MONTREAL—Grass Valley has announced that Australian News Channel (ANC), operator of Sky News Australia, has deployed Grass Valley AMPP to transform its newsroom production operations as part of the move to a new national headquarters.

The deployment replaces a long-standing legacy system with a cloud-based production architecture, enabling more than 250 journalists, editors, and producers to collaborate through browser-based workflows. The platform now supports the delivery of over 1,500 hours of content each week across broadcast and digital platforms.

“This transformation has fundamentally changed how we operate as a newsroom,” said Jesse Hicks, deputy head of operations and innovation, Sky News Australia. “Our teams can access editing tools from anywhere, collaborate in real time, and turn around content faster without compromising quality. It gives us the flexibility needed for modern news production while maintaining the reliability required for a 24/7 environment.”

ANC deployed the AMPP ecosystem, as part of a relocation project replacing an SQ based news production system from Grass Valley’s Quantel lineage. The solution includes Framelight X for browser-based editing, Playout X for cloud playout, and integrated asset management, ingest, and storage services. Journalists can now create and edit content directly in a web browser, removing reliance on physical workstations and accelerating production workflows.

The new workflow also supports fully distributed production, enabling teams to work across the newsroom, field locations, and remote environments. By streamlining processes and reducing manual tasks, ANC is reporting improved efficiency and its employees have been able to spend more time on content creation.

“Undertaking a full newsroom transformation alongside a headquarters relocation is a complex challenge,” said Jon Wilson, CEO, Grass Valley. “ANC took a clear, strategic approach – moving to an integrated software defined model that delivers greater flexibility, scalability, and resilience across its operations. This project reflects our long-standing partnership and a shared commitment to modernizing news operations live production.”

Since going live in November 2025, the platform has delivered continuous 24/7 operation without downtime, demonstrating the reliability of cloud-based production at scale. As an early adopter of AMPP for newsroom workflows, ANC continues to work closely with Grass Valley, providing operational feedback that informs ongoing platform development.

While this year’s U.S. presidential election has seen plenty of drama already, the events of Nov. 5 could still prove to be explosive. As the race to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. reaches its final hours, viewers around the world will be tuning in to see who gets the keys to the White House for the next four years.

In the U.K., Sky News will bring viewers the results throughout Nov. 5 and into Nov. 6. The broadcaster will have presenters based in Washington, D.C., at both candidates’ events and the key swing states. But in a first for Sky News, its main gallery will be based in the United Kingdom, with the team employing remote production throughout the project.

Planning for the election has been ongoing since 2020, as the fixed cycle of U.S. elections means that broadcasters know what date they’re working toward, something that is unusual in the news business. But planning took a step forward in November 2022 when Republican Donald Trump announced his candidacy for a third run at the White House.

“We’ve been thinking about the story in a news gathering capacity for a long time now,” Emily Purser-Brown, Sky News’ Washington bureau chief, said. “The primaries were a really big deal at the beginning of this year, and from an output and programming perspective, we’ve been in very serious planning for several months.

“There was a moment I think that we and the rest of our colleagues in the media thought we might have a U.S. and a U.K. election running right alongside each other and so some of our planning was around that contingency. I think it’s a relief to all of us in the news business to be able to cover the stories at different times.”

Purser-Brown added that planning election coverage while also keeping up with the story has been a huge challenge over the last few months. “It’s been a wild summer of developments and keeping not just at pace with that, but hopefully in front of it, whilst planning and trying to execute a big project of this nature with many 10s of colleagues in London has been a lot of work.”

Separation of Powers
Sky News is basing its on-air team in D.C. Studio N1 in NBC’s Washington news bureau, home to the Sunday morning public-affairs show “Meet the Press,” America’s longest-running program. Because Sky and NBC have existing fiber infrastructure between D.C. and London, the gallery will be based at Sky’s HQ in Osterley, West London.

“We are very lucky to have the ‘Meet the Press’ studio. It’s an iconic studio and it’s in constant use, and this is one of the challenges,” said Niel Finlay, senior director at Sky News.

