BTS: Building the Wisdom of the Crowd

Wisdom of the Crowd is a new large-scale quiz-based entertainment format filmed at MediaCity’s studio facilities and produced by Magnum Productions. The primetime Saturday evening show on BBC One and iPlayer sees on-stage contestants take on the collective knowledge of the 200 contestants in the crowd.

Hosted by John Bishop, the shiny-floor show combines high-volume audience participation with complex studio production and real-time decision-making. The series is part of a long-running relationship between dock10 and Magnum, following earlier collaboration on The 1% Club. Filmed earlier this year, Wisdom of The Crowd will broadcast for iPlayer and BBC One later this year.

MediaCity explains how the complex studio production came together

The Challenge: The technical and production demands behind Wisdom of The Crowd

At the heart of Wisdom of the Crowd lies a fundamental production challenge: the audience is not passive; they are the game. Every one of the 200 participants requires full technical integration into the studio environment, including radio microphones, interactive devices, lighting visibility and real-time gameplay inputs.

This was further challenged by a highly ambitious and spatially complex set design, including a large-scale W-shaped LED structure, elevated audience seating requiring extensive rigging and structural engineering, camera positions embedded within the set to avoid line-of-sight issues, and overhead and elevated camera tracks to maintain full coverage without obstructing the audience. Wisdom of the Crowd also required an almost 360-degree way of shooting, rather than traditional requirements – both the audience and screens needed to be recorded at all times so the space for having cameras positioned 180 degrees from each other was required.

Clare Barton, Joint MD of Magnum Productions said: “The technical aspects of the show are enormous. There aren’t many other shows out there that require 200 people in the crowd all being fully integrated, playing simultaneously and all feeding into the game in real time. You then have the set itself and making sure the space and technical requirements can be met. The challenge therefore isn’t just about the studio space, it’s whether the whole system can handle that level of complexity.”

From set build to connectivity, the production needed a studio partner capable of system-wide orchestration. MediaCity’s studios, dock10 stood out as one of the UK’s most connected creative campuses, uniquely positioned to deliver Wisdom of the Crowd, with few locations matching the scale and infrastructure of its HQ1 studio. The studio team also had a proven track record with delivery of five seasons of The 1% Club with similar technical and connectivity challenges.

Designing the Solution: A Fully Integrated Studio Ecosystem at MediaCity’s Studios

MediaCity’s studio team were tasked with designing a production environment that could support high-density participation, complex set engineering and real-time editorial collaboration.

Led by Studio Manager Sam Handsley and the wider studio technical team, the solution brought together infrastructure, engineering and workflow design into a single connected system.

Sam Handsley, Studio Manager at MediaCity said: “This was a show where every element was pushing against each other, from the set to the rigging, cameras and audience, all within a very tight footprint and timeframe. The health and safety considerations were ten-fold what they normally are. It needed a real can-do attitude across the team to bring those moving parts together into a workable solution, making sure everything was delivered safely, on schedule, on budget and without compromising the production.”

The studios team delivered a tailored technical setup that allowed every contestant to participate simultaneously without latency or disruption including high-capacity wireless infrastructure, scalable audio systems and radio mic management and integrated systems ensuring real-time synchronisation of 200 individual gameplay device inputs. An additional sound desk was essential for the show to manage the 200 contestant radio mics, and the dock10 team worked closely with the production sound team to fully support and integrate the desk within the existing sound gallery infrastructure.

With just 48 hours to complete the set build, multiple teams were working simultaneously within a highly constrained space. The complexity of the rigging and scaffolding meant health and safety requirements were significantly heightened, with formal sign-off processes required before crews could access and work across different areas of the set and tightly managed to ensure work could commence on the next part of the set in quick succession. There was also significant planning for the camera work with camera positions embedded within the set to avoid line-of-sight issues and overhead and elevated camera tracks to maintain coverage without obstructing the audience

A key innovation for the series was dock10’s approach to editorial workflow. The team created a live, two-way connection between the studio gallery and offsite editors in London, which allowed same-day editorial decisions to be shaped in parallel or soon after production, significantly increasing efficiency and creative responsiveness. The team also set-up a Media Shuttle to rapidly share recorded media and content with off-site teams so post efforts could start right away. This was only possible with MediaCity’s metropolitan sized bandwidth capabilities, breaking any form of hurdle for communication between North and South teams.

Clare added: “dock10 don’t just provide facilities; they listen, understand the brief, and deliver solutions that make complex productions work. They truly understand it from a producer’s point of view. What we have created has become an international IP with exciting conversations to have the show run in other European territories, reinforcing its global appeal.”

Andy Waters, Head of Studio at MediaCity, said: “Wisdom of the Crowd is exactly the kind of production HQ1 was designed for; high-volume, real-time and technically demanding. With 200 contestants all needing to be fully connected and responsive at the same time. It’s not just about providing studio space, it’s about delivering a fully integrated technical environment where connectivity, infrastructure and production workflows all operate seamlessly together. That level of scale and complexity is what MediaCity is built to handle.”

Wisdom of the Crowd demonstrates how modern entertainment formats are increasingly dependent on integrated technical ecosystems. By combining high-density connectivity, real-time editorial workflows, and collaborative production support, MediaCity enabled Magnum Productions to deliver a format where scale, speed, and audience participation could coexist seamlessly.

Wisdom of the Crowd (8 x 45 ) is a Magnum Productions for iPlayer and BBC One, commissioned by Kalpna Patel-Knight, Head of Entertainment Commissioning for the BBC. The Executive Producers are Andy Auerbach, Clare Barton, Dean Nabarro. The show was created by Dean Nabarro and Andy Auerbach. The Commissioning Editor for the BBC is Katie Taylor. The format will be distributed globally by BBC Studios.