A £7.5m contract to run a post-production facility to support the expanding BBC Creative department is up for grabs.
It follows the broadcaster’s decision in July not to renew its exclusive contract with Red Bee Media, which created TV trails, promos and marketing material for the BBC.
The BBC is currently gearing up to deliver up to 900 TV campaigns per year - the majority of its clip-based trails – before Red Bee’s contract expires in December this year.
As part of the BBC’s preparations it wants to appoint a company to set up and run an Avid-based post operation to support the post production of trails.
The tender is for a facility that will include six edit suites, two graphics suites, two audio suites with voice booths, craft edit suites and Avid-based storage.
The successful bidder will also be expected to provide media asset management functionality, browser-based desktop editing and provision for disaster recovery. A second lot includes ingest and transcode capacity to the DPP’s file delivery standard.
The value of the three-year contract ranges from £900,000 to £1.5m per year. The BBC could extend the contract by up to two years, making it potentially worth as much as £7.5m.
A BBC spokesman said: “We’re bringing the production of the majority of our TV trails and other marketing material in-house as part of a drive to reduce costs, align with the rest of the broadcasting industry and deliver more creativity in our output.”
Prime Focus currently provides on-site post services for Red Bee’s creative services department, operating 11 suites to support Red Bee’s work supplying channel branding and promos for clients such as the BBC and UKTV.
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