“We have very limited time with the studio, so we don’t want to change it too much, especially as it’s quite iconic and we can’t disturb the studio too much because NBC need to use it in the two hours after we have it for rehearsal,” Finlay said. “The current set has a neoclassical and federal style architecture, which refers to the Capitol building and other architecture around it, so we’ll be leaning into their set, but we’ll be trying to make it distinctive by using our graphics with our presenters and our journalism.

“We’ve done some latency checks. We were in their studio at the end of July/beginning of August, for a tech check, and we were really impressed,” he continued. “We’re lucky being top-end broadcasters, we’ve already got that infrastructure in place. It’s just one of the facts, when you run a remote production, there is going to be slight latency in there, but it’s nothing that we aren’t used to dealing with. We’ve got all the cameras coming into the studio, we’ve got sound coming into our gallery, and we’re piping back all the graphics that are feeding the video wall.”

The master gallery in Osterley will be fully crewed with the team working alongside a director in Washington. Finlay said there was some discussion as to whether to run the production completely remotely, but it was decided that there should be someone on the ground to guide the U.S.-based crew.

“Not to blow our trumpet too much about the whole remote production part of it but Sky News and Sky Sports have been leaders in remote production for many years now,” he continues. “Our Millbank facilities in London are remote production robotic cameras, we do have some technical people down there when we need to. But this election is just our next step onwards, where we’re effectively controlling someone else’s studio.”

Access
Sky will have some technical people in the U.S., but the collaboration with NBC means that a lot of the production staff will come from the U.S. broadcaster.

“Editorially, we have got two overnight presenters plus a screen presenter, so we have to have enough production team to be able to cover that as well as all our teams in the field,” added Lucie Charlton, Sky News output editor. “This isn’t just a one- night production, either. We’ve got the days running up to it, and however long it may be before the results are called. So you have to have enough editorial team to cover all those correspondents and presenters.”

Sky News will have correspondents on the ground across the United States, including with both campaigns as well as several of the swing states, particularly the likes of Pennsylvania and Georgia. “One of our core principles is eyewitness journalism. To do that, you need to have boots on the ground,” Charlton said.

To help cover all of the locations where they intend to have reporters, Sky News will rely on LiveU for feedback feeds and on NBC’s infrastructure in certain locations.

“This election night project is really an extension of our day to day relationship with NBC,” Purser-Brown said. “Particularly here in America, we work hand in glove with NBC, it’s a close working partnership from news gathering to picture sourcing, to, in this case, the technology.”

Talking Points
Back in D.C., Sky News intends to make full use of D.C. Studio N1’s location on Capitol Hill with all of its windows looking out on historic landmarks. The studio also includes four window archways, which Sky News will use as graphics screens. One of the screens will also be employed as a way for the presenters to speak to correspondents and guests.

“That helps us add to the set but it’ll also help us to tell the story throughout the night,” Charlton said. “The bit I’m excited about is one of the big archway screens will be used as a map of the United States, and as the night goes on, each state will go red or blue as the result comes in and the audience will be able to see that happening in real-time behind our presenters. The other screens allow us to show live shots and images of the White House and the Capitol building as well.”

Augmented reality powered by Unreal Engine will also come into play during the night—although the team is reluctant to give too many details as it wants to surprise viewers. “We do have an AR White House that our graphics and innovation teams have made, and that includes the grounds of the White House and all those kind of iconic shots that you see on TV,” Charlton explained. “It will allow us to show how close we are getting to the winner of the election and that magic number of 270 electoral votes. All that will help feed into our coverage throughout the night.”

Lewis Goodall is also joining the on-air team for the election and will be in charge of a famous piece of kit—the touch screen used by Steve Kornacki as part of NBC’s broadcast. “Lewis will be talking us through all the data throughout the night. We’ll have state-level and county-level data coming in so we can see exactly who’s voting for whom, in which state and county and and really tell the story on a granular level,” Charlton said. “We’ve had access to a level of data for the U.S. election before, but this type of data and this type of technology, the way the touch screen works, it’s very quick and responsive. It allows us to tell the story really quickly, so it’s quite exciting, and it’s going to be our kind of shining star hopefully of the night.”

