Clear-Com’s Gen-IC virtual intercom platform enabled seamless real-time communication for On-Air Student TV, a 24-hour live broadcast that connected more than 900 students, staff, and industry volunteers across 17 locations worldwide.
The event, organised by media leader Carrie Wootten under the Global Media and Entertainment Talent Manifesto, streamed live on YouTube to over 10,000 viewers.
The initiative linked universities and media schools
from London and Los Angeles to São Paulo, Mumbai, and Brisbane, with Gen-IC providing the communication backbone. The software-based system allowed full coordination between global production teams without any dedicated intercom hardware.
“Each
participating university was provided with Clear-Com’s Station-IC virtual desktop client, allowing teams to easily coordinate their contributions,” said John Sparrow, Clear-Com technical support engineer for the project. “Once installed on a PC
or Mac, all they needed was a headset to achieve perfect communications. Gen-IC reliably linked all Station-IC instances via the cloud, giving teams full real-time connectivity wherever they were.”
Some universities went
further by integrating Station-IC into local hardware systems. Students at Mulberry UTC, working with Rise Academy, created a custom Stream Deck interface using the latest Station-IC update to provide a tactile control surface
for managing comms during production.
“With contributions from 17 locations on six continents, the buzz in the temporary MCR was incredible,” Sparrow added. “I stayed up for 36 hours straight to support
the initiative, and it was very much worth it.”
The On-Air Student TV project also became the first live event to use the Time Addressable Media Store (TAMS), an open-source API specification
from BBC R&D. More than 30 industry partners collaborated on the broadcast, including Sky, AWS, ITV Studios, SMPTE, Vizrt, Levira, and Techex, demonstrating new workflows for distributed media production.
“Clear-Com’s Gen-IC unlocked a
level of coordination and professionalism that elevated this project to new heights,” said Wootten. “It’s beyond what I imagined we could achieve, and it demonstrates the power of industry and education coming together.”