GMA Network allots P91M for its 28-hour election coverage

GMA Network Inc., one of the leading television stations in the Philippines, has allotted P91 million for its 28-hour coverage of this year’s mid-term elections. Entitled Eleksyon 2013, GMA’s special coverage is set to run for 28 full hours from 4:30 a.m. on election day until the morning after. GMA news teams will be reporting from 47 strategically selected live remote points throughout Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao including the GMA originating regional stations Cebu, Davao, Dagupan, Ilocos, Naga, Iloilo, Cagayan de Oro and satellite stations Bacolod and General Santos. In its coverage of the 2010 Presidential elections, GMA introduced the voting public to the state of the art election-related news delivery as it utilized touch screen, virtual screen, and immersive 3D graphics and the hologram effect, all powered by Vizrt, a first in Philippine television. This year, the Network has taken it to the next level as it launched the highly sophisticated Vizrt Immersive Graphics System interfaced with the Mosys camera tracking system. Powered by the Viz Virtual Studio System, this interface creates a more dynamic presentation of information, context packages, and real time immersive graphics, enabling camera movements such as panning, tilting, zooming, and even allowing anchors to walk around the graphics. CNN used the same tracking system in reporting the 2012 US Presidential elections. The Network also purchased 10 Ibis Pro, a digital mobile news gathering system. The equipment results in rapid deployment thereby expediting transmission and exchanges of information between the base and the reporters from wherever in the country they may be. Live reports and information gathered will be sent to GMA’s election hub, a two story set that took weeks to construct. The Eleksyon 2013 set includes a massive data and call center desk and an all-new social media center—with a Google Hangout that will allow the public to engage in discussions with moderators and guests throughout the coverage—in addition to the traditional anchors’ and talk areas. Adjacent to it, a fully equipped election war room has been prepared to handle coordination among hundreds of staffers. GMA also utilizes social media for wider coverage of the mid-term elections. To visualize the social media climate during the elections, the Network is launching two different web applications powered by Mass Relevance, a US-based “social engagement platform that discovers, filters, and displays real-time content anywhere.” The first web application is the Kandidato Buzz Index, which will help the Network visualize election related social media buzz online—determining via Facebook and Twitter as to who’s the most talked about candidate, at the same time sifting through a myriad of social content delivering only the most relevant information. Kandidato Buzz Index can be accessed through http://www.gmanews.tv/kandidatobuzzindex. The data gathered will then be translated for TV through Viz Social TV system, another state-of the-art technology recently acquired by GMA for the purpose of the elections—another first in the Philippines. Second is the Voting Experience Poll where people are invited to choose among a number of options as to how their voting experience went: was it orderly, was there a problem with the PCOS machine, was there an electricity outage, etc. Voting Experience Poll is accessible through http://www.gmanews.tv/votingexperiencepoll. Viewers can expect even more from GMA this 2013 as the Network will be able to provide information as to how each national candidate performs—not only nationwide, but as far down as city level. On election day itself, GMA Network will be connected to COMELEC’s mirror server—which guarantees immediate vote results from the polls. In 2010, GMA led all media organizations in providing a consistently fast, accurate and uninterrupted count as soon as the first PCOS machines transmitted the numbers. — Danessa Rivera/VS, GMA News