BURLINGTON, Mass.—Avid today released its fully integrated news platform, uniting MediaCentral and Wolftech News in a single newsroom solution, and will demonstrate it live during IBC 2025, Sept. 12-15, at the Amsterdam RAI Exhibition and Convention Center.

Redefining newsroom collaboration with a story-centric workflow designed for today’s multiplatform news environment, the combined offering enables news teams to plan, create, publish and amplify stories, reaching audiences where they are when they want news. The integration empowers newsrooms to focus on impactful storytelling instead of administrative overhead, Avid said.

Now commercially available as a production-ready offering after its debut at NAB Show, the integration of MediaCentral and Wolftech News within the MediaCentral Cloud UX brings together planning, story writing, media production and resource management in one AI-powered environment accessible from anywhere, Avid said.

“Avid is equipping news teams to collaborate across geographies, streamline editorial processes and amplify their stories at unmatched speed and scale,” said Arne Berven, CEO of Wolftech and senior vice president of broadcast strategy at Avid. “We are eliminating barriers through our AI-powered, unified toolset—responding directly to the industry’s call for an end-to-end, best-in-class platform that breaks down workflow silos and accelerates storytelling.”

The integrated solution supports:

Pitch-to-publication workflows, bringing together planning, resource management and equipment booking with production and publishing in one web-based interface.

Seamless, faster storytelling, eliminating duplication and delays with centralized communication and intelligent automation to drive efficiencies in the production chain.

Story-centric, multiplatform distribution, reaching audiences everywhere faster with AI-powered content distribution to digital, social and broadcast channels.

Empowered remote and field teams, using mobile tools that connect newsroom operations in real time.

Future-proof architecture, leveraging Avid’s open platform, integration engine and AI framework to support evolving technology needs.

The integrated MediaCentral and Wolftech News solution is well-suited for national and regional broadcasters and other media companies facing mounting pressure to deliver more stories faster across more platforms with constrained resources, Avid said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

See Avid at IBC 2025 Stand 7.B59.

The news production tech provider nxtedition is reporting that it supplied a complete newsroom system to Collective Newsroom, an independent news producer based in New Delhi, India.

The deployment in a new facility delivers high quality journalism to digital, audio and television, in multiple languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi and Telugu as well as English, the companies reported.

Collective Newsroom was founded by four senior BBC journalists based in India, with the aim of creating high-quality impartial news services in seven languages. It also provides all the news content for the BBC services in India, its largest international market. The company now embraces more than 250 journalists across the country.

“We want to create a newsroom operation that is future-proof and flexible, as well as providing all the collaboration we need between our journalists, editors and producers,” said Atul Garg, head of technology at Collective Newsroom. “We saw in nxtedition the functionality we really need, including realtime data and graphics integration, as well as integrated workflows wherever our journalists are working.”

The deployment is a hybrid cloud implementation that is completely scalable, allowing it to respond to rapidly changing news agendas, nxtedition said.

Designed from the ground up to be a story-focused news production platform, nxtedition provides simple and intuitive access to sophisticated workflows, enhancing collaboration and using automation to give the journalists the time and tools to create content.

“We chose nxtedition over other vendors because its all-in-one integrated platform supports both digital and TV production,” Garg said. “Its powerful functionality and ease of use makes it fast to adopt, and its architecture makes it future-proof, whatever the challenges the market brings to us in future. That is what really sets it apart in the competitive broadcast automation space.

“We have the best journalistic talent in India, but we have to stay competitive in the ever-evolving media landscape,” he added. “nxtedition ensures our production capabilities remain top-notch across all platforms.”

For more information on the nxtedition microservices-based production platform and its capabilities, see nxtedition.com.

The Associated Press has launched a new multiformat AI-powered content delivery platform designed to make it easier for users to find and use the news organization’s vast collection of visual, audio and text content.

The AP Newsroom platform offers a redesigned interface and wide range of new and enhanced features, AP said. They include AI-powered search and content recommendations, as well as intuitive navigation and customizable homepages to make the user experience faster and easier than ever before.

In launching the improvements, the AP said that the site underscores its commitment to delivering digital, visual-first media and serving the needs of its members and customers in a rapidly evolving media environment.

“The all-new AP Newsroom is a truly user-centric platform that provides seamless access to AP’s rich portfolio of all-formats journalism,” said Kristin Heitmann, AP senior vice president and chief revenue officer. “This marks an important milestone in our efforts to help customers quickly get the content they need, jump on breaking news faster than ever before and uncover new angles on stories – all in service of being able to serve their own readers and audiences.”

The AP described the new and enhanced features as follows:

• “Storylines,” a new tool powered by Storytelling AI from ShortTok that makes it easy to discover curated video and photo content organized around key themes and stories. For instance, when Pope Francis returned to the Vatican after his hospitalization, Storylines surfaced adjacent themes like public reaction and recovery updates to help users explore every angle.
• “More Like This,” also from ShortTok, which leverages AI to display visually similar and contextually relevant related content.
• Customizable homepages that allow users to focus on the topics, regions and formats that matter most to them.
• Access to content in AP’s exclusive historical archives, which contain more than a century’s worth of award-winning, rare and high-quality content.
• Breaking news alerts now with audio alerting, offering real-time updates on the latest stories as they unfold.

More information is available here.

It wasn’t all that long ago that most TV newsrooms relied on a person in the feed room to manage recording all of the incoming raw footage, news packages and other content transmitted to stations so reporters and editors could create stories and producers could build newscasts.

Someone in that room knew which satellite or microwave feed would be arriving at what time via which router output so that news content could be recorded on a designated tape machine. Tapes then were shuffled to the journalists and producers who needed them to write and edit stories. Eventually, those stories made air on the 6 or 11 o’clock news, and the cycle began once again.

But those halcyon days of TV news are long gone. Today’s newsroom is far more than a “television newsroom.” In many instances, it’s the hub of a 24/7 news operation that creates and distributes newscasts and stories 10 or more hours a day on air across multiple channels and around the clock via websites and social media.

With this transformation has come increasing complexity in managing incoming feeds. Not only has the number of feeds skyrocketed, but also the variety of signal formats used. While SDI feeds abound, many additional formats, codecs and signal types are in play as well, making transcoding to a house format essential.

