For 14 years Dave has been involved in the delivery of the Good Friday Appeal Telethon. For the past four of these Ready Set Go have been the Site Producers for the telecast.
The telecast runs for 17.5 hours on Good Friday, a public holiday. The onscreen content is created by three separate production teams, one for Sunrise, one for the Day program and one for the night program. The project requires us to co-ordinate all of the requirements for the broadcast, the event in general and the phone room which houses over 200 phone operators.
Because we are in a function room in a football stadium we are also at the behest of the AFL. Some years we have had a night match in the middle of our production week to contend with.
All in all its a complex job. With the help of the broadcast operations team at The Seven Network, each of the three production teams, and a suite of fantastic suppliers we are able to provide an environment fit for a major community television event that has been on the Seven Network for over 50 years.
In addition to the normal requirements for this project, this year, the executive producers decided it was time to upgrade the set This involved getting all three teams to agree on a design, specify it so it could be built, then build and install it. Because the production period is reduced to save money we only had 7 days from the time the set was signed off until it had to be installed. Luckily, TV set designing legend Peter Disney was on the case, and designed a set that worked in all senses of the word, was easy to build, and installed with a minimum of fuss. And, we couldn't have achieved what we did with the set without our set construction company, Staging Rentals
The result, a triumph! We could tell you for days about how our team's planning made this "the easiest GFA ever for all concerned" [Gordon Bennett - Exec Producer - Day] . But its not about that, its about one thing. The appeal raised $13,862,734 for the hospital. A mammoth effort in trying times. Thankyou Victoria.
