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 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 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 .
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
Australia n-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 before their sale, BBC Broadcast 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.
Red Bee Media also opened a subtitling division 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.
