LOVE ISLAND

Love Island USA Season 3: How The Switch enabled ITV America and CBS to capture the summer of love

ITV America and CBS joined forces to bring reality TV fans their nightly episodes of Love Island USA Season 3 but needed to carry feeds from two remote shooting locations in Hawaii to a master control room located in a nearby town and then to production and post-production facilities in California
Separate locations in Hawaii and California presented serious connectivity challenges for the production team and they turned to The Switch to bring the show together seamlessly using a remote set-up
The Switch deployed ground-breaking connectivity between the sets and production facilities to create a unique workflow that supported 24/7 live production of Love Island USA

The Switch installed a dedicated network in Hawaii between the main “Villa”, a second villa at “Casa Amor” and the master control room set up at the Naniloa Hotel in downtown Hilo, which formed the main base of operations for the production crew
Established Nimbra IP transmission platforms at each of the three locations and, working with its local partner, Hawaiian Telecom, provided 10Gb connectivity from each site to support video, audio and data
Provided 10Gb fiber connectivity to The Burbank Switch facility, where ITV America’s 80+ remote editorial team put together the show 24/7 for 41 days straight, as well as the ITV post-production offices in North Hollywood
Bubbles were created at all three Hawaii locations to keep contestants and the production team COVID-safe throughout the process

Production team directed, produced and controlled 115 cameras across Love Island USA’s Hawaiian “Villa” and “Casa Amor” sets from 20 miles away at the Naniloa Hotel and edited the show from 3,000 miles away in California
The Switch worked with ITV America and CBS to deliver the show six nights
per week for six weeks via fiber to Los Angeles, and by satellite to New York for broadcast; and supported delivery of live feeds to CTV in Toronto for the Canadian simulcast of series
CBS’s broadcast of Love Island USA reached on average 1.82 million viewers a night
Danielle DiStefano, Executive Vice President of Post Operations & Technology at ITV America, said: “When we shifted Love Island to a remote workflow from Hawaii to Los Angeles, we needed a partner that understood live production, could manage unforeseen challenges and could handle continuous live feeds from multiple remote locations. The Switch offers a unique mix of extensive production knowledge and network capacity, which enabled it to meet our specific requirements. Having The Switch on board freed the on-the-ground creative team to concentrate on producing the show instead of worrying about how to get the content where it needed to go.”