The Tabernacle Choir Blog

Why Isn’t This Year’s Christmas Concert Broadcast on TV or YouTube?

This is a great question that we hear quite often. We are thrilled at the amazing response to the Christmas concert and blessed that we have the Conference Center where nearly 85,000 people can attend...

We don't broadcast the concert live or post it immediately. Instead we produce a PBS TV special, a DVD with fascinating bonus footage and a CD, all available starting in September next year.  We produce a very high quality product that matches the Choir's high standards. Final music is selected from the best of all the performances and then the video is matched to it. We use 13 different cameras to film the concert enabling us to provide a great viewer experience. After all four concerts are filmed, we have almost 80 hours of footage from which the very best shots are chosen. We add to that special behind-the-scenes footage, interviews with the guest artists, and other unique material to provide the finished product. Then final product is sent to one of the finest audio mastering facilities on the West Coast and then duplicated under exacting standards.

The current year’s concert is always broadcast the following December on PBS. The DVD and CD are released in September. For instance, last years concert featuring Deborah Voigt and John Rhys-Davies is now available on DVD and will premiere on PBS Television on  Friday, December 19, 2014. This year’s concert with Santino Fontana and the Muppets® from Sesame Street® will be released on DVD and air on PBS in December 2015. 

Watch Choir president, Ron Jarrett, discuss the 2014 Christmas concert.