The boards of EMG and Gravity Media have announced the completion of a definitive agreement to combine their businesses.

The combination of the two companies creates one of the world’s largest broadcast technology and production organizations.

The new entity, which is yet to be named, will include more than 100 outside broadcast trucks and flypacks and 40 studios and production facilities across Europe, the Middle East, United States, and Australia.

It will also have 30 offices across 12 countries, with a total of  2,000 permanent employees and access to a global network of freelance personnel.

The new entity will be led by Shaun Gregory, the current CEO of EMG, as its global chief executive officer. John Newton, founder, CEO and majority shareholder of Gravity Media, will serve as executive chairman.

Speaking to TV Tech sister brand TVBEurope as part of a media briefing, Newton and Gregory revealed the deal was officially signed before Christmas and has passed all regulatory hurdles.

The two companies first began discussing the merger pre-Covid, added Newton, and resumed negotiations last year.

“This is a non-cash transaction, which is why it’s a merger,” he added. “It takes the best of both businesses. There is a scale difference. The EMG business is bigger than the Gravity Media business, but all of the existing Gravity Media and EMG stakeholders are now in the new combination.”

The merger provides a much bigger and more stable company in an environment in an industry that’s been through some difficult times, added Gregory.

Asked what it means for staff, Newton said he doesn’t see much crossover between the two businesses. “One of the reasons for doing the deal is that the geographic markets are quite separate,” he added.

“Gravity Media has a big position in APAC, a bigger position in the U.S. than EMG. Obviously, we have some overlap in the U.K. but Gravity’s U.K. business provides slightly different services to EMG. There’s a good story for the aggregation of those services from glass to eyeball as such. We’re production and content, and media services and facilities. So that’s a combination of creative elements and also technical elements as well.”

In terms of geography in the U.K., Newton said he expects that in time all of the new entity’s production staff will move into Gravity Media’s White City production center, while the OB trucks and back-off staff will likely move to one single location, “if a location that can accommodate the scale of what’s needed can be found.”

“We’re always looking to improve, optimise and have an efficient business,” added Newton. “So just because there’s a merger, there doesn’t always have to be fallout from that.

“If you look at our industry, generally, all of our competitors are suffering from the same challenges that we have. Hopefully, those bad days are behind us and we’re going to start to see credit markets settle, inflation coming back under control, and that’s going to drive a growth phase. We want to take the best of the services that we have globally, offer them to our current markets plus new markets, which will mean we’ll be looking for more staff in those areas where we don’t work.”

According to Gregory, the merger allows the new entity to aggregate component parts of both businesses, enabling it to offer customers more services. “This industry is not behind the times, but I think it’s not mature, and there’s an opportunity to take a more proactive role,” he explained.

“There’s a kind of gap in the market for an Amazon of this sector, a truly digitized business that connects both people and customers around the world. There’s a real opportunity for someone to step in and provide that real customer-facing point where you can just do something differently.”

PARIS—European broadcast service provider EMG has appointed Nathan Spencer CEO of EMG Connectivity USA, leading the expansion and strategy of EMG’s RF and wireless camera execution in the North American market. 

He will have a particular focus on the further development and market penetration of RF, 5G, and other connectivity services in which EMG specializes. EMG Connectivity is the business unit into which all of EMG's RF services have recently been consolidated. Spencer will be based at EMG’s American HQ at the Trilith Studios near Atlanta. 

Spencer began his broadcast career in the U.K. in 1992 where he specialized in RF productions and has been active in the U.S. for many years in both the film and television industries. More recently, Nathan worked as a Remote Operations Manager involved in business development as well as field support and as EIC for major events across North America like the NFL, College Football, MLS, Super Bowl, Triathlons, Marathons and Cycle Races. Nathan is a member of the International Cinematographers Guild in Los Angeles and has worked on movies such as “The Avengers,” “Inception,” “Mission Impossible 4,” and “The Bourne Legacy.” 

“I’m excited to be joining an established market leader like EMG,” Spencer said. “I have known the company for many years and worked extensively with the team at EMG Connectivity UK (formerly known as Broadcast RF). The North American market offers a lot of potential for a specialist like EMG Connectivity. The know-how of the teams broadcasting the Tour de France and the London Marathon will prove very useful in the coming years, and I believe that with my experience of the USA market I can make a big contribution”. 

