Bannister Lake played an important role during coverage of the June 7th Ontario 42nd general election delivering flawless results throughout the evening for three Ontario broadcasters. Bannister Lake’s Elector product provided editorial teams at Global Television, TVO and French language public broadcaster TFO with real-time results, advanced race filtering, and the ability to quickly and accurately create graphic playlists for broadcast.
Unlike previous elections, Elections Ontario utilized tabulators at many polling stations across the province which dramatically speed up the distribution of results data. Elector’s multi-user, web-based UI easily handled the deluge of data and provided producers and analysts with newsworthy voting trends, the ability to accurately make race calls and in turn translate those trends into powerful graphic presentations.
This election marked Global Television’s twelfth time using Elector on a major election broadcast. Beyond conventional broadcast graphics, Global used Elector’s RestAPI to integrate election data directly into augmented reality and virtual reality elements creating 3D interactive environments that complimented storytelling.
TVO first used Elector for the 2011 Ontario election and again in 2014. For the 2018 election broadcast, TVO used Elector to create a more analytical program featuring a wide variety of live data graphics that provided editorial context and insight.
This election was TFO’s first experience with Elector. TFO’s broadcast focused on Ontario’s Francophone population and used a combination of augmented and traditional graphics to convey the impact of election night. To accommodate TFO’s French language requirements, Bannister Lake translated the Elector UI into French ensuring TFO staff was able to fully utilize Elector’s capabilities. TFO also extended their broadcast by making their Elector generated graphics available on Facebook Live.
Bannister Lake provided all three broadcasters with a variety of professional services that complimented and enhanced their editorial and on-air capabilities. The Bannister Lake data integration team worked closely with the Canadian Media Election Consortium to ensure that results data flowed perfectly into each broadcaster’s Elector systems. The creative team led graphics integration connecting live data to graphic templates while ensuring that graphics performance was optimized. Bannister Lake led training sessions for editorial and production staff.
Elector is used throughout Canada and the US delivering reliable election night results and analysis for federal, regional and municipal races. An industry staple for over fourteen years, Elector can drive 2D and 3D graphic displays across any broadcast graphic playout system.