When Victoria Real was asked to build a website featuring video
streaming for the first series of Big Brother, the company did not
know it would be changing the face of prime-time television. Liz
Warren asks the company's solutions delivery director Kevin
Goodings how he did it.
With the schedules awash with voting-based reality TV shows, it is
hard to imagine a time when they did not exist. Yet Kevin Goodings,
solutions delivery director at web developer Victoria Real,
remembers taking a leap into the unknown when the company was asked
to deliver a website and live video streaming for the first series
of Big Brother. "Big Brother had run successfully in Holland but
had not yet hit the UK. Nobody really knew what the show was
about," Goodings says. "It was very different to anything we as a
company had done previously."
When Victoria Real took on the project, there were several hurdles
to overcome. "The scale of the site in terms of the size of the
audience was potentially massive, but it was also an event site
which would go live for only a short period of time," he says.
"That meant we had to build a chunk of infrastructure that could
cope with enormous loads, but which only needed to last for a short
while."
The Big Brother producers also wanted to use streaming video to
show real-time TV pictures on the web. This was one of the first
times video streaming had been used to support a live event and
Victoria Real had to work out how to encode and deliver it.
The team did have some idea of the potential size of the audience
by looking at the impact of the original Big Brother show in
Holland, although the load for the UK show turned out to be
different. Victoria Real then struggled to identify partners in the
UK who had the history and maturity to deal with those levels of
traffic - especially with the added data burden of live video
streaming. "We had to work out what infrastructure we needed, who
could support it, how to physically tie it all together and then
how to put a website and applications on top," says Goodings.
While the elements of the website over which Victoria Real had
control stood up to the hammering given by fans, many other
websites had not scaled up enough to handle the hits they received
on pages linking to the main Big Brother site. "Although those
issues were quickly addressed, we had not focused on the impact on
services outside our own site. Those issues gave us a better
appreciation of the whole picture," he says.
However, technical headaches were not the only factors the company
had to grapple with: it faced the demanding creative challenge of
engaging the audience and holding them for the life of the show.
"The whole creative concept behind Big Brother was very different
to anything we had been asked to do before,"Goodings says.
All of this had to be put in place in the three months before the
show began broadcasting on a notoriously tight budget. The task was
complicated by the fact that, at that time, many of the tools now
taken for granted were in their infancy. For example, Victoria Real
had to build its own content management system to accept stories
from its editorial team and to manage the vast amount of content
that quickly accumulated on the site.
The Victoria Real team also had to grapple with the Big Brother
house and studio being under construction for much of the project.
They sidestepped this issue by assembling the kit in the company's
Brighton offices and laying it out and connecting it in the way it
would be connected on site.
"That was a pragmatic way to give ourselves the confidence that it
would all work. It gave us a real sense of just how much physical
technology was involved," says Goodings. "Once we knew it worked,
we took it to bits, put it in a van and drove it up to London to
install it. In fact, the final connections were made just a few
minutes before the first contestants walked in. There was little
room for contingency and it was a rush to get it all in place, both
physically and from a software point of view."
Goodings says the first evening when the contestants entered the
house was pretty low key. "The site went live and the video
streaming got connected and it was exciting to see, but we did not
really begin to feel we were in the middle of a big event until
things in the house got interesting." He says the turning point
came when the housemates confronted "Nasty Nick" and people used
the website and real-time video streaming. "More people watched
that live on the web than on TV," he says. "We realised then we had
converted a good share of the audience to online viewing for the
first time in the UK. That really crystallised the achievement of a
crossover between TV and the web.
"It is only by looking back that we can appreciate what we achieved
in a short space of time and the impact it had. At the time we were
just getting on and doing it." He says being in at the start of Big
Brother helped Victoria Real build up its reputation and the
programme is still what the company is best known for. However, it
represents just a small part of its activities. This close
association - and a lot of coverage in the Brighton-based media -
meant that when the second series of Big Brother was announced, "a
lot of people would come to our offices and try to access the show
through us," says Goodings.
The company has gone on to provide support for other reality TV
shows, as well as the later series of Big Brother. "As the show has
come back for subsequent runs, the technology has matured and we
have been able to create a lot of reusable components which are a
good fit for similar programmes," Goodings says. "Our experiences
with Big Brother have also profoundly structured our thinking about
project delivery and the technology we offer."
Victoria Real has continued to introduce new features and
technologies into successive Big Brother series. "Big Brother Two
was about showing the programme on digital TV," Goodings says. "It
was also the first large-scale consumer experience of voting
through interactive TV. We have been able to move away from
web-based support for the show to true cross-platform products for
the web, digital TV and wireless services. A lot of people have
talked about multi-platform delivery, but few have achieved it. It
has been great to be involved in that."
Goodings admits that Victoria Real never expected Big Brother or
reality TV to develop into the phenomenon it has become. "At the
time, we had no idea we were involved in something that would be so
significant," he says. "Since then, everyone involved has enjoyed
being part of an online prime-time event that their friends and
family are interested in. We certainly have not lost that initial
excitement when doing new TV-related projects, because they are a
little bit special and our work is very public."
Project lessons
Lessons Kevin Goodings learned from implementing the Big Brother
website can apply to any business with an online presence:
- Although your website may already have the capacity to cope
with peaks in traffic, ensure that other websites that link to your
site have also made adequate preparations. If users are unable to
access a partners' site, your reputation may be tarnished by
association
- When time is tight, be prepared to improvise
- Do some research into your partners on the project. Do they
have the right kind of experience and skills to provide you with
the level of support you require?
- If the project involves developing new software, you may be
able to re-use components on future projects
- If you have to learn new skills to implement a project, see it
as an opportunity rather than a chore.