ABS-CBN tour

Ever wondered what exactly goes on inside a TV station? Let’s say for example that you watch local shows and see all that vibrant setups in the shows that you watch (news, teleserye or television series, and even the commercials). Aren’t you curious to know how these shows come to life to your television screens? For most of us young ones (born on the technological era) I guess I can assume that it just comes to us as ‘normal’ and that ‘this is because of the technology today’; that basic answer can usually suffice for the curiosity of our generation, but then diving in to what this ‘technology’ is, that takes more than a curious mind. 

The first thing you see even before entering the vicinity is this tower

 I was given the chance to tour to a local TV station but one of the biggest stations on our country, ABS-CBN. The first thing you could visually see as you would approach the vicinity is this large tower painted in strips of red and white alternately. This is the tower that holds the antennas that transmit the broadcast signals. As an ECE student, I asked the question “why place this in the middle of the city and not on the mountain or somewhere high?”, then the guide just answered that it was placed there even before there was the city and moving this elsewhere is just adding another problem and that solving interference problems would just need strengthening of the signal and monitoring of it.

The tour was basically divided into two parts, one was touring around the transmitter side and operations center and the other one was touring the studios where the magic happens. First up was the technical operations center (TOC). Inside the operations center lies the different offices and monitoring rooms as well as the storage of videos. The first room (sorry no picture) right after the entrance, called the media handler room, is where the commercials are stored in betacams as well as catalogue. This is where all the commercials are checked out and verified if what is labelled is the actual commercial. Commercials are catalogue in a 30 minute sized betacam but only 30 seconds of video information is used up. The actual cost of 30 seconds of commercial broadcast is about 420 thousand php depending on the air time. Now why not use CD’s for storing these commercials? The answer to that is that betacams and vhs provide raw data which is actually better than CD’s and are easily handled; one of the newer versions made by sony may contain about 60 minutes and is smaller than the betacams. A newer technology is also being applied in parallel to using the vhs and betacams, this is the tapeless recordings which are stored in a server accessible and manageable by the personnel in the room.

The second area is where one of the monitoring as well as calibrating (I think) room is located, in this area, the tour guide basically told us that ABS-CBN is capable of handling and operating digital TV broadcast because of its’ ISDBT setup, they are just waiting for the actual standard to be applied by the government.

This is one of the cubicles you would see as you enter the office-like facility wherein the personnel do some editing

The next area containing a series of small cubicles (work stations as seen above) is where videos are manipulated in a way to make it appear better before it is broadcast. These videos are tapes that are recorded and then edited for its quality. I didn’t get much from the tour guide during this part of the tour cause I was way back and didn’t hear a thing.

One of the monitoring rooms

Here you'd see a couple of people monitoring the channels

A man in action as he adjust the video that is being transmitted as well as coordinating with personnel through radio on a channel that has some problem

Same person as the one above explaining to the group (at the right side of the pillar) what he's doing

The monitoring room and its equipment 

Didn't get to go inside so I don't know much about this room but it should contain the same stuff as the others

The next area is where the broadcast telecoms operations (BTO) and master control room are located which basically look the same (as seen in the pictures above). Since they look the same I assumed they operated in the same way and somehow I was correct in a way. The BTO is capable of viewing 12 microwave feeds and 12 satellite feeds at the same time. This is possible because of the mult-viewer. Then again I was curious as to why they needed all these feeds when the only have one channel. I got the info I needed from the tour guide in whom he said that not only one channel is being monitored and adjusted to perform at its highest quality possible, but also sky cable and other TV stations under the ownership of Lopez. In short, technical support all comes from ABS-CBN. The feeds are stored and processed in a server, in case it bugs down, a back up server is readily available, but in case these two servers bug down (in case), tapes are used. For the master control room, it has the same feature wherein 12 micro and sat feeds are monitored simultaneously, but in here, the 10 studios are also monitored. Basically Video and Audio are checked in this area; also, over modulation is used for the audio, what this does is that it strengthens the signal to make it (the audio) louder. In the BTO, one operator is assigned to 6 channels. This makes up of the tour around the TOC, next up is the transmitter side.

