Red Bee Media
| Company type | Private limited company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Media |
| Founded | 2005, see article for history |
| Headquarters | London, UK |
Number of employees | Approximately 1,400 (Q3 2006) |
| Website | www.redbeemedia.com |
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 and the Community Channel. The company also 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 News 24 and BBC Parliament, the playout of which is handled entirely by the BBC), as well as international channels such as BBC World, BBC Prime and BBC Food.
In addition to the playout, 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 descriptionfor BBC, Channel Four and Channel 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 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 a 3D sport graphic system designed to analyse sports on TV. Through its BDS subsidiary, Red Bee also provides programme listings services.
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 and the BBC.
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 specifically set up for the purchase which is jointly owned by Australian-based Macquarie Capital Alliance Group and Macquarie Bank Limited. As a consequence of the sale, the company was renamed "Red Bee Media" on 27 October 2005. Shortly after, Red Bee bought Broadcasting Dataservices ("BDS") from BBC Worldwide thus strengthening their EPG and programme metadata offering.
As BBC Technology was sold to Siemens Business Services already in 2004, this leaves only BBC Worldwide and BBC Resources in the BBC commercial division.
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. They also opened up a subtitling devision in Paris, France in January 2007 where they subtitle for the French TV channel M6.
At the end of 2005, Red Bee Media acquired the Australian Caption Centre, an Australian subtitling company, for AUD 7.5 million (GBP 3.2 million).
On 6 March 2007, Red Bee Media announced the launch of Red Bee Media Australia. SBS is the first of the main broadcasters in Australia to outsource their media management and playout operations.