At the same time, newsrooms have transformed old workflows to meet the challenge of 24/7 news operations, looking to achieve greater efficiencies and enhance productivity. Many have replaced the “feed room dude” of old with a workflow that enables anybody with permission in the newsroom to grab a feed, begin working with it and share that feed with multiple people.

Recognizing these evolving workflow requirements, Ross Video designed its Media I/O specifically to support modern newsrooms. The solution enables newsrooms to unify all of their ingest and playout channels in the same control interface.

Those in the newsroom can access feeds via Media I/O’s web UI from their laptops and workstations. In essence, Media I/O brings the feed room directly into the newsroom and places it on the desks of journalists who can ingest footage, play it out in real-time in any format and incorporate desired clips into their stories.

Reporters and others in the newsroom can control ingest and playout from their preferred web browser and access ingested assets, eliminating unnecessary, repetitive recordings of the same content by different people.

Media I/O supports most broadcast file formats, such as ProRes, XDCAM, DNxHD, AVC-Intra, XAVC, DVCPRO HD, HEVC and H.264, including growing files, as well as software-driven IP workflows like SMPTE ST 2110, NDI and SRT. Media IP works natively with baseband and network sources, such as SDI, HLS, MPEG DASH and RTSP.

The system also offers a visual schedular with a calendar-based timeline to enable users to manage and visualize upcoming recordings. Media I/O can be deployed on premises, cloud hosted as a virtualized system or as a hybrid to meet the individual preferences of media organizations.

These are only a few of the many features that make the Ross Video Media I/O a key enabler for modern newsroom workflows. Many others are in the works. For example, expect to see at the 2025 NAB Show a new feature for Media I/O’s web UI that allows users to open an asset in a web browser and view it as a proxy video, not simply as a thumbnail as in previous versions.

Media I/O enables newsrooms to allow anyone they want to be their own feed dudes, giving them access to and control over the signal sources they need to create news content more efficiently. With Media I/O, the feed dude is dead. Long live the feed dudes!

See Ross Video and the Media I/O at the 2025 NAB Show in booth SL206.

Click here to learn more about the Ross Video Media I/O.

PARIS—New Zealand public broadcaster RNZ has selected Dalet to transform its editorial systems with the media solutions provider’s story-centric news production technologies, the company said.

RNZ is making the upgrade as it enters its 100th year of operations. It plans to transition to the new system in 2025. Dalet is currently working with the broadcaster on a comprehensive staff training program.

“RNZ’s upcoming centenary marks not just a celebration of our past, but a bold stride into the future,” RNZ Chief Technology Officer Mark Bullen said. “This investment underscores our commitment to digital transformation, leveraging modern technologies to streamline operations and enhance our capacity to deliver timely news and information.”

RNZ provides independent news and current affairs and a range of diverse programs and podcasts, on-air and online, with both audio and video programming. The new system will free RNZ’s staff to spend more time on what matters most, the broadcaster said—delivering impactful narratives to audiences.

RNZ said it plans to deploy Dalet Pyramid, a news solution that enhances resource sharing and story collaboration for chaos-free operations that are open and auditable. The integrated solution will modernize content production and delivery with a story-centric approach.

The replacement newsroom management solution includes planning, story editing and approvals, wire feeds, contact management, publishing, rundown management and archiving. In addition, the updated audio editing and management solution will let RNZ staff capture, edit and publish audio anytime and anywhere. The tech upgrade represents an investment of NZ$4.5M for the implementation and first five years of operation, RNZ said.

“One of the systems we’ve been relying on dates back to 1999,” RNZ Chief News Officer Mark Stevens said. “To put that into perspective, in 1999 Nokia 3210 topped phone sales and Google had just hired its first employee. Our dedicated RNZ kaimahi (staff) have worked wonders with these outdated tools, finding creative solutions wherever possible. However, we owe it to our storytellers to provide them with state-of-the-art technology so they can concentrate on delivering quality content to our audiences.”

Dalet was chosen to deliver the new system after a rigorous six-month tender process with almost 200 specific requirements, including RNZ’s role as a lifeline utility needing a hybrid cloud and on-premise solution. This ensures that RNZ can remain on-air to deliver news broadcasts during emergencies.

Traditional news media is under increasing scrutiny, critique, and often attack from administrations on both sides of the aisle and an ever-more distrusting and distracted populace.  

Even small mistakes are highly visible, but news directors don’t have the luxury of slowing down. Not unlike riding a motorbike across a tightrope, broadcast news production requires speed, efficiency, and accuracy — and now more creativity than ever. 

Ross Video works with some of the top news producers around the world to produce engaging, immersive, highly efficient news productions.  

These are the top three strategies we use to help top-tier media studios like NBC and Fox balance creativity, speed, accuracy, and efficiency in their newsrooms. 

Strategy 1: Empower Reporters to Wear Many Hats 

As the media landscape evolves, the role of reporters is evolving as well. 

The desire for more regional, on the ground content from audiences and the growing number of distribution platforms is putting increasing strain on reporters and newsroom teams. Reporters must wear a variety of new hats, which often requires them to spend hours fighting unintuitive and inefficient workflow and creative software. That’s time they could be finding great stories or simply recovering from fieldwork.  

Many reporters now shoot their own interviews and add graphics to their stories from the field. This creates a new challenge for newsrooms: finding video production, media asset management and broadcast graphics software that’s easy to use, so reporters can spend their time reporting, not learning how to use new tools and wrangling with graphics software. 

The right production tools can make high-quality, dynamic visuals and storytelling accessible to even the smallest local newsrooms.  

Strategy 2: Enable Consistency and Creativity 

Consistent branding conveys credibility and professionalism, which can help increase retention and boost ratings. Templates and automated workflows go a long way to ensuring consistency.  

For example: are the titles of over-the-shoulder graphics always in the same font? Are lower-third graphics consistent with your brand’s visual identity? Templates help live video producers avoid idiosyncrasies that can distract viewers. 

