland Pavilions across IBC2025 (12 15 September, RAI Amsterdam) feature a remarkable 34 companies, each providing unique, innovativ...
17/07/2025
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers today introduced its Content Provenance and Authenticity (CPA) in Media Study Group (S...
17/07/2025
NEW YORK Despite widespread concerns about a soft advertising market, NBCUniversal said it closed its 2025-26 upfront negotiation cycle with a record ad sales v...
17/07/2025
NEW YORK Television advertising remains an effective means to market and influence younger baby boomer and Generation X consumers approaching retirement age, ac...
17/07/2025
ALLENTOWN, Pa. & JERSEY CITY, N.J. Service Electric Cable TV and OpenVault have announced that the operator is deploying the OpenVault Proactive Network Manage...
17/07/2025
WASHINGTON Following up on his first major policy speech just two ago, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr is promising to buck the usual summ...
17/07/2025
Luxembourg, 14 July 2025 - SES received the final regulatory approvals for the SES-Intelsat transaction, including the US Federal Communications Commission.
O...
17/07/2025
Berklee Alumni Nominated for 2025 Emmy Awards Twenty-seven Berklee alumni received nominations across categories in sound mixing, sound editing, and compositi...
17/07/2025
Back to All News
What We Watched the First Half of 2025
Entertainment
17 July 2025
Global
Link copied to clipboard
Today, we're sharing our latest Eng...
17/07/2025
Cast your vote in 2 categories for Ivory 3 American Concert DIvory 3 American Concert D is in the 2025 MIDI Innovation Awards and we are honored to be nominated...
17/07/2025
SVG Sit-Down: OpenDrives' Sean Lee, Michael Wilsker, and Jason Matousek on E...
17/07/2025
Oracle's Geoff Tognetti on Staying Ahead of the AI Curve Through Further Ado...
17/07/2025
NBA's Summer League Is a Hot Bed of AI, Immersive Innovation Testing Audio mixing, intelligent camera framing are among AI-driven efforts By Ken Kerschbaum...
17/07/2025
SVG's TranSPORT Conference Returns to NYC on Oct. 21; Register Today! By SVG Staff
Thursday, July 17, 2025 - 8:29 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
St...
17/07/2025
Gravity Media chosen as group name for merged OB business By George Bevir
Wednesday, July 16, 2025 - 11:30
Print This Story
Gravity Media executive chairm...
17/07/2025
SES Closes Deal to Acquire Intelsat, Creating New Giant in Satellite Connectivit...
17/07/2025
How MLB Pulled Off That Unforgettable Hank Aaron Tribute at the All-Star Game Vintage content, state-of-the-art projection/processing combine in marvelous mile...
17/07/2025
Wuppertal July 17, 2025
Riedel Communications Powers Handa Opera on Sydney Har...