“Nathan will work with the rest of our RF colleagues around the world to ensure EMG remains a leader in wireless and RF innovation,” said Shaun Gregory, CEO, EMG. “Our roots are in Europe, but we operate all over the world for many major international projects. In North America, we see a lot of growth potential supported by the arrival of many major international events such as the new Formula One races, the 2026 FIFA World Cup and the 2028 L.A. Olympics. We would therefore like to make our exceptional RF knowledge and expertise available to our current and new customers in the USA. We wish Nathan every success in his new role.”

MUNICH—European media production company EMG deployed Lawo’s AoIP infrastructure to provide audio for the European Championships Munich 2022. The event, held from August 11-21 saw around 4,700 athletes compete in a total of 176 events in the sports of beach volleyball, canoe racing, climbing, athletics, cycling, rowing, table tennis, triathlon, and gymnastics.

The event was the largest of its kind to be held in Munich's Olympic Park since the 1972 Olympic Games. EMG was responsible for the live broadcast of the European Championships Munich (ECM), using an AoIP setup from Lawo. 

The nine control rooms, or galleries, in the International Broadcast Center (IBC), located in Munich’s Olympic Stadium, and one gallery for outside venues, were equipped with Lawo mc²56 MkIII Production Consoles to cover the audio production in the stadium (Athletics, BMX, mountain bike), the Olympia Park (medal ceremonies), Olympia Halle (gymnastics), and the remote venues. 

Lawo’s mc²56 provides native support for SMPTE 2110, AES67/RAVENNA, DANTE (via a Power Core Gateway), MADI and Ember+. Local I/Os allow for direct connectivity. Powered by the 1U software-defined A__UHD audio engine with intuitive HOME functionality, up to 1,024 mc²-grade DSP channels per processing core can be shared among multiple consoles. This pooling option was applied to the ECM installation as a whole: Instead of dedicated audio cores, the required processing power for all mixing consoles derived from a cluster of eight shared A__UHD audio engines in a redundant setup, supporting flexible DSP assignment and reliability. 

For an even further increased security, Docker containers in an also redundantly designed cluster of six servers hosted the mirrored software of the audio mixers. So, even if any gallery should have gone down, the whole system would have stayed functional, and the audio mixing could have still been handled outside the console.

For audio contribution, the setup comprised more than 30 Lawo AoIP stageboxes of the A__line WAN capable AoIP nodes. Employed were clusters of A__stage64 and A__stage 48, as well as A__madi4 and A__madi 6 plus A__mic8 units, dedicated to tournaments and ECM events. 35 Lawo C100 blades were in use for 130 multiviewer heads.

“EMG’s sports production services for the European Championships were certainly an outstanding event. Many tournaments were running in parallel" said Guy Haegeman, EMG’s Multicam Audio Engineer. "We had to cover them either in one location from different spots or in different locations. This meant that during the whole event we had to deal with an immense number of parallel feeds that needed to be monitored, switched and produced.

"When planning for Munich, we chose a networked Lawo AoIP solution with mc² consoles and A__UHD cores, providing us with the flexibility, DSP power and switching capacity we needed for our complex workflows," Haegeman added. "The cluster of A__UHD audio engines networked with all galleries also made last-minute changes in production manageable. When it became tricky, the Lawo team was always on our side to give support whenever needed!”

In addition, the infrastructure for the commentary sound was fully Lawo. A total of 65 Lawo LCU Commentary Units provided an intuitive user interface for up to three commentators per LCU, while Lawo-quality mic preamps and uncompressed (24-bit/48kHz) real-time audio-over-IP ensured "uncompromised audio quality," the company said.

BOTHELL, WASH.—European-based companies Broadcast Solutions and Euro Media Group signed an agreement to join the Alliance for IP Media Solutions. With the addition of these two companies, AIMS reports them as the first international systems integrator (Broadcast Solutions) and first technical service provider (EMG) to join the alliance.

AIMS promotes the adoption, standardization, development and refinement of open protocols for media over IP, putting an emphasis on VSF TR-03 and TR-04, SMPTE 2022-6 and AES67.

“As the first international systems integrator and technical service provider, respectively, to join AMS, Broadcast Solutions and EMG bring new insight and experience to our membership as we seek to foster the adoption of true standards in the migration to IP,” said Michael Cronk, AIMS chairman.