Workflow automation tools and graphics templates boost creativity by freeing up creative professionals’ time. By using deeply integrated tools (like XPression, Streamline Pro, and Inception), news broadcasters can develop polished, reuseable graphics that allow reporters to make last-second updates with the confidence that they are ready-for-air and error-free. 

Local news network Graham Media Group uses ‘super-templates’ to create and distribute high-fidelity, on-brand graphics for their network of stations from a single creative hub. 

This video shows how Graham Media uses XPression to enable more creativity and better storytelling with fewer resources.

Strategy 3: Virtually Expand Studios 

In a traditional newsroom studio, most on-camera elements are also present in real life, on a physical set. Virtual studios use chroma keying to blend real-life elements (such as reporters and news desks) with interactive and digital multimedia visuals, and augmented reality elements. 

This strategy is already popular in sports broadcasting and weather reporting, where meteorologists frequently present the weather in front of a greenscreen, with visual elements like graphical representations of weather, maps, and real-time data being added digitally. However, this technology isn’t limited to the weather — it can enhance election coverage, sports stories, and other segments with sophisticated graphics that would be impossible to replicate on a real-life set. 

News stations like Servus TV/Red Bull Media have achieved incredible results using virtual studios powered by Ross Video’s technology, including XPression, Voyager and Lucid.  

Learn more about how virtual studios can be a strategic advantage for modern newsrooms in this article.

Balancing an Adaptive, Creative, Competitive Newsroom 

One thing is constant in news production: change. 

There is no playbook for succeeding in news because success is not static; the bar for quality is always rising. To rise above the competition, your station must be able to adapt to and embrace change. Consumer behavior and audience patterns are short-lived, so appealing to viewers has less to do with a one-time change and more to do with having the agility to change constantly. 

Ross Video’s newsroom solutions are designed to work together seamlessly (together or as part of a multi-vendor stack) to help stations create the accurate, compelling news broadcasts audiences expect, without crushing their teams. 

You do more than just deliver news. The ‘fourth estate’ is responsible for educating and engaging a population that is swamped with misinformation and propaganda, from often very questionable resources with far less integrity or concern for accuracy.   

The only way to keep up with that media tidal wave, newsrooms must invest in technology that allows them to be flexible, efficient, and creative, without crushing their teams.  

To learn more about how Ross Video solutions help news broadcasters big and small find the right technology to bring their stories to life, reach out to one of our production experts here.

Keeping Pace in the Election Race

2024 is a big year for newsrooms with a record number of elections taking place around the globe. For advanced insights on how newsrooms can get ahead in addressing their elections needs with cutting-edge graphics, download our guide.  

BETHPAGE, N.Y.—News12 has officially opened a new 40,000 square foot $20 million state of the art studio and newsroom. 

During a grand opening on May 1 with local businesses and political leaders, executives at Altice USA’s News12 operation said the project is a major $20 million investment into Long Island journalism. The build was part of a multi-year effort beginning in early 2020. 

"It just shows our commitment to local, hyperlocal news, to this community," Altice USA CEO Dennis Mathew said in a News12 story on the opening. "We have the best team. This shows that the best team should have the best state-of-the-art studio, and so we're excited."

Altice News senior vice president and chief content officer Kristin Malaspina explained that the upgraded space with larger monitors will enhance our visual storytelling.

"I'm so excited to be here and to open this new studio and continue to bring the best hyperlocal news coverage to the tri-state area," Malaspina said. 

Notable features in the studio include:

• Flash Camera for breaking news coverage.
• Multiple spacious Production Control Rooms with advanced automation and technology for high- quality broadcasts, graphics, weather and more. 
• Crew vehicles equipped with power inverters to enable the teams to work out of mobile “offices” from any of the News12 communities. This allows the team to shoot and edit news packages to go live to air within minutes.  
• Thunderbolt 12 mobile weather and storm tracking vehicle with live reporter capability. 
• Editing and Technical Operations Center with numerous fiber connections to pull in news feed, breaking news and video from across the region and nation. 
• Massive Broadcast Equipment Center featuring the latest news production technology and backup and redundant systems to ensure high quality video signals and continuity of broadcast in the case of a system failure.  
• Five broadcast studios of varying sizes.  These include a small Weather Hub studio, two midsize studios and two large studios which feature newly designed and modern sets. 
• The large studios consist of multiple large seamless monitor walls, an anchor desk, a working Weather Center, an Alert Center and additional monitor areas for Anchors to “walk and talk” as they deliver and visually illustrate local news coverage.    

DETROIT—As broadcasters grapple with declining ratings and their ongoing difficulties in reaching younger viewers with traditional newscasts, one fundamental question is being increasingly asked: “What would you do, if you could start all over, if you could build a news operation and a newsroom from scratch?”

One ambitious answer to that query can be found in Detroit at WWJ-TV where CBS News and Stations has launched a new local news operation CBS News Detroit. Initially, the station is launching tonight, Jan. 23, with weekday newscasts broadcast at 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. that will also be live streamed on the CBS News Detroit streaming channel. As the rollout continues in the coming weeks they will be adding newscasts for additional dayparts and days, including weekends. Eventually, there will be a 24/7 live streaming CBS News Detroit channel that is live most of the day, much like their 13 other local news streaming channels. 

The debut not only marks the first time that the station has offered a local newscast since it became a CBS-owned station in 1995. It also is a case study in using technology to build a “streaming-first” hyper local news operation that CBS hopes will fundamentally alter how local news is approached, produced and distributed to viewers on a variety of platforms. 

“We have been really focused on creating hyperlocal neighborhood based news operations and using technology to achieve that,” in multiple the CBS-owned stations explained Adrienne Roark, president, CBS Stations, who oversees CBS’s owned and operated stations in the eastern half of the country and has been heavily involved in the Detroit initiative. 

Detroit, however, marks a new step forward in that effort, with operations, staff and technology specifically designed from the ground-up as a streaming news, hyperlocal operation. “In Detroit we have community-embedded journalists and we have a technology layer that allows them to be geographically-based and to tell the story from beginning to end from wherever they are on any platform," she said. 

“CBS News Detroit really is [our] answer to the question: What do you do if you could build a newsroom from scratch?” Roark added.

