Eurovision Americas last weekend mounted its biggest event of the year: the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Fifty-eight networks from around the world broadcast news liveshots and special programming from the three Eurovision operations in New York, at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where flight 93 crashed. The total number of minutes fed was equivalent to 14 days, 10 hours and 30 minutes – all in the space of 72 frenetic hours. In addition, dozens of items were fed into the news exchange, including live coverage of President Obama at all three sites.

The main operation in New York was on the roof of 1 Financial Center, directly overlooking Ground Zero. Workspace and much of the technical equipment had to be in the open air, causing EAI staff to keep an anxious eye on the weather, which thankfully never got worse than a few sprinkles of rain. As well as hundreds of single-camera liveshots, there were multi-camera special programmes for ARD, ZDF, DR, ORF, RTP, TVP, TF1 and SVT.

View video of Ground Zero operation here.