The Aveco installation at the TV Today Network’s Aaj Tak 24-hour news channel
NODIA, INDIA—With its launch of the Aaj Tak 24 hour news channel in 2000, the TV Today Network redefined electronic news journalism in India. The channel—India’s leading news network—has also earned the distinction of being the country’s most trusted TV brand.
This has roots that go back to 2000 when we were a production house, delivering 30 minutes of daily news bulletins to the state TV channel. We decided to expand by using the latest file-based technologies and workflows. Aveco was selected for their automation system and also designed and did the system integration of the TV infrastructure. We successfully went on-the-air in late 2001 and have since won the prestigious Indian Television Academy award for Best News Channel for a record 12 years in a row.
Aveco’s Astra system controls all our file-based ingest operations, manages our central storage system, integrates NLEs, and controls studio playout in studios and master control. Astra is our media asset management system providing extensive metadata management and automating workflows.
Since that first integration project, Aveco has worked closely with us in providing the features and capabilities needed to launch new channels and to do ad insertions.
Recently, we decided to build a new facility to consolidate all of the India Today Group companies. The project involved construction of a new building with all new infrastructure and equipment. Based on our previous experience with Aveco, we chose their automation and media asset management to technology. This has provided high operational efficiencies and allows us to operate the 24 hour news operations with a relatively small staff.
We’ve been on-the-air from our new building in September; however, as with any large project, there are still things to do and goals to accomplish, including migration of 10 years of videotape to data tape archives.
A LEARNING EXPERIENCE
The conversion of TVTN from a tapebased operation to a file-based facility with automated workflows has taught us many things, including involvement of all affected departments and establishing realistic goals. Another important consideration is defining a metadata system and workflow that work for all, but still allows manual intervention if needed. A very important item is selection of a system that allows you to take an incremental approach to media asset management, with capability added as necessary.
We have found that Aveco is always ready to deliver the features needed in such an incremental approach and we look forward to more years of fruitful cooperation.
Rahul Kulshreshtha is senior vice president of technical and operations of TV Today. He may be contacted atrahul.k@aajtak.com.
For additional information, contact Aveco at 303-588-5528 or visitwww.aveco.com.
