On Air 2026: five live channels, played out from the cloud

 For 24 hours, Levira ran playout for five pop-up television channels fed by students at universities around the world, with the whole playout system deployed in the cloud in a single day. 

At a glance

• Event: On Air 2026, played out from the University of Westminster

• Channels: Sport, Film, Culture International & UK, News & Kids

• Content: Live feeds and file-based content created by students at universities around the globe

• Levira’s role: Playout, and the opportunity for students to work as playout directors

• Infrastructure: Public cloud
  

The brief

On Air gives students the chance to run live television rather than read about it. In 2026 it was not one channel but five, each with its own pod in the playout room, and each needing a mix of live feeds from universities and pre-recorded content.

That is a demanding schedule for a temporary operation. Live events overran and underran, feeds from universities and studios arrived back to back, and the plan changed throughout the day.

Why the cloud

The resources were needed for a short, fixed period, so public cloud was the natural fit. Live feeds from the universities were delivered straight into the cloud playout environment.

Levira chose BCNEXXT VIPE as the playout engine because it is highly reliable and flexible enough for the most complex playout workflows. Around it sat the rest of the chain:

• Contribution: Live feeds from universities delivered into the cloud

• Master control room: Workflows handled with a technology partner

• Playout: BCNEXXT VIPE, run by Levira

• Routing: Playout outputs routed to live subtitling, recording and YouTube distribution

• Monitoring: Visual monitoring of all five channels
  

Built in a day, prepared in advance

The playout system was deployed within one day, and each channel took a few hours to configure before it was ready to go.

That speed comes from automation. Configurations are prepared as cookbooks and templates, so the team adjusts the configuration values and the automation does the rest. With legacy infrastructure, the cabling and manual configuration alone would have taken far longer.

The cloud also changes when the work can happen. Levira could prepare every system weeks ahead, then shut the virtual instances down until the live date. That left time to tackle problems early while keeping costs under control.

What the team handled on the day

• Last-minute schedule changes. Event plans moved constantly, so playlists were edited on the fly to absorb overruns and underruns.
• Back-to-back live feeds. Live events from universities and studios followed one another with little or no gap.
• Mixed frame rates. Playout handled live sources in different frame rate formats on the fly.

Putting students in the playout director’s seat

Levira’s main goal was to give students the chance to experience the role of a playout director on a live, dynamic channel, with real schedule pressure and real sources.

What makes this partnership particularly special is their willingness to share that expertise with the next generation, giving students real-world experience of professional broadcast operations. On Air simply wouldn’t be possible at this scale without partners like Levira who are prepared to invest their time, knowledge and resources in the future of our industry.

Carrie Wootten, CEO, Media Talent Manifesto

Results

Across the event, On Air added up to:

Levira was one of 40 industry partners that supported On Air.