Streaming Operation With Broadcast Towers

In addition to the focus on hyper-local based operations, CBS Detroit has also adopted a “streaming first” mentality, explained Brian Watson, president and general manager, CBS Detroit that will allow it to focus more intensely on local stories outside the time limits and structure of a traditional newscast. 

“We’re essentially a streaming operation that also has broadcast towers,” he quipped. 

A key part of implementing that strategy has been staffing and training. “You hear about challenges at other stations trying to integrate their linear broadcast teams into streaming,” he said. “That is not the case here. We have a full multi-skilled newsroom from the news director on down. There are no silos within our departments. Everyone has the ability to jump across different platforms, to jump between writing and editing.”

CBS Detroit has combined the multi-platform skills of its staff with a technological infrastructure that allows them to be embedded in local communities. “Other stations have teams that are crisscrossing the market to chase the lead story that came down from a central assignment desk,” Watson said. “Our team of journalists are embedded in the community and they are hearing first hand what’s important to the communities.”

Newsroom in a Bronco

Much of this is made possible by technologies for remote production, improved connectivity and mobile workflows that have been honed and refined in recent years.

Currently CBS Detroit has 14 community-based journalists spread out through its DMA, including one in Lansing Mich., which is the capital of the state, to cover politics, explained Paul Pytlowany, vice president and news director at CBS Detroit. 

Each of these journalists operates out of a Ford Bronco that has been outfitted with what amounts to a mobile newsroom, including cameras, editing and other equipment so they never have to return to the main station. 

Based on input from their multimedia journalists, CBS Detroit removed the front passenger seat and created a mobile editing station. It has all the power converters needed for laptops and equipment, a table in the backseat, interior and exterior facing cameras and a small switcher, explained Pytlowany.  

“There is a mini switcher within the editing deck that allows the [journalist] to switch between different cameras,” he added. “Each of the SUVs is outfitted with LiveU LU600s for cellular-based transmissions, which allows them to go live under any circumstances throughout their DMA.”

More specifically, the Broncos have two Sony PXW-Z150 cameras, Grass Valley editing software and LiveU's LU600s to send video back to the station.  

Journalists also have iPhones and accessories that allow them to completely shoot, edit and deliver stories on the iPhones. “Some are already turning content from start to finish on their iPhone,” said Pytlowany. “It gives them an incredible opportunity to think creatively and get shots outside the traditional way you would produce a story…The workflow is just a seamless transition from working with both those cameras and integrating it into your timeline and actually producing a final product.”

This focus on mobility and remote production is also readily apparent in their mobile weather trucks and their operations at the station’s headquarters, where they have a “working newsroom” instead of a traditional studio. 

“Studio is not a term we use here very often,” Watson said. “It’s really a working newsroom. Our entire staff is in this one room. So you can see the flurry of activity that comes with reporting the news. We plan to turn the camera on the assignment desk and have an assignment editor report in real time as you know information is coming in. We want to convey the news for exactly what it is, not a polished script that's worked up in the newsroom and then carried down the hall and reported on by anchors in the studio.”

No Silos and Studios

The room is also designed to have an industrial look reflective of Detroit’s industrial backbone. “We've had some pretty well known dignitaries and public figures come through the station on some tours, and more than once without me having said anything, the sentiment is `wow, this is very Detroit,’”  Watson said. “It’s not a room full of monitors, with fancy artwork and graphics. It’s a really authentic raw operation.”

CBS Detroit has also deployed a mobile weather truck built on a lifted Ford F150. “We can use it to go to any terrain in any weather,” with a full complement of weather sensors and gear, says Pytlowany. “It has four onboard cameras, including a slush cam.” 

Some of the key vendors for the project include Imagine Communications (for routing); Sony (PXW-Z150 cameras and switcher), Clear-Com (for IFB and communications back to the station); Grass Valley (GV Edius and AMPP Editor as well as their play-to-air and their media asset manager), IBM Watson (teleprompter), Logitek (audio mixer/sound board), Avid (iNews), LiveU (LU600s in the vehicles with their community based journalists and LU800s in the live trucks), Chyron (graphics), Total Traffic (traffic and road conditions), and WSI/IBM (weather graphics and system). 

Watson praised the tech teams at the CBS-owned stations led by Jeff Birch, vice president of engineering, for bringing the project together and the vendors that worked on the project. The vendors, he noted, played a key role by being willing to embrace new ideas and develop technologies that would advance their vision using newer cloud-based and IP technologies. 

“Seeing us start things from scratch and knowing that we had a timeline for being up and running, really motivated them to push forward on their products,” Watson said. “So we were really fortunate to work with a great number of vendors that have really been doing things for the first time and new ways.” 

“We talked earlier about silos and newsrooms and traditional jobs and functions,” Pytlowany added. “I think that's also the case with the technology. This project really allowed them [the vendors] to kind of get out of their silos. I think they looked at this as the next generation, the next way we should be doing things. It's really propelled them to start thinking outside of those silos that they're normally working in.” 

The death last week of Larry Edgeworth, a 25-year NBC News veteran audio technician, from COVID-19 not only underscores the serious nature of the disease in TV news, but also adds an element of urgency to planning going on in newsrooms around the country about how best to keep news personnel safe.

Telephone interviews with several broadcasters—large and small—over the past week revealed that a variety of steps are being taken in an effort to protect personnel and maintain news operations.

They include: when possible, sending staff home to work remotely; breaking newsroom personnel into small pods to limit interpersonal contact and possible exposure; distancing personnel from each other in the newsroom and on-set; limiting exposure of field reporters and photographers to newsroom personnel; deep cleaning of stations; regular wipe downs of keyboards, various production control surfaces, ENG camera controls and other surfaces with disinfecting wipes; use of old-school mic techniques; and frequently using internet technologies like Skype and Apple FaceTime in place of personal interviews with newsmakers and other sources.

Further, broadcasters also reported ongoing evaluation of longer term strategies, such as leveraging control room and master control automation, to address a range of possible eventualities, the worst of which includes an entire shutdown of a station building.

NEW TECH FRONTIERS

The rapid onset of the coronavirus in American society means newsrooms, just like the public at large, must evaluate new information as it becomes available and adjust their strategies for protecting staff and their overall operations accordingly.