Game On
Working alongside its U.S. sister network is a big challenge for Sky News, and one that Finlay said needs to be acknowledged. Not only is the Sky News team dealing with the time difference between the U.S. and U.K., but its also getting to grips with different technology, including a different comms system. “We use Riedel for comms, and it’s always a challenge mixing comms systems. The tech team have gone down an embedded audio route, so we’re going to embed and de-embed audio streams to feed into presenters. We need to have ISO recordings coming back as well. We might want to clip particular moments up so we need all the cameras and ISOs and sound paired together.”

“We’ve obviously been working with NBC for a long time, but on this scale, and using one of their studios, using all their data that’s coming through and using their touchscreen, is just the closest and biggest collaboration that we’ve ever done,” Charlton added. “It’s all very new to us but so far, it’s all been very successful.”

This story originally ran in TV Technology sister brand TVB Europe.

Sky News UK and Sky Sports News have been taken off air by what’s being described as the ‘biggest IT outage of all time’.

Sky News began to experience problems around 5am and switched to broadcasting documentaries at 7am. It then went completely off-air about an hour later.

The channel returned to air at 8.50am with a much-changed backdrop, and no graphics, autocue or packages. It then went back off air again after a short news update and before resuming at 9am.

In a statement on X (formerly Twitter), Sky News chairman David Rhodes said that the network had “not been able to broadcast live TV this morning. Much of our news report is still available online, and we are working hard to restore all services.”

In its own post on X, Microsoft 365 said: “We’re investigating an issue impacting users ability to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services”.

Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike later released a statement in which it said it is “actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”

Australian broadcasters were also forced off air, with both Sky News Australia and ABC hit.

AWS, NOW, Virgin Media, and BT are also among the companies impacted, according to DownDetector.

This story first appeared in our sister publication TVBEurope

PHILADELPHIA—Comcast has reportedly shelved its plans for an international news channel, which would have united its NBC News and Sky News brands.

According to the Financial Times, the company has taken the decision following the impact of coronavirus on its business, telling staff it has become “unviable.”

The channel was originally due to launch this summer, and then was put on hold in April. The company had already hired 50 members of staff for the channel.

The FT added that the proposal to shelve the NBC Sky World News will now go to consultation with staff, who have been told they can suggest alternative options.

NBC News has declined to comment on the report.

Comcast has officially acquired 21st Century Fox's 39 per cent stake in Sky.

The acquisition allows Comcast to take full ownership of Sky. Comcast won the auction for Sky valuing the company at £29.7 billion.

"We are pleased today to be the majority owner of Sky. Led by Jeremy Darroch and his superb team, now together with Comcast, our combined global leadership in technology and content paves the way for us to accelerate investment and growth in Sky’s brand and premier platforms," said Brian Roberts, chairman and CEO of Comcast, said in a statement.

"We are also fully committed to ensuring Sky News' future, maintaining its editorial independence, and preserving its strong track record for trusted, high quality, impartial news," he added.

Following the announcement, James Murdoch was among a number of directors who resigned from the board of Sky.

Fremont, CA - June 14, 2018 - Blackmagic Design today announced that Sky News UK has integrated a series of Ultimatte 12 compositing processors and an Ultimatte Smart Remote 4 to produce dynamic virtual studio segments for its award winning 24 hour rolling news cycle, in particular for its ‘Sunrise’ breakfast programming.

The installation forms part of a major relocation project, which saw the news broadcaster move to new, state of the art studio facilities within Sky Campus in West London. “Our key aim was not only to retain the extremely high quality production values that Sky News is renown for, but also to ensure that we were able to create depth, scale and variety when presenting news output,” explains Ben Wickham, head of studio output, Sky News.

The three walled greenscreen takes up around half of the studio, and is predominantly used for Sky News’ virtual news studio, built within a highly realistic 3D VR environment. Within the virtual set, a video wall can be deployed for welcome sequences, lead item discussions, correspondent reports, sports bulletins and weather forecasts.

