Verizon powers reality show with private 5G, edge AI

Fox Entertainment teamed with Verizon to solve major connectivity and post-production issues while filming season two of Extracted , a reality show where 12 contestants attempt to survive in the Canadian wilderness. The premise of the show is the contestants are dropped alone into the Canadian wilderness. Their families then watch the action 24/7 via a live camera feed and biometric data. The only way a contestant can leave is if their family members decide they’ve had enough and press the “Extract” button.  The production crew needed to wirelessly connect 25 video sources and 20 communication devices across four square miles of rugged, low-connectivity terrain. It also had to manage secure massive data transfers, and sort through over 100,000 hours of footage without hitting a post-production bottleneck. “Verizon came in and built the system that allowed us to send signals from anywhere in a very remote region back to HQ in real time,” said Jeff Anderson, SVP of production for Fox Entertainment. “Zero latency, exactly what we needed to have happen for this show to work.” Andrew Zarick, head of strategy and partnerships at Verizon Innovation Labs, explained the way the operator deployed the private 5G network “was completely new and novel”. “What we provided is a bubble of cellular connectivity that was completely private and secure, he said. “We also deployed an edge AI solution.” Verizon used a temporary, portable private 5G network to blanket the entire filming area with secure, high-bandwidth and low-latency coverage while completely separating the network from public traffic. This untethered the production crew while supporting everything from 5G-enabled electronic news gathering cameras to wireless comms systems with reliable uptime. The mobile operator trialled its edge AI platform to tackle footage overload. Using computer vision, the AI automatically identified which camera feeds contained contestants, then generated timestamps and summaries to reduce the manual logging burden on post-production teams while freeing editors to focus on storytelling. A live data API integration with cell phones and 5G video encoders allowed directors to track the location of contestants and camera crews on a remote map in real time from the production base miles away. Verizon positioned the deployment as a proof of concept for the broader media and entertainment industry. The same portable, secure, scalable model could be applied to studio backlots, large festi