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Red Bee Media
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Red Bee Media Limited is a media company which operates a playout centre in west London in the United Kingdom for television and radio broadcasters such as the BBC, UKTV, Virgin Media Television, ESPN, Community Channel, Setanta Sports News and soon (following an announcement in November 2007) Channel 4. The company also transmits Fiver and Five US and provides backup facilities for Five. The playout department handles more than 60 TV and radio channel streams, among them all the domestic BBC channels (except for BBC Parliament, the production and playout of which is handled by Millbank Studios), along with international channels including BBC World News, BBC Prime and BBC Food.
Most of the Red Bee Media activities are located in the Broadcast Centre in the BBC Media Village, part of the BBC White City campus, although part of the subtitling operation is located in Glasgow and other subtitlers and compliance staff are located around the UK.
Employment Issues
Red Bee Media is currently being taken to an employment tribunal over the termination of a freelance contractor working for them at Channel 4 in November 2008.
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Encyclopedia
Red Bee Media Limited is a media company which operates a playout centre in west London in the United Kingdom for television and radio broadcasters such as the BBC, UKTV, Virgin Media Television, ESPN, Community Channel, Setanta Sports News and soon (following an announcement in November 2007) Channel 4. The company also transmits Fiver and Five US and provides backup facilities for Five. The playout department handles more than 60 TV and radio channel streams, among them all the domestic BBC channels (except for BBC Parliament, the production and playout of which is handled by Millbank Studios), along with international channels including BBC World News, BBC Prime and BBC Food.
Most of the Red Bee Media activities are located in the Broadcast Centre in the BBC Media Village, part of the BBC White City campus, although part of the subtitling operation is located in Glasgow and other subtitlers and compliance staff are located around the UK.
Employment Issues
Red Bee Media is currently being taken to an employment tribunal over the termination of a freelance contractor working for them at Channel 4 in November 2008. The allegation is that Red Bee Media and three of its staff were involved in breaches of the Disability Discrimination Act and the Whistleblowers Act.
Freelance contractors in this industry (as in many others) are not eligible for the full benefits of employment protection enjoyed by employees. However, they are covered by the discrimination and whistleblower acts designed to protect workers from errant companies.
It is quite often hard for any disabled person to advance in the workplace but this industry is particularly difficult. The accepted route into the business for many of the better jobs available (e.g. video editor) is to be a “runner”. The nature of the job is as the name suggests. It involves fetching and carrying for other employees and generally acting as a gopher. Obviously a disabled person is at a disadvantage (however talented an editor they might be) and must try to find other ways to enter the industry. The contractor involved in the case against Red Bee Media was trying to do just that.
History
Red Bee Media was formerly BBC Broadcast Limited. BBC Broadcast was created by the BBC in 2002, by placing a range of BBC channel creation and channel management services under one roof. It was part of an agreement with the British Government to create a commercial division that could supplement the BBC's income from the television licence, thus keeping the licence fee increases down in the future. The other entities within the commercial division were BBC Worldwide, BBC Resources and BBC Technology.
On 1 August 2005, BBC Broadcast, together with its subsidiaries, was sold for GBP 166 million to Creative Broadcast Services Limited, a company set up specifically for the purchase and jointly owned by Australian-based Macquarie Capital Alliance Group and Macquarie Bank Limited. The company was renamed Red Bee Media on 27 October 2005. Shortly before the sale, BBC Broadcast bought Broadcasting Dataservices ("BDS") from BBC Worldwide thus strengthening the EPG and programme metadata offering.
The sale of BBC Technology to Siemens Business Services in 2004 leaves only BBC Worldwide and BBC Resources as commercial BBC companies.
Operations
In addition to playout services, Red Bee Media provides "creative services", such as creation of advertisements, promotions and trailers for radio, television and interactive television, and "access services", such as subtitling, signing and audio description for the BBC, Channel 4 and Five programming. Red Bee Media also provides media management, design and support services, like encoding and editing video for mobile phone operators and VOD and IPTV operators such as the BBC, Orange and UK cable company Virgin Media.
Red Bee Media operates interactive television for the BBC, UKTV and others, and provides webmaster services for bbc.co.uk and other web sites. It markets complex design systems for television such as its sports analysis tool called Piero, which is a 3D sport graphic system designed to analyse sports on TV.
Through its BDS subsidiary, Red Bee also provides programme listings services.
The company purchased the Australian Caption Centre, an Australian subtitling company, for AUD 7.5 million (GBP 3.2 million) in 2006. This was relaunched as subsidiary Red Bee Media Australia in March 2007.
In 2006, Red Bee Media launched its Digital Hive product, which allows content owners and rights holders to have their media assets enhanced and re-purposed. Customers include Endemol, Camelot, SWISS TXT and the BBC.
Red Bee Media also opened a subtitling division in Paris, France in January 2007 where they subtitle for the French TV channel M6. The company has offices in London, Paris, Beijing, Singapore and Sydney.
The Australian publicly-owned broadcaster Special Broadcasting Service had announced in March 2007 that it would outsource its media management and playout operations to the company. These negotiations came to an end without agreement in February 2008. SBS will continue to examine other available options to update its television broadcast system.
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