Strong and Stable Livestream
| Strong and Stable Livestream | |
|---|---|
| |
| Genre: | Political, Event Coverage |
| First Broadcast: | 08/06/2017 |
| Producer(s): | Katherine Bell Edwin Barnes |
Strong and Stable was the name given to YSTV's overnight coverage of GE2017 with The Lemon Press. It was envisioned as an alternative and comedic take on the elections. As Katherine Bell pointed out: "If people want serious, they'll watch the BBC". The multiple livestreams streamed on both YSTV and Facebook live in 3 increments at 10-12pm, 1-3am and finally a more serious political debate show from 4-6am.
Pre-Production
There were vague intentions to cover the elections since the current PM Theresa May unexpectedly called the election back in April 2017. However since the election was called for June 8th just after exam season, pre-production was put on the back-burner until anyone could be bothered. Turns out no one really could, so much like the election campaigning itself it was quite a last minute affair.
The Lemon Press (York's answer to The Private Eye) were invited onto the project to provide VTs, presenters and general anarchy. There was a very productive meeting with our lemony partners where the general outline of the show was discussed. From this meeting it was decided Tom Lee would help The Lemon Press film VTs with our green screen in the studio. Spoiler alert: Most of these ended up being unbroadcastable. One of the skits about the Queen was bordering on treason so there was some trepidation for the actual live show.
Edwin Barnes booked YourSpace for the night, intending to set up the OB hours before we went live.
The Day of Livestream
The day of the election stream was at the end of the infamous week of hell from 2-9th June where there was a production every single day. Therefore, everyone was a bit fed up and there wasn't much going on until around 6pm on the night. Since we were supposed to go live at 10pm it was decided there wasn't enough time to set up an OB in YourSpace and the studios would have to do. There was then a rush against time to build a decent-ish set with setboard, photos of politicians, a comically bad "On Air" sign and multiple balloons. Hui-Ling Phillips, Katherine Bell and Raquel Bartra went to Aldi to procure catering as there was a huge crew arriving.