John Probyn headed up the ClearChannel Entertainments team, working alongside Emma Hodgetts, who managed the event on behalf of Capital Radio. The two assembled a team of trusted suppliers with production manager Mark Ward and Kahren Williams at its vanguard.
Mark Ward explained: "There was a major transformation to this year's show, because for the first time it was televised on Christmas Eve. This brought changes to several aspects of the production, and meant that lighting became a major priority. We also added a second satellite stage to allow the presenters to be filmed whilst the stage was being set for the next act, reducing disruption to the flow."
The Show saw the six artists involved performing in pairs, with two breaks. Craig David and Will Young kicked off, David Gray and Miss Dynamite filled the centre spot with contrasting but very polished sets, whilst the final section featured Savage Garden's Darren Hayes and Ronan Keating.
Audio
It fell to Canegreen to take on Earls Court's challenging acoustics. Pete Hughes, recently recruited to the Canegreen fold was the company's project manager, overseeing the installation of the PA. Having worked in Earls Court before, Hughes was well aware of how idiosyncratic the venue could be so wisely invested time in some advance planning to achieve a high quality sound that would otherwise have been virtually unachievable in such a short time period. Hughes' experienced team included Roger Lindsay, Ian Nelson (who looked after the two main FOH systems) and Andy Williamson (housekeeping and managing Soundweb).
Canegreen installed their Meyer system, flown in stereo clusters with each side containing 10 M3D, six M2D and six MSL4 boxes; with six 650R2P SP subwoofers on the ground flanking the stage. To get the best out of the system, Hughes utilized Meyer's Internet-based MAPP Online (Multipurpose Acoustical Prediction Program). This required him to feed in the speaker plot, featuring the flying height and angles (including factors such as room temperature and humidity), into Meyer's website, and in a matter of seconds, he then received back a detailed prognosis of how the sound would behave in that particular venue. It also meant Hughes could allow for the changes in frequency response caused by the cavities that are created when adjacent loudspeaker cabinets are splayed, to achieve a desired sound coverage pattern. Hughes explained: "Using MAPP Online meant that as soon as we switched the system on, we had a PA that sounded great all over the hall.
"In the case of Earls Court 1, this included generating a 'null' point within the field to negate the reflections from the large areas of concrete exposed at the front of the balconies (which were also draped)."
Hughes also changed the configuration of the subs: "This year we stacked the 650R2P SP subs in a vertical column, reducing the contact area with the floor of the venue and waveform interference between the cabinets. Roger Lindsay commented immediately that 'the bass response was smoother and tighter than I have heard in that room'."
At the front of house control position, two Midas XL4 mixing consoles ran two systems as the live bands performed in pairs with a break between every other band, giving the stage crew time to reset the stage between acts, and the two monitor and FOH crews to reset their systems.
The internal communication between the PA team, stage management (by Steve Jones), VT, and the broadcasters (Impact TV), was made possible by a Clearcomm Broadband Comms system provided and managed by Canegreen. Hughes explained: "On a show with six live bands, there are a lot of parameters changing on various cues, so it's es