“How it is impacting our day-to-day operations is a learning process we are still going through,” says Patrick McCreery, president of Meredith Local Media Group. “But I can tell you we are pushing the boundaries when it comes to using technology to help us through this process.”

For Meredith that means instructing reporters and photographers to not report to their local stations. Rather, they are being asked to access their Avid iNews NRCS remotely, rely on IP newsgathering backpacks and Dropbox to submit video. 

Adjusting strategy to the realities of working during the outbreak and relying on technology to fill the gaps created by the contagion are key to the response from Sinclair Broadcast Group as well, says Sinclair Senior Vice President of News Scott Livingston.

“Many of our stations are right on the frontline of this outbreak,” he says. “There is a lot of uncertainty. The situation continues to change rapidly, and we continue to adjust our coverage plans and also our contingency plans.” 

Among the adjustments is clamping down on studio guests. Rather than inviting newsmakers into its stations’ studios, the stations are turning to Apple FaceTime and Skype to conduct live interviews, he says.

Changes are happening in the field as well. Sinclair has inked an enterprise-wide deal with LiveU so that all employees have the LiveU app on their phones, greatly multiplying the group’s ability to go live from the field. Not only does the app give the broadcaster greater reach, it also means an individual can readily shoot news footage without requesting more station personnel to go into the field, thereby limiting possible exposure to the virus.

To further limit the possibility of exposure, Sinclair news-producing stations have stopped using lavalier mics but instead are using stick mics—frequently clamped to an object—to minimize how many people actually touch workaday gear, says Livingston. 

In another move to limit exposure, news crews no longer share cars from a vehicle pool. Rather, individuals are assigned a vehicle that they take home and can use to drive to the scene of a story. Similarly, ENG trucks are being assigned to single individuals—all in an effort to isolate news personnel from one another and minimize potential interpersonal virus exposure, Livingston explains.

The outbreak has also affected how technology is used and a planned expansion at NewsNet, the Cadillac, Mich.-based free-to-air diginet news network that launched a little more than a year ago, says Eric Wotila, president of the new news network.

“We have greatly expanded our Skype and remote interview capabilities here so we can talk to people without sending anyone into the field and interview more relevant newsmakers right from our control room via Skype,” says Wotila.

NewsNet is also “fast-tracking” deployment of its Studio C because of its extensive remote interviewing capabilities, he adds.

CLEAN, REORGANIZE, RETREAT

The first thing Waterman Broadcasting in Fort Myers, Fla., did when it learned of the outbreak was to put sanitizing stations at every entrance of its buildings, says Bob Hannon, director of production. 

Employees at its NBC affiliate, WBBH-TV, and ABC affiliate, WZVN-TV, which Waterman operates under an LMA, are also being instructed to wipe down their work surfaces several times a day with disinfectant. Similarly, frequently touched surfaces in the broadcaster’s production control rooms are being wiped down before and after each block of shows, and personnel in the room are instructed to disinfect their hands frequently with hand sanitizer, he says.

Reorganizing how things get done is important, too. The broadcaster has restricted all visitors, guests and deliveries and developed a plan to have up to 30% of its personnel—mostly traffic, sales and digital—work from home. At-risk employees with ongoing health concerns were sent home to work as well, he says.

Waterman has broken up newsroom and production teams into what Hannon describes as “workgroup pods.” 

“We are looking at a situation where we have smaller groups instead of large groups,” he says. “So when an exposure happens—and that’s not a question of if—we are looking at possibly having to quarantine a smaller number than a larger number.”

Thorough, regular cleaning is important elsewhere, too. “Over the last week, we have fogged and/or done other similar types of deep cleaning at every facility,” says Meredith’s McCreery. “We did this because we knew we were going to be working, and we wanted to start with a new, clean, fresh slate.”

However, if cleaning and the other steps aren’t enough, other contingency plans are in place. If Meredith should be forced to shut down a building due to the outbreak, the first tier of defense is to run an umbilical from the building to a temporary work environment outside to control station operations while decontamination and cleaning are under way, says McCreery. 

“Let’s take that one step further and say we can’t access the premises at all,” he says. “We do have the ability through remote control rooms in two of our facilities to switch and augment a newscast.”

In practice, that might mean running a newscast for Meredith’s WSMV-TV in Nashville, Tenn., from its hub in Phoenix. “I could actually utilize Nashville anchors and reporters via LiveU and bring them in and switch them with Nashville graphics out of my Phoenix hub,” says McCreery.

If one of Meredith’s hubs should have to be abandoned due to the virus, the broadcast group can continue to operate it remotely via the cloud. “So I can actually keep all of our stations on the air without actually having the physical hub in place,” he says. “It’s not ideal, and it would be messy—I can promise you that. But we can do it.”

A SILVER LINING

Without question, the COVID-19 pandemic has so upended what was considered to be normal that some pundits are predicting a new normal will emerge when the pandemic passes in which there’s far more work from home and far less social interaction.

Local television news may not be immune to this turning either. Meredith’s McCreery likens the possible long-term impact of the pandemic on newsrooms to what happened coming out of the economic downturn 12 years ago.

“We needed something to shake our foundation, and that was the Great Recession of 2008,” he says. “That forced our hands into thinking proactively about using the technology that was available, and that’s what led to our hubs in the first place.”

Sinclair’s Livingston thinks the pandemic’s effect on newsrooms is already under way. “You look at it, and this outbreak is really accelerating the newsroom of the future,” he says. “We are using the technology at our fingertips, and it’s pushing us to be innovative.

“I think this is probably one of the most challenging situations folks will face in their professional careers. But together, we will help each other. We will leverage our strengths and resources to help all of our stations get through some difficult days ahead.”

The lighting in news studios is designed to achieve a nondramatic look without needing to make adjustments. Talent on camera should be able to move around freely; and cameras should be able to capture a variety of angles on each set once lighting is in place. For this reason, long trusses are positioned among an expansive overhead grid with countless mounting points for lights. Not only is the number of available mounting points greater this way, but there are also no stands to avoid on the ground. The goal is not only to have subjects lit for every setup, but to have backgrounds lit and ready to go as well. Because news is not a dramatic lighting look, having several lights installed to fill the space is also reason for a large grid.