Outside of the transmitter facility with the ABS-CBN logo

Here you see the entrance to the transmitter side right below the tower in the picture earlier.

Equipment room

Here you'd see the cabinets, didn't get to picture what was inside but it contains visual drivers

In the middle portion you'd see the control panel

Here's the transmitting side which is directly below the tower

At the top portion you would see the dummy load used for testing and other purposes

Tour guide pointing at the dummy load explaining the purpose of it

Whole view of the room

This is where the Aural and Video signal are processed together

Just our group going back through the cabinet section as we exit the facility

The pictures above compromise the three parts of the transmitter side: equipment room, transmitter room, and monitoring room. In the transmitter side, the signals from the TOC are processed here. Since the tower is located within the vicinity already, there is no more need for STL or station - transmitter link, instead, fiber optics is used. In the equipment room, the processing amplifier (coming from its name) processes the ntsc-brightness, contrast, hue of the signal. 2 transmitters are used with 60kwatss transmitting power each. The other one is just used for back up. 346.2 kwatts erp is generated after the antenna gain. Another device in the equipment room is the exciter (oscillator and modulator combined), which is used to excite the baseband signal to rf. The driver, also located in the equipment room, is a pre-amplifier that is used to drive one whole cabinet, wherein a cabinet contains many visual drivers. In one of the pictures above, a dummy load is used for testing. In the transmitter room, visual and aural signals are processed together than combined (individually processed before going into this room). The monitoring room is basically a small office where you could view the transmitted signal and the received signal. These three area make up the transmitter side.

Fire truck just outside the studios

Here you see a fire ambulance and rescue unit.....I guess it may come in handy during the setups in the studios (for props or for actual fire fighting).

The biggest and most advance studio in ABS-CBN

Same room but now you could see all those lights at the ceiling

A closer look at the lights and air conditioning vents

This is a picture wherein one of the light stands is being operated to go down

Another one of those pictures showing the technological side of  the studio

Here you see the biggest and the most advance studio in ABS-CBN, studio 10. Visual effects are mostly done in this studio which explains all the equipments hanging in the ceiling. Right now, a temporary setup is being arranged. Temporary setups are setups that are replaceable and arrange right before the airing or recording of the show. Meanwhile, permanent setups are setups that are used for live airing. In this studio (not really seen), there are green and blue cloths surrounding the whole studio. These cloths are used to display the graphic effects that are placed by computers during editing. Now why green and blue? This is because there is no green nor blue pigmentation in the human skin, which is why it is possible to place effects on the background and not affect the actors or the people in the show. Now with all these lights, it would be so hot that equipment could malfunction. In ABS-CBN, this kind of problem is solved by using conditioner gaps which cool not only the equipments but also the whole studio. Going through the studios, I noticed that they weren’t so big at all, this was because of the special lenses used (wide angle and super wide angle) which make the whole set appear larger.

This is the hallway where artists usually pass by and our group hoping for one to pass by

Here you see a couple of students walking through the hallway hoping for an artist to pass by....sadly...we weren’t able to meet one. 

This is the studio where news was done

The next studio is where the news is setup. 

The man in charge of our group and our professor. At the back you would see the most expensive equipment in the studio used for weather forecasts

This is our professor who accompanied us with the tour.

Just the set used for the news

A camera with an 'idiot board'

Same camera in side view

A picture of the background and a couple of people from our group

Another side view of the camera used for news casting

Here is the set where i'd say for general use cause of the green background used for effects

Now the pictures above show what the news setup looks like. In the news show, there is a part where in a hologram is visible, in truth, it appears to be a hologram but it makes use of augmented reality. For the weather forecast (kuya kim and his handy touch screen tv), the big display behind the guy with his camera (our professor) in the previous picture is the U-touch. In reality, it really isn’t touch screen but it makes use of heat sensors, if you noticed the hand gestures the weather man does, this is actually to control the display like a touch screen. This ‘TV’ costs about 4 million php. Other equipments used is the camera with the ‘idiot’ board which displays the scripts the anchors say.

This makes up the whole tour around ABS-CBN, one of the biggest, if not the biggest, TV industries in the Philippines.