Red Bee Media, formerly Ericsson Broadcast and Media Services (EBMS), is an international broadcasting and media services company and the largest access provider in Europe. Red Bee has its headquarters in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, England, with branch offices in

Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...

Cardiff Cardiff (; cy, Caerdydd ) is the capital and largest city of Wales. It forms a principal area, officially known as the City and County of Cardiff ( cy, Dinas a Sir Caerdydd, links=no), and the city is the eleventh-largest in the United Kingd ...

MediaCityUK MediaCityUK is a mixed-use property development on the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal in Salford, Greater Manchester, England. The project was developed by Peel Media; its principal tenants are media organisations and the Quayside MediaCi ...

in Salford and

Newcastle upon Tyne Newcastle upon Tyne ( RP: , ), or simply Newcastle, is a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. The city is located on the River Tyne's northern bank and forms the largest part of the Tyneside built-up area. Newcastle is ...

, and international offices in Australia, France, Spain, Germany,

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

the Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

, Sweden, France, Canada, United States and

Abu Dhabi Abu Dhabi (, ; ar, أَبُو ظَبْيٍ ' ) is the capital and second-most populous city (after Dubai) of the United Arab Emirates. It is also the capital of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and the centre of the Abu Dhabi Metropolitan Area. ...

. It has 2,500 employees worldwide across eight media hubs and distributes over 2.7 million hours of programming each year worldwide. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of

Ericsson (lit. "Telephone Stock Company of LM Ericsson"), commonly known as Ericsson, is a Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company headquartered in Stockholm. The company sells infrastructure, software, and services in informat ...

. Clients include

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

broadcasters such as the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

...

History and locations

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TV Genius TV Genius is a United Kingdom-based software company that specialize in TV search engines, TV recommendation engines, and EPG development. It was acquired by Red Bee Media in August 2011, and by Ericsson in July 2013. TV Genius became an inte ...

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Tandberg Television Ericsson Television, formerly Tandberg Television, is a company providing MPEG-4 AVC, MPEG-2 and HEVC encoding decoding and control solutions, plus stream processing, packaging, network adaption and related products, for Contribution & Distribu ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

Mediaroom

Competition Commission The Competition Commission was a non-departmental public body responsible for investigating mergers, markets and other enquiries related to regulated industries under competition law in the United Kingdom. It was a competition regulator under t ...

The company rebranded under its parent's brand on 1 June 2015. On 9 November 2017, it was announced that Ericsson Broadcast and Media Services would be renamed as Red Bee Media and become an independent business fully owned by Ericsson. The move was reported to be to clear the way for a sale of the division which has been retained by Ericsson.

United Kingdom

Red Bee's predecessor BBC Broadcast Limited was created by the BBC in 2002, by placing a range of BBC channel creation and channel management services under one roof. It was part of an agreement with the British government to create a commercial division that could supplement the BBC's income from the

television licence A television licence or broadcast receiving licence is a payment required in many countries for the reception of television broadcasts, or the possession of a television set where some broadcasts are funded in full or in part by the licence f ...

, thus keeping the licence fee increases down in the future. The other entities within the commercial division were

BBC Worldwide BBC Worldwide Ltd. was the wholly owned commercial subsidiary of the BBC, formed out of a restructuring of its predecessor BBC Enterprises in January 1995. The company monetises BBC brands, selling BBC and other British programming for broadcas ...

, BBC Studioworks, BBC Resources, BBC Ventures and BBC Technology. On 1 August 2005, BBC Broadcast, together with its subsidiaries, was sold for £166 million to Creative Broadcast Services Limited, a company set up specifically for the purchase and jointly owned by Australia-based Macquarie Capital Alliance Group and

Limited. The company was renamed Red Bee Media on 27 October 2005. Shortly before the sale, BBC Broadcast bought Broadcasting Dataservices ("BDS") from

thus strengthening the Electronic program guide, EPG and programme metadata offering. Red Bee Creative is the creative agency that operates within Red Bee Media. Based in White City, Red Bee Creative was responsible for the creation of various entertainment brands including BBC Sport,

UKTV UKTV Media Limited, simply known as UKTV, is a British multi-channel broadcaster, which, since 2019, has been wholly owned by BBC Studios (formerly BBC Worldwide), a commercial subsidiary of the BBC. It was formed on 1 November 1992 through ...

's Dave (TV channel), Dave and BT Sport. They have also produced creative campaigns for Nissan, Oasis, Netflix and Weston's Cider.

Australia

In 2006 the company purchased the commercial operations of the Australian Caption Centre (ACC) in 2006 for Australian dollar, A$7.5 million (Pound sterling, GBP3.2 million), rebranding them as Red Bee Media Australia in March 2007. The remaining part of the ACC became the not-for-profit Media Access Australia.

Germany

In March 2008 Red Bee Media acquired Titelbild Subtitling and Translation GmbH, a multilingual subtitling and translation service providers, enabling Red Bee Media to offer translation services into many languages as well as expanding Red Bee Media into the German market.

Spain

In October 2008, Red Bee Media acquired Mundovisión, the largest independent subtitling and audio description company in Spain. Alongside the recent acquisition of Titelbild in Germany, the addition of Mundovisión consolidated Red Bee Media's position as Europe's largest supplier of subtitling, signing and audio description services to the media industry.

The Netherlands

Red Bee is active on the Videoland website: they create subtitles for the service.

United States

Red Bee Media acquired

’s broadcast services division in July 2012 and FYI Television in January 2016.

Operations and services

In addition to channel playout, media management, content discovery platform and electronic program guide services, Red Bee Media provides "creative services" such as creation of Television advertisement, advertisements, Promotion (marketing), promotions and Trailer (promotion), trailers for radio, television and interactive television and "access services" such as subtitle (captioning), subtitling, Sign language, signing and audio description for the BBC, Channel 4 and Channel 5 programming. The company also provides compliance, media management, design and support services, like encoding and editing video for mobile phone operators and Video on demand, VOD and IPTV operators such as the BBC iPlayer, Orange (UK), Orange and UK cable company Virgin Media. Red Bee Media operates interactive television for the BBC, UKTV and others and provides webmaster services for BBC Online and other websites. It markets complex design systems for television such as its sports analysis tool called Piero, which is a 3D sport graphic system designed to analyse sports on TV. Red Bee Media also opened a subtitling division in Paris, France in January 2007, which subtitles for the French TV channel M6 (TV channel), M6.

2021 London Broadcast Centre incident

Red Bee Media's broadcast centre in London was evacuated on 25 September 2021 following a fire alarm. The fire extinguisher system caused damage to servers and storage devices that resulted in national television channels going off air during primetime.

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned enterprise, state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a four ...

, Channel 5 (British TV channel), Channel 5, BT Sport, JSTV, More4, Film4, E4 (TV channel), E4, 4Music, The Box (British TV channel), The Box, Box Hits, Kiss TV, Kiss, Magic (TV channel), Magic and Kerrang! TV, Kerrang! were impacted. Live continuity announcements for BBC channels were also taken off air. Accessibilty services such as subtitles and audio description tracks were also severely disrupted, with some features not becoming available again until mid-November. This caused several people depending on these services to complain to the UK broadcasting industry regulator Ofcom.

References

External links

* {{Official website, https://www.redbeemedia.com
Red Bee Media Broadcasting Dataservices
British companies established in 2005 Ericsson Mass media companies established in 2005 Mass media companies of the United Kingdom 2014 mergers and acquisitions British subsidiaries of foreign companies