A special broadcast for the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, with FIWARE media and content specific enablers developed by FIcontent. At the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, German broadcaster RBB organized a 25-hour media event on TV, radio and the Internet.

Coverage combined live footage from significant places along the former path of the Wall, official festivities, interviews with studio guests and historical footage of events 25 years ago. Millions of viewers tuned in to view the 15 kilometre-long chain of 8000 light balloons which marked the former path of the Wall.

RBB viewers were able to participate in this HbbTV broadcast by using the Fall of the Wall app, available on any HbbTV-compatible television set. This app enabled viewers to comment and participate in on-screen discussions with other viewers. Using the ‘Fall of the Wall’ social application for Smart TV, viewers could follow a live blog of events broadcast simultaneously with the TV programme. The HbbTV app, developed within FIcontent, delivers viewers social media commentaries and up to the minute reports, and supports discussions with other viewers and programme makers.

The technology underlying the app was developed by RBB in cooperation with the Institute for Broadcasting Technology (IRT) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (FOKUS). The ‘Fall of the Wall’ app for social TV was created using the HbbTV Toolkit, which allows media editors to create SmartTV apps.

Feedback from viewers were collected via an online questionnaire on rbb-online.de. As an incentive to participation in the questionnaire, RBB offered to ten randomly-selected viewers the DVD box ‘Chronicle of Change’, which recounts the history and eventual demise of the Berlin Wall. More information on the event.

Image: Source: Kulturprojekte Berlin_WHITEvoid/Christopher Bauder, photo: Daniel Büche.