Darlington FC teams up with CJP Broadcast Solutions for Quaker TV
By Ray Simpson
New venture, with DFC volunteers heavily involved, starts soon
Darlington Football Club have joined forces with one of the leading live production companies in the country, CJP Broadcast Service Solutions, to produce our exciting new live streaming service, Quaker TV!
CJP are very experienced, having worked on several major national sporting events, and we believe that they will be the ideal partner for our new venture. They will be supplying us with a Streamstar X4 Live Production Studio, which will be in use at every Darlington home game this season.
Quaker TV will be run entirely by Darlington FC volunteers, who have done a terrific job in making sure that the popular Darlington FC You Tube channel and Darlo Fans Radio have achieved a high standard and reached a worldwide audience over the last eight years.
Quaker TV now has the capacity to use a four camera HD platform in order to broadcast all Darlington FC home matches at the Northern Echo Arena to a national and international audience. New features will include graphics, close up action, cameras on the 18 yard lines, and half and full time highlights beamed into our hospitality areas.
Stuart Armstrong, one of our commentators on Darlo Fans Radio in the last eight years, has played a key role in launching Quaker TV, and said; “With all the uncertainty about attendances this coming season we knew we wanted to make sure we could provide a streaming service for our fans who might be shielding or unable to attend due to restrictions. As well as that, we know from our work on DFR that we have lots of listeners already from all around the world who tune in religiously to keep up with the team and be part of the Darlo community through the chat rooms we have.
“We set off with two main goals and that was to provide a high quality broadcast for each game that Darlo fans would really enjoy and also that we would do it in a way that the club could get maximum benefit from any income without going to third party operators.
"We've built up a good reputation over the years with Kevin Luff’s unbelievable highlights and the commentaries that we do on DFR but we wanted to step up our game a bit and make sure we kept a good Darlo feel and some continuity from that.
“When we looked around there are lots of clubs right up to the Championship doing a single camera feed for their streaming and as a minimum offering that is ok - but we wanted to create something that Darlo fans could feel proud of so we went about figuring out how we could aim to do it better.
“When it comes to each home game this season, we will be providing a stream consisting of up to four match action cameras, integrated commentary, graphics, instant replays, and some additional build up and post-game content. We're also looking to see if we can broadcast some match action in to the bar areas at half time and full time so you can have a drink with friends and take a look at some of the match action from the game you've just watched.
“The board have supported us in terms of purchasing the bits of equipment we needed which we're grateful for, and the Supporters’ Group have also contributed financially. We've been able to integrate a lot of our existing equipment, so we've not had to start from scratch.
“All of this will be powered by our existing media volunteers, with some help from local film and media students as well as hopefully being able to encourage some more Darlo fans to get involved. If you'd like to be involved, please let us know!
“We'll have only limited opportunities to test the service out prior to the season so it will be a very steep learning curve for us all, so stick with us if there's the odd hiccup - but we're confident that we'll be up and running smoothly pretty quickly.”
Kevin Luff, who has established the club’s YouTube channel as one of the best in the country, said; "As a media team we're really excited about the prospect of bringing live match day streaming to our fans. If you had told me eight years ago when I recorded my first game for the club at Consett that this is where we'd end up, I'm not sure I would have believed you!
"Live streaming is something the club has spent a great deal of time looking at. We examined many different ways of doing it but throughout the process of researching the marketplace quality and the experience of our fans was at the forefront of minds.
"We feel the system that we have invested in, which allows us to have up to four cameras, commentary, replays and graphics will give supporters the experience and quality that they've come to expect from our match day coverage. There will undoubtedly be a learning curve but we're really excited about the prospect of bringing this to our fans."
"I'm grateful to everyone who has been involved in this project - it's been a real team effort. However, I'm also particularly thankful to the football club board and the supporters group board who have backed us throughout this process."
You can see what CJP and Streamstar offer here in this three minute clip of the recent friendly game of Hereford v Newport
CJP Broadcast Service Solutions Limited was established in 2011 to provide broadcast manufacturers and engineering companies with professional ITIL based service desk solutions. In 2016 the company expanded its portfolio to include digitisation of broadcast tape and film media for restoration of historical media archives into modern file-based formats. In 2018 CJP Broadcast expanded its operations further, providing live production solutions, professional broadcast TV studio system integration and technical support services.
CJP Sales and Service Executive Kieran Phillips, said; "We have gained a lot of experience in recent months offering Streamstar as the basis of a fully-crewed production service. That included successful TV coverage and live streaming of two Major-League football finals and semi-finals. Our remit was to add behind-the-scenes content to offset the absence of a traditional packed stadium crowd. The resultant stream attracted very good feedback from our client and from viewers; it was even taken as a feed by the host broadcaster.”
Here's a link to their website: https://cjp-bss.co.uk/
Coronavirus permitting, Quaker TV’s first league game will be on Saturday 10th October 2020 at the Northern Echo Arena against Kidderminster Harriers.
The price for each home league game will be £7.99 – no matter where you are in the world. All of the revenue from Quaker TV goes to the club, none of it is shared with third parties.
Details of how to subscribe to Quaker TV will be available soon.
Everyone at Darlington FC hopes that Quaker TV's partnership with CJP Broadcast Service Solutions will be very successful.