MANAGING THE SPREAD

Typically, lights are set across trusses for backdrops to evenly light green or blue screen behind a news desk setup. The lights are set back from the backdrop about half the height of the backdrop so as to spread the light without having any darker spots. For the best keying job, you want as evenly a spread as possible. Lighting in newsrooms usually is also preferred to be softer and this can apply to the backgrounds as well. The larger the source, the more you can soften without losing too much intensity or throw. The backdrops are not always a chroma key background—now a lot of high-resolution screens are the actual background elements. This makes spot reading essential so as to avoid any hot screens behind your subjects when exposing on camera.

In front of the set lights, toward camera, there are backlights for the subjects. These can be a little harder as they separate your subjects from the background. Finally, you have soft key lights. You may find an array of lighting fixtures up in the grid.

To maintain control and direction of specific lights, specifically key lights, some lighting designers choose fresnel units. These have lenses that help directionality, usually equipped with barn doors, and you can narrow or widen the beam. Some of the more common fresnels found in a newsroom are those from ARRI, Fluotec and Mole LEDs. Other sets go all panels—ARRI Skypanels, Litepanels, etc. That way they’re using all soft lights and fixtures that can have chimeras built on top to avoid having to rig up diffusers.

It is usually preferred to rig as little to the grid as possible while still meeting all the lighting needs. Besides mounting a few solids to separate sources and control spill, all that should be up there are the units themselves. Being able to attach soft boxes to them helps keep the amount of hardware above to a minimum. A lot of panels are naturally soft lights, so being able to add on a soft box with a variety of diffusion options gets the light quality to an ideal place quite easily.

NEW TOOLS

Tools available in lighting now save a tremendous amount of time and energy in the news space. LED technology makes these sets much cooler and draw less power. They also offer flexibility with color temperature and intensity, all easily adjustable through DMX. Sure, you could connect everything to a dimmer board years ago, but now you can dial in even more in terms of hue, saturation, etc.

I was fortunate enough to demo the new ARRI Orbiter, which I think will be another major player in studio lighting, with even better color and offering hard light with a variety of mountable lenses. It seemed like a hybrid of a Skypanel and a little like the company’s L-series. I think more and more of these will start appearing—lights that become all you need in terms of color, hard and soft light, with a range of attachments to easily mount on the unit.

News is climbing in visual sophistication along with every other format and lighting technology is what is helping make it all possible. Lighting is used to create depth, execute color cues and light a variety of stages and subjects like never before. As LED lighting technology becomes even more versatile, the job of lighting a studio will only become easier, with more lighting tools and capabilities at our fingertips.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer based in California, whose narrative films include “Killing Animals,” “Jilted” and “Cassidy Red.” She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand. She can be contacted through TV Technology.

NEW YORK—Dalet has struck a deal with what it says is a prominent North American broadcaster to use its Dalet Galaxy five system to build a next-generation, borderless multiplatform newsroom serving the broadcasters 24-hour news service.

Using advanced cloud and AI technologies, all of the broadcaster’s production and distribution operations will be moved to the Dalet Galaxy five platform, a unified Media Asset Management, workflow orchestration and editorial environment.

The Dalet Galaxy five is based on a video over IP infrastructure that uses the SMPTE ST 2110 standard and that uses the cloud to help news networks scale remote bureaus, field resources and workflows. It has integrated cognitive services that can accelerate the metadata enrichment of content archives. There is also a hybrid architecture with AWS that provides native disaster recovery capability b offloading on-premise capacity to the cloud when needed.

Specifically for the partnership with this broadcaster, the Dalet Galaxy five will underpin the multiplatform production and delivery workflow, integrating broadcast system and supporting field and bureau workflows with an updated remote editing user experience, per Dalet. The platform will also facilitate metadata-driven operations that automate complex media processes, distribute tasks and streamline workflows.

“Dalet Galaxy five is able to facilitate standard news, long-form programming and digital workflows simultaneously,” said Frederic Roux, vice president of sales, Americas, Dalet. “The transition to the platform brings immense efficiency to the operation with limitless options to implement future workflows and iterate quickly with new, digital-first initiatives.”

More information is available on Dalet’s website.

Dalet, a leading provider of solutions and services for broadcasters and content professionals, announced today it will showcase at NAB 2018 (booth SL8010) new capabilities for producers and journalists to tackle the rapidly growing role of social media in the newsroom. “Reuters Institute Digital News Report * stated that in 2017 more than 51% of those sampled (in the US) get news via social media networks. This was up five percentage points from 2016 and twice as many from 2013,” explains Arnaud Elnecave, vice president of marketing at Dalet. “In order to keep pace with today’s hyper-active non-stop news cycle and audiences’ desire for new forms of content interactions, Dalet hasinterwovensocial media functions into every facet of the newsroom. From using social media as a source, all the way to engaging audiences in complementary experiences, this new suite tools have been designed for publishers to very simply and effectively treat social media as an integrated part of their overall day to day operations, alongside traditional outlets.”

Powered by the Dalet Galaxy five Media Asset Management, Workflow Orchestration and Editorial platform, the newly revved Dalet Social Media Framework enables editorial teams to harvest, aggregate, analyze, produce and deliver fast-paced news to social media networks, while the rest of the platform helps free up editorial time by further automating business as usual for the more traditional outlets. New Dalet Social Framework capabilities available with the Dalet Galaxy five release and shown at NAB 2018 include:

• Aggregator: This new feature offers a friendly and efficient UI to use social threads as news sources. Journalists can simply subscribe to topics they need to follow. The module automatically aggregates and displays matching threads.
  
• Track story popularity: Real-time engagement data presented in familiar social media style data lets journalists know how their posts are performing with audiences and assists in gauging new story angles.
  
• Support for Facebook business pages: In addition to the ability to publish to Facebook personal accounts, journalists can now publish to business pages with full control over draft or as a final post.
  
• Advanced social media staging: The new feature allows to time and schedule posts either solo or alongside a developing story (before, during and after a story airs). It also includes the ability to submit and approve social media stories.
  
