Vertical: Broadcasting
Application: Remote production connectivity, real-time video transport, post-production AI logging, live crew/contestant tracking
Ecosystem: Verizon
Private Network: 5G
When Fox Entertainment set out to film the second season of Extracted, the production challenge was as extreme as the show’s premise. Twelve contestants are dropped alone into the Canadian wilderness, their families watching every moment through live camera feeds and biometric data – the only escape a button their loved ones can press to bring them home. Capturing that drama meant wirelessly connecting 25 video sources and 20 communication devices across four square miles of rugged, low-connectivity terrain, while also managing a staggering 100,000 hours of continuously recorded footage. Public networks were not going to cut it.
Verizon’s answer was a temporary, portable private 5G network deployed specifically for the production – a contained bubble of high-bandwidth, low-latency cellular coverage completely separated from public traffic. Jeff Anderson, SVP of Production for Fox Entertainment, described the result plainly: “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. Zero latency, exactly what we needed to have happen for this show to work.” The network supported everything from 5G-enabled electronic news gathering cameras to the wireless communications systems keeping the crew in contact across the wilderness.
Andrew Zarick, head of strategy and partnerships at Verizon Innovation Labs, noted that the way the operator deployed the network “was completely new and novel.” The private 5G infrastructure untethered the production crew entirely, giving them reliable uptime in an environment where connectivity had previously been a fundamental obstacle. What Verizon provided, in Zarick’s words, was “a bubble of cellular connectivity that was completely private and secure.”
Connectivity alone, however, did not solve the post-production problem. With cameras running around the clock, editors were facing a near-impossible task of manually logging and sorting footage before any storytelling could begin. To address this, Verizon trialed its Edge AI platform alongside the private 5G deployment. Using computer vision, the system automatically identified which camera feeds contained contestants at any given moment, then generated timestamps and summaries – cutting through the manual logging burden and freeing editorial teams to focus on the creative work. A live data API integration with mobile devices and 5G video encoders also allowed the director to track the precise locations of contestants and camera crews on a digital map in real time, from a production base miles away.
The combination of private 5G and edge AI proved to be more than a technical fix for a difficult shoot. Verizon and Fox have positioned the deployment as a proof of concept for the broader media and entertainment industry. The same portable, secure, and scalable model could be applied to studio backlots to partition traffic for visiting productions, or at large festivals and concerts to manage security, sales, and operations. It is, as Verizon described it, a first step in building and validating the next generation of media production technology – one where the network itself becomes as essential a production tool as any camera on the crew.