Ben explains that this is where the cleanness of Ultimatte’s keying and spill suppression come into their own: “As well as a range of different presenters’ hair colors, skin tones and clothing, it has to deal with changes in camera angle, and greenspill from the three walls on presenters’ heads and shoes. The Ultimatte’s real time edge handling and color separation means that we can always be confident of the results on screen, no matter how many different VR studio slots we have in the running order.”

News programming in the studio is captured by five cameras, including two dedicated VR units; one on a jib and a pedestal unit operated remotely from the gallery. “Our VR elements have to be as flexible as possible, so we can cut between our VR camera signals and also transition between the virtual set and the presenters’ desk in the other half of the studio,” continues Ben. “The integration between studio set and VR cameras has to be seamless.”

Sky News is already expanding its use of VR with Ultimatte 12 with enhancements to its editorial news elements, for example, creating a series of real life locations to recreate timelines of key news events. “Often we simply can’t film in these locations live, as they may still be an active crime scene, however by constructing a virtual recreation, we can have a presenter walk through the scene, giving the story an added dimension,” explains Ben.

“We chose Ultimatte 12 primarily because its precision, wide color space and real time image processing would match Sky News’ rigorous demands for production excellence at all times,” Ben concludes. “It’s critical that any VR elements we introduce into our studio productions retain as much authenticity as possible. Ultimatte’s flexibility, combined with high quality VR builds ensures that viewers will continue to turn to the channel as a reliable and information news source.”

Press Photography

Product photos of Ultimatte 12, Ultimatte Smart Remote 4 and all other Blackmagic Design products are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/images.

About Blackmagic Design

Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia. For more information, please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com.

Press Contact

Nick Govoni
Zazil Media Group
(e) nick@zazilmediagroup.com
(p) +1 (978) 866 7354

LONDON--As guests arrive at the Royal Wedding on May 19, Sky News will be using machine learning technology provided by Amazon Web Services and two partners to name guests and provide additional background.

Fans will be able to access the ‘Royal Wedding: Who’s Who Live’ via the Sky News app or via skynews.com. The technology enabling this enhanced user experience and deliver this service at scale, is being provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and two AWS technology partners, GrayMeta and UI Centric. 

As guests make their way into St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, AWS will capture live video and send it to cloud-based AWS Elemental Media Services for multiscreen viewing optimization. An on-demand video asset, including catch-up functionality, will also be generated. In parallel, Sky is combining the GrayMeta data analysis platform with the Amazon Rekognition video and image analysis service for real-time identification of guests and tagging with related information.

[Read: AWS Elemental Launches Media Services]

Finally, Sky News is using the Amazon CloudFront content delivery network to unify the content for rapid distribution to viewers. UI Centric has designed and developed the front-end application and video player to enhance the experience and user interface accessed by Sky News viewers.

Keith Wymbs, chief marketing officer for AWS Elemental, the video division from Amazon providing the encoding and cloud services for the event, said that AWS has a long relationship with Sky, adding that the capability will give Sky some insight into the capabilities of machine learning.

“It’s really a way to explore what we can do in a more nimble environment where we don’t have to provide a traditional workflow where you’re bolting servers into a rack and dealing with all the related hardware,” he said. “This gives Sky an understanding for exactly how much demand is going to be there so they can do a lot more experimentation and be first to market with things that are exciting for the end user.”

Video content from the application will also be made available on demand after the event. 

HACKENSACK, N.J.—The Guinness world record for most concurrent live web streams was set during Sky News’ coverage of the U.K. General Election on May 7, the broadcaster officially announced. The U.K. broadcaster used LiveU technology to stream from 138 locations simultaneously to cover 150 constituency results.

The LiveU units were managed and controlled by LiveU Central, a cloud-based management platform that used geo-location capabilities to centrally control the fleet of units. LiveU’s cellular bonding technology was also utilized.

LiveU is a provider of IP-based live video services and broadcast technology for acquisition, management and distribution. The company is headquartered Hackensack, N.J.