LiveU powers ITVX Love Island from villa to viewers

Last summer, ITV celebrated the tenth anniversary of its popular reality dating show, Love Island. Supported by LiveU’s cloud video technology, ITV live streamed the official podcast, Love Island: The Morning After, on ITVX and YouTube, giving fans a watch-along experience.

For this live stream, the production team needed to build a flexible, agile cloud workflow that could handle precise timings and real-time communication with its playout provider. The team turned to LiveU Studio, which was able to streamline the workflow between Majorca, where the main show is filmed, and London, home of the podcast.

ITV used LiveU’s LU800 units and Studio platform to create a low-latency connection between the two locations. This allowed the presenters to follow the main show in real time, while the feeds were combined in LiveU Studio to deliver a picture-in-picture live experience for viewers. This technology helped to make the podcast feel fully Love Island-branded.

With linear viewing in decline, broadcasters are reconsidering how to connect with audiences across demographics. Leon Langdale, technical producer at ITV Studios, explains, “Reaching younger audiences means meeting them where they are, and that increasingly means digital and social platforms.”

Langdale concludes, “LiveU Studio has given us a flexible entry point into cloud-based production, and we’re keen to expand its use. While we still rely on traditional kit for much of the workflow, there’s no reason we can’t evolve into cutting cameras, handling LRT feeds and adding live graphics directly in the cloud. It’s an exciting direction of travel.”

Find out more at liveu.tv