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Final to be viewed by record 1.5 billion
YOKOHAMA, Japan (Reuters) -- The World Cup final between Germany and Brazil on Sunday will be watched by 1.5 billion giving it the biggest audience in television history, its Swiss broadcasters said. "1.5 billion is the expectation for the final match -- accumulated for the 64 matches we expect more than 40 billion spectators," said Host Broadcast Services' (HBS) chief executive Francis Tellier on Saturday. The figure -- around one in four of the planet's population -- is easily the largest ever viewership for a single TV programme, according to HBS. HBS is wholly-owned by KirchSports, a Swiss subsidiary of insolvent German media company KirchMedia, and was set up in 1999 to provide 200 of the world's broadcasters with television pictures of the World Cups in 2002 and in 2006. The company is employing 2,800 directors, cameramen, technicians and other staff to cover the 2002 World Cup being co-hosted in Korea and Japan -- far more than it will need in Germany in four years. "Basically, it's three times the workload, it's three times the budget," said Tellier. "You have one World Cup in Korea, one World Cup in Japan and then once you have organised these two World Cups you have to organise a third one which is a unified World Cup to make sure that for the audience it looks like one single World Cup." The total budget for HBS to cover this World Cup is around 200 million Swiss Francs ($134.5 million) of which 70 percent is being spent on equipment rental and wages. The scale of the operation is staggering; over 2,000 kilometres of cable -- more than enough to link Seoul with Tokyo -- have been laid, 800 tonnes of equipment have been shifted into stadiums and broadcast centres, 260 cameras and 2800 television monitors have been in operation and facilities have been provided for up to 1,000 match commentators. The broadcast compound at the Yokohama International stadium was abuzz with anticipation on Saturday as HBS prepared for the show-stopping finale to their four-week marathon. Huge drums of cable whirred as technicians put the finishing touches to the wiring while Steadicam operators readied their backbreaking equipment and the harnesses they use to ease the load. Twenty-three cameras will be trained on Sunday's match between Brazil and Germany, including the 'in-goal' camera that has debuted in 2002. LIVE DIRECTING If the final is marred by any of the controversy over refereeing or play-acting that has coloured the tournament so far, banks of state-of-the-art digital slow-motion machines will replay the action over and over again to either enraged or ecstatic audiences in Brasilia or Berlin. The man casting the spotlight on the brilliance and the blunders on the pitch on Sunday is TV director Volker Weicker, a 25-year veteran of live directing. Weicker will be selecting the images, graphics and slow-motions provided by his handpicked team of cameramen and engineers, mixing them into the programme that will go out to the world. Weicker says he is aware of the millions if not billions of people watching his work but is too busy in the intense control room atmosphere to worry about making a mistake himself. "If you think about the pressure you'll probably get into trouble so I don't think about it. I just do my job," he said. "It's a soccer match first of all. It's the final and I'm very happy and glad and proud to be picked to do that but I just do what I do normally -- just doing my work," he says. Weicker, a German, was picked to do the final from a pool of soccer-specialist German, French and British directors long before the German national team made it to Yokohama. The majority of his cameramen also hail from Germany but Weicker says audiences in Brazil need not fear unbalanced coverage on their television screens. "The heart is going to surely beat with one team but they are all professionals as I try to be -- we want to have fun as well as the players have fun on the pitch," he said. "We want to produce a good final. It won't be subjective in what we pick to show from the pitch," he said. ($1-1.487 Swiss Franc) Copyright 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. |
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