• Emoji library: A 6,000 character Emoji library used by Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat communicators is now part of the Dalet Social Media Framework.

News Production, Creation and Distribution for a Multimedia World

The flexible Dalet Galaxy five platform allows news operations to either distribute to social media via a traditional CMS integration or to connect directly to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. This increases the speed in which news is delivered to a global audience and gives journalists full control over their news engagement with the audience.

For more information on Dalet Social Media Framework, please visit http://www.dalet.com/solutions/social-media-framework.

* N. Newman, R. Fletcher, A. Kalogeropoulos, D. A. L. Levy, R. Kleis Nielsen (2017). Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2017. Retrieved from this link on April 4th, 2018.

Schedule a Private Press Briefing with Dalet at NAB 2018

Members of the NAB registered press are invited to request a private press briefing with Dalet at NAB 2018. For more information, please contact Alex Molina at alex@zazilmediagroup.com.

About Dalet Digital Media Systems

Dalet solutions and services enable media organizations to create, manage and distribute content faster and more efficiently, fully maximizing the value of assets. Dalet products are built on three distinct platforms that, when combined, form versatile business solutions that power end-to-end workflows for news, sports, program preparation, production, archive and radio. Individually, Dalet platforms and products offer targeted applications with key capabilities to address critical media workflow functions such as ingest, QC, edit, transcode and multiplatform distribution.

The foundation for Dalet productivity-enhancing workflow solutions, Dalet Galaxy is the enterprise Media Asset Management (MAM) & Orchestration platform that unifies the content chain by managing assets, metadata, workflows and processes across multiple and diverse production and distribution systems. Specially tailored for news and media workflows, this unique technology platform helps broadcasters and media professionals increase productivity while providing operational and business visibility.

Dalet AmberFin is the high-quality, scalable transcoding platform with fully integrated ingest, mastering, QC and review functionalities, enabling facilities to make great pictures in a scalable, reliable and interoperable way. Addressing the demanding needs of studio production, multi-camera ingest, sports logging and highlights production, the innovative Dalet Brio video server platform combines density and cost-effectiveness with high reliability. Adopted by leading broadcasters, Dalet Cube is a suite of applications to create, manage and deliver graphics in a newsroom scenario.

Dalet supports customers from the initial planning stages to well beyond project execution. Our global presence includes 17 offices strategically located throughout Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific, North America and South America, and a network of more than 60 professional partners serving 87 countries worldwide. This collective experience and knowledge enables our customers to realize potential increases in productivity, efficiency and value of their assets.

The comprehensive Dalet Care program ensures deployments remain up and running with 24/7 support 365 days a year.

Dalet systems are used around the world by many thousands of individual users at hundreds of TV and Radio content producers, including public broadcasters (ABS-CBN, BBC, CBC, DR, FMM, France TV, RAI, RFI, Russia Today, RT Malaysia, VOA), commercial networks and operators (Canal+, FOX, eTV, MBC Dubai, MediaCorp, Mediaset, Orange, Time Warner Cable, Warner Bros, Sirius XM Radio), and government organizations (Canadian House of Commons, Australian Parliament and UK Parliament).

Dalet is traded on the NYSE-EURONEXT stock exchange (Eurolist C): ISIN: FR0011026749, Bloomberg DLT:FP, Reuters: DALE.PA.

Dalet® is a registered trademark of Dalet Digital Media Systems. All other products and trademarks mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.

FORT COLLINS, COLO.—Jim Ocon, a familiar face to many broadcasters, two weeks ago launched Ocon Solutions Company, a Fort Collins, Colo.-based engineering consultancy to address what he sees as a dearth of innovation at stations when it comes to field contribution for news and to plug the budgetary hole of wireless data plan overages.

“Back in 2009 or 2010, right around then when the economy was really in the bucket, I think there was a lot more innovation going on,” says Ocon, who is president and chief innovation officer. “As Warren Buffet would say, you can always tell who’s not wearing swimming trunks when the tide goes out. In other words, prosperous times tend to hide bad practices.”

One way those bad practices are showing up is in newsroom budgets for wireless data plans that are needed to facilitate use of IP newsgathering backpacks. “Every manager we talk to about the budget talks about the data plan. One station in particular had to add $75,000 a year alone because they had not accounted for the overages and they are having to reduce staff. I think this is an area where we can really help,” he says.

Ocon says he is uniquely qualified to help stations to solve the problem, and he may be right. While at Gray Television, Ocon led an experimental effort called GrayMax to use IP-based radios on 2GHz BAS channels. After leaving Fox Television Stations in Dallas, he moved to Persistent Systems where he was VP of business development and given responsibility for rolling out the Wave Relay Mobile Ad Hoc Networking (MANET) solution to broadcasters.

[Gray's Jim Ocon Heads to Dallas Fox O&O] 

“My aim is to help stakeholders realize a new way to leverage their infrastructure, which I prefer to call out-fra-structure,” says Ocon. “Let’s rebuild the networks that stations or groups own to facilitate IP journalism.”

For more information on Ocon Solutions Company email: jim.ocon@comcast.net.

COLUMBUS, OHIO—Today’s TV newsrooms are increasingly being tasked with serving the web and mobile first, and broadcast second.

This is a natural consequence of the “always-on” nature of internet-based news: Although regularly-scheduled TV newscasts still matter, viewers are expecting their local broadcasters to be on top of stories at all times, and have that information available online as soon as news breaks.

In response to this online-driven reality, Columbus, Ohio CBS affiliate WBNS-10TV has radically rebuilt their newsroom. “We have replaced a dimly-lit, divided-up old school newsroom—all that was missing were manual typewriters—with a circular, multi-ringed layout that allows for the free flow of information between all news team members,” said Kelly Frank, director of news and digital content for the station, which is owned by Dispatch Broadcast Group. “The change in layout has created a constant back-and-forth between the online and broadcast elements of our news team; resulting in better content for viewers, and better morale for our staff.”

At the center of WBNS-10TV’s new digital news facility is “The Hub,” a raised half-walled circular platform, whose digital/assignment editors look outwards towards the rest of the newsroom.IT ALL STARTS AT THE HUB

Walk into the WBNS-10TV newsroom, and you might think you’d stepped onto the bridge of the next Starship Enterprise. That’s how big a departure this facility is from the desks-and-cubicles layout of most current TV newsrooms.

