SYDNEY—Telstra Broadcast Services (TBS), a division of Telstra, one of Australia's largest telecommunications and technology companies, has appointed Karen Clark as CEO.

Clark brings to her new role more than 25 years of experience in the media, telecommunications, and technology industry, most recently as chief revenue officer at TBS, leading pre-sales, sales and marketing teams across all regions.

With extensive experience in strategic alliances and M&A, Clark has been pivotal in forming strong partnerships, most recently with BT Media & Broadcast, allowing TBS to address the industry’s most complex challenges and deliver services that set it apart, the company said.

“It is an honor and privilege to lead our exceptional TBS team at such an exciting time in the industry, and I am deeply passionate about the continued growth and success of the company,” Clark said. “The demand for high-performance media solutions continues to develop, and our focus remains on delivering innovative, fit-for-purpose managed services and solutions that meet our customers’ evolving needs.”

Clark is dedicated to fostering diversity and inclusion, particularly through her involvement with Rise, SVGW Women in Sports Production and adjacent work with the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) and IBC councils, according to Telstra. As one of the few female CEOs in the media technology space, Clark sees diverse perspectives as essential for the company’s success, the company said.

Telstra said Clark plans to advance TBS’s global agenda, launch market-ready 5G media solutions, sustain significant growth and showcase its value through a steadfast commitment to customers.

Clark’s priorities include continuing the legacy of her predecessor, Andreas Eriksson, who led TBS to global success over the past five years. “The past few years have been remarkable, and I’m thrilled to build on the strong foundation we’ve established,” she said. “We’ve taken risks, driven growth, built trust and created bespoke solutions with our partners. I look forward to building on our achievements and setting up TBS for future success.”

SYDNEY—Telstra Broadcast Services (TBS) and BT have signed an initial five-year strategic alliance agreement to bring together their global media networks and pool their network infrastructure and localized expertise.

The agreement will enable TBS to grow its global footprint by 50% and expand its customer base to more than 170 broadcast and media organizations around the world, the companies said.

“Our priority at TBS is to offer a world-class global content delivery service for our customers, including the largest distribution network with the most flexibility and options for organizations to connect to the world,” said Karen Clark, head of APAC at TBS.   

“We’re continuing to see rapid growth in content demand and ongoing evolution in technology and distribution channels in response to changing consumer behavior. The focus of TBS and BT’s teams and operations on the right customer outcome will ensure our customers have the very best partner to respond to the fast-changing broadcast environment and help them optimize their operations and reach global audiences.”  

The deal gives the customers of both companies access to their unified operations, including their global media networks, via a product offering from Telstra. It brings key Asia-Pacific regions, including India, Malaysia, Hong Kong and other countries into the fold, they said.

Media companies will benefit from Telstra’s high-capacity media networks, generating expanded reach and distribution of their content. This will be supported by an increased local team in APAC and access to the broader suite of TBS products and services, including field services, special events teams and broadcast operations centers in Sydney, Melbourne, Hong Kong, London and Pittsburgh.   

Telstra and BT customers will continue to access the same media delivery service with the additional opportunity to drive greater global reach and visibility of their content, the companies said.

“We're excited about this collaboration and the opportunity to bring our customers greater content, reach and visibility by utilizing the strength of both BT M&B’s and TBS' world-class content delivery networks,” said Faisal Mahomed, director of media and broadcast and UK Portfolio Businesses at BT.   

“This approach builds on the reach of our intelligent media platform, Vena, which continues to add wider networks, in addition to cloud integrations, virtualized services such as baseband encoding, and the recent 5G and LEO developments into our portfolio.”

More information is available on the TBS and BT websites.  

BURBANK, Calif.—PSSI has announced that it demonstrated a significant expansion of its remote production capabilities last month with the production of the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s "The Road to UFC 2" from Shanghai, China. 

The live production in Las Vegas in May involved 24 camera feeds that were acquired from Shanghai via remote integration through transmission services provided by PSSI Global Services, a live event management, transmission, production and connectivity provider serving clients across the globe. 

PSSI reported that the scale and distance of the event represented a significant expansion of the remote production model and that the successful event demonstrated that PSSI can help clients of any size expand globally without compromising production quality and reliability. 

The REMI production model enabled UFC and its production partner, ConCom, to reduce its production footprint by providing an alternative to traveling overseas with an entire production team.

"A college football game as a 10-channel REMI is now part of the weekly repertoire in the US, but we are pushing the boundaries with scale and distance,” said Garrett Hunt, who leads PSSI’s project management team. “UFC is the perfect partner for this initial venture because their global reach is so expansive. Our work in Shanghai and Vegas shows there’s no corner of the world we can’t reach to produce a world-class show with fewer boots on the ground than ever before.”

PSSI sent its newly acquired Appear media processing and delivery equipment and two senior engineers to Shanghai to facilitate this broadcast. Appear's X Platform enabled high-density HEVC encoding/decoding for the event, converting 24 HD camera signals and 8 return feeds into high-quality HEVC, low-latency transport signals. 

In addition, PSSI turned to Telstra to provide one gigabyte of data for the event via their Special Events Network, as well as an IT interface for remote engineering. PSSI also engaged Nextologies to design multiple payload data tunnels for comms, scoring, and camera tallies between the Shanghai Media Group facility and UFC Apex in Las Vegas.

“What we were able to accomplish in Shanghai could be tailored to any company with an interest in efficient international REMI productions,” said Tracy Michaels, director of project engineering, who architected this solution alongside PSSI’s partners at Appear, Telstra, and Nextologies. “What sets this REMI apart is the rapid-deploy set/shoot/strike model that can be scaled up or down for any event around the world.”

For more information about PSSI, visit http://www.pssiglobal.com. 

SYDNEY—Telstra and media asset management specialists Silver Trak Digital have announced that they used their 5G Cinema Direct content delivery service to deliver the first ever live event for The Australian Ballet to select cinemas over 5G.

The March 24 broadcast over 5G allowed audiences in select cinemas to see the live performance from Melbourne of Don Quixote. 

The performance was managed over Telstra’s Internet Delivery Network (IDN) using Telstra's best of breed 5G technology to deliver the content to cinemas from Telstra partner 5Stream Streaming Solutions.

“Telstra and The Australian Ballet have had a close relationship for over 30 years,” Silver Trak CEO, Tim Creswell, explained. “The Australian Ballet have been keen to take their live events to audiences in shared spaces such as movie theaters for some time and have now partnered with their long-time distributor Sharmill Films to bring their first truly live event to cinemas across Australia. The enabling technology is Telstra and Silver Trak Digital’s 5G Cinema Direct content delivery service.”

In order to fulfil the content delivery requirements for the event, Silver Trak Digital and Telstra took the live production feed and distributed it to participating cinemas with the Cinema Direct technology installed in real time.

Head of APAC Telstra Broadcast Services, Karen Clark, added Silver Trak are the front-end organizers of the process. Telstra took the feed directly from the production and delivered it to cinemas via “our proprietary IDN and over our 5G wireless network. Delivering live events, in real time, over IDN technology and using a 5G wireless network to do this is truly ground-breaking,” he said. 

This unique live broadcast event was first envisaged shortly after the launch of Cinema Direct at an industry summit hosted by Telstra where partners 5Stream, Telstra Broadcast Services (TBS) and Silver Trak Digital proved that it was now possible to get professional grade content of both niche and major events into any and all cinemas regardless of location over 5G.

For this particular event The Australian Ballet and Sharmill Films required Telstra, TBS, Silver Trak Digital and Cinema Direct to acquire, manage and guarantee delivery of a high definition 1080p / 2k stream (approximately 20 mbps), into multiple cinemas simultaneously, with little to no technical expertise required by the cinemas themselves. 

Sharmill Films CEO, Katharine Thornton explained that “Having shown delayed dance events for some time, they don’t have the same impact as the experience of live dance events. The Cinema Direct solution is exciting in that it gives access to people who wouldn’t ordinarily be able to view the performance collectively. Thus, for people in rural Australia this solution now connects them to the very best arts content. Live dance is designed to be viewed collectively as the performance has been created for a shared audience. By watching it in this way the cinema audience will also be embracing the true excitement and complete experience of watching The Australian Ballet. In terms of cost effectiveness, by using Cinema Direct, we also have no need to book expensive satellite time.”

“Silver Trak will orchestrate the content partnerships in line with our vast breadth of contacts, through our bookings portal,” Creswell added. “Telstra Broadcast Services, who have specialist 24x7 broadcast master control teams in Australia and around the world, will handle the booking and the live stream, keeping it on their network and guaranteeing it the entire way. They will do this by targeting the cinemas using their industry-grade IDN broadcast interchange platform and delivering the content using a specialist configuration of 5G cellular running on high grade modems and antennas.”

SYDNEY, Australia—Telstra Broadcast Services is a wholly owned subsidiary of Telstra Corp., Australia’s largest telecommunications company. We are a global media and managed services business that provides media and broadcasting solutions and assurance with facilities worldwide including APAC, EMEA, and the United States. 

As our customers become increasingly global, they need to distribute content to and from different parts of the world to other broadcasters or intermediaries. To achieve this, TBS relies primarily on our global media networks, our fiber, internet, and our PoPs around the world. We also have access to Telstra’s subsea cable network where we can deliver contribution and distribution services for all of our products, but most recently for our new Media Production Platform (MPP). 

Aligning Our Facilities
MPP is a cloud-based platform from Telstra that allows users to control any broadcast workflow remotely via a web browser and the public internet.

With AMPP from Grass Valley, we are aligning our facilities and our end-to-end media networks to provide infrastructure as a service. By combining on-prem signal conversion such as Alchemist HD and KudosPro with the virtualized software found in AMPP, we can give customers content in different formats from a signal conversion perspective. 

For example, we aggregate numerous sporting events in our U.S. facility, but we need to reformat from 59.94 frames per second down to 50 frames per second to supply it to European networks. We use an on-prem KudosPro with motion compensation. This way, we’re able to convert it at our facility and then push it out over the network for global distribution of that product. 

The most recent use case was the localization of major sporting events using MPP and AMPP—which is incorporated into MPP. Rather than go from the venue back through our facility and then into the cloud, we went directly from the venue into our public cloud instance where we then used GV AMPP to do the time-based conversion, format conversion, or even HDR to SDR. 

On-Prem and in the Cloud
We’ve deliberately moved away from doing things physically on-prem thanks to the maturity of MPP and the ability to orchestrate feeds from different locations using our media networks into the public cloud or into our on-prem facilities. We let the end-to-end workflow decide where the workloads go. 

We’ve always been a Grass Valley house, so carrying on our investment and knowledge is very important. Using Alchemist for frame rate