Case Studies

Manchester’s Trafford Centre opened to great acclaim, with a £600m build cost and three miles of granite and marble boulevards containing 280 stores for all the family, including the only branch of Selfridge’s outside of London.

Central to the Trafford Centre is the Orient Leisure Dome - a vast arena themed as a passenger liner and the size of London’s Albert Hall. The Orient was designed as a place where the family can gather, with 18 restaurants to cater to up to 1,600 people, as well as a 27m² LED screen, installed by The ADI Group. The screen is a customer specification Invision LED screen, giving high resolution with high contrast and excellent viewing angles, allowing the screen to be viewed clearly from short distances.

As well as superb viewing angles, the LED screen at The Trafford Centre differentiates itself from similar ventures in shopping centres is in its programming content. Whilst many such screens operate on a looped tape, repeating every couple of hours, The Trafford Centre management were determined to produce programming that was not only informative and relevant to their customers, but also constantly changing, meaning that customers would not be subjected to the same programmes on repeat visits, or indeed, on one visit. So, instead of the traditional two-hour loop tape, The Trafford Centre’s programming runs for twelve hours before repeating with different sections updated on a regular basis.

This approach called for something different in the production process so, again, The Trafford Centre management called on The ADI Group to provide their services. ADI specified and installed studios at The Trafford Centre, so that much of the programming could be produced on-site. This allowed for greater control and relevancy within the programming as well as the obvious reduction in costs, once the initial set-up costs were regained.

ADI set up ‘Trafford Television’ to run as an autonomous venture, with it’s own staff - including cameramen and technicians, presenters, editors and a studio manager - as well as fully equipped studios which included an Avid AirPlay system, matrix switching, a Magic Dave DVE, Avid MCXpress and Newscutter editing systems and DVCAM cameras. ADI also created a number of camera points within The Trafford Centre, providing triax cabling to enable for easier filming at 13 key locations throughout the complex.

ADI’s production studios assisted throughout the formative months of the channel, with programme production initially shared between them and Trafford Television. Shows featured the numerous businesses within the Trafford Centre, with focus on different areas, such as fashion, films and travel, mixed with music videos, news features and commercials.