At the center of it all is “The Hub,” a raised half-walled circular platform, whose digital/assignment editors look outwards towards the rest of the newsroom.

Set directly against the other side of The Hub’s walls is a desktop surface that encircles the structure: This is where WBNS-10TV’s assignment-only and digital-only producers work.

On one side of the wall behind them is a 24’x7’ monitor video wall with 18 monitors. On the other side are outer rings of desks assigned to the various AM and PM TV newscast teams, plus desktop-based edit bays. (WBNS-10TV uses Grass Valley EDIUS ENPS newsroom system for editing and playout.)

All these work spaces are open to each other, as are the floor-to-ceiling glass walled conference room and news director office at the room’s periphery. The only areas that are isolated are three edit bays specifically set aside for WBNS-10TV’s investigative news unit.

There are also two rings of ceiling-encompassing 14 HDTV monitors. One faces into The Hub, and the other faces out into the newsroom. Content from various news sites, 24/7 TV news networks, and other sources are rotated across these screens every 20 seconds, so that viewers have a true up-to-date sense of what news consumers are seeing in real time.

As stylistic as this layout looks, WBNS-10TV’s newsroom is entirely functional. “The Hub is the central source for information monitoring—including social media in all its forms—and for driving coverage decisions that work their way into the various news teams, and back again,” said Tim Moushey, WBNS-10TV’s news operations manager. “We think of The Hub as being ‘Media Central,’ it is the core of our newsgathering operation,” added Frank.

CONSTANT VIGILANCE

Set directly against the other side of The Hub’s walls is a desktop surface that encircles the structure: This is where WBNS-10TV’s assignment-only and digital-only producers work. The reason The Hub is so vital to WBNS-10TV’s new-style newsroom is because The Hub’s staff is constantly monitoring online news sources, and populating the station’s own web and social media sites in response.

“We keep a close eye on what people are saying online, plus what’s being posted on our competition’s TV and newspaper web sites,” Moushey said. “The producers at The Hub do all of this, in addition to monitoring the scanner and other older news information sources.”

The Hub’s role as Media Central also ensures that WBNS-10TV’s news teams are constantly informed on what is happening, and communicating to each other about it. “In our old newsroom, the anchors were isolated in one area, the reporters in another, and the photographers in a third,” said Frank. “In our new model, each news team is grouped together. This makes it easy for a producer to grab their news anchor and get their feedback on what is being put together as it happens.”

Beyond being functional, WBNS-10TV’s modern newsroom is meant to impress. “We have a controllable camera based at The Hub that can be used to shoot an anchor or reporter in front of our video wall, while switching between video sources as required,” said Moushey. “This gives us a profoundly powerful informational and visual source to use for breaking news, or for special events such as our November 2016 election coverage, which is the first time our viewers saw our new facility.”

Most importantly, WBNS-10TV’s newsroom has revolutionised how the station’s journalists produce the news. “It’s not just that we have brought everybody together, but that they have embraced this new model whole-heartedly,” said Frank. “There is a new enthusiasm for newsgathering at our station; not just because we have cool new technology to present the news with, but also because our approach works so well in the online multimedia world we live in. At WBNS-10TV, we have the tools we need to do the job right in 2016; not when we signed on in 1949.”

HONG KONG—CNN Indonesia, a new channel formed in collaboration between CNN International and CT Corp Indonesia, recently installed a new turnkey newsroom system at its facility at the Trans Corp Headquarters in Jakarta, Indonesia, that was designed and built by Ideal Systems.

With 80 percent of CNN Indonesia’s content being produced locally and 20 percent coming from CNN International, the channels newsroom system needed to support multiple business entities in different locations, while also providing access to the Newsroom Computer System for Transmedia users. Ideal Systems designed the system to accommodate complex workflows, including ingest, content acquisition, editing, MAM, story creation, rundown generation and studio playout. The system also allows journalists to access CNN International’s pool of journalist material and the ability to share content from global affiliates.

To achieve all of these functions, Ideal Systems integrated a number of technologies into the system, including Avid’s New Production System, SGL’s Flashnet, MOG Tech and a digital MATV system.

CNN Indonesia currently airs through CT Corp’s DTH Platform, Transvision, in full 1080i HD.

TORONTO—Sinclair Broadcast Group has announced it has acquired a number of Masstech’s Masstech for News systems to create a centralized hub for sharing content among all of its news-producing stations. Masstech for News is a newsroom sharing, media management and archiving system that will simplify movement of video and stories between Sinclair locations and archives.

Masstech for News

A number of Sinclair stations already featured Masstech for News, but the new installation raise the number of stations by more than 50 percent. The system offers these stations automated local archive management; drag-and-drop sharing workflows; and access to content in the archives of other similarly-equipped Sinclair locations.

Additional features offered through the Masstech for News system are the Masstech Media Wires feature, which enables journalists to push selected stories and videos to other stations across the group; and the Video-Follows-Text technology, which ensures all text, metadata and media are transferred together with a drag-and-drop option.

Sinclair Broadcast Group owns and operates 163 TV stations in 79 markets.

Masstech is a provider of software for the management of digital media content and related information. The company is based in Toronto.

WASHINGTON – The Radio Television Digital News Association has released its annual survey of the position of women and minorities in the industry, with the results yield both positive and negative trends.

First, according to the research, the number of women in broadcast newsrooms and in leadership roles has reached record levels. Women now make-up 42.3 percent of the TV news workforce and 39.2 percent of the radio news workforce, both of which are the highest they have ever been. In addition, the number of women and minority general managers has increased overall.

However, that seems to be one of the only areas of growth for minorities, according to RTDNA. The number of minorities in newsrooms has slipped, no longer keeping pace with the growth of the minority population overall. Minority news directors at non-Hispanic TV stations fell by three-tenths of a point, the fourth year in a row those numbers saw a decrease. Radio, meanwhile, saw a decline of 6.5 percent.

To see the full numbers and learn more about RTDNA’s report, visit www.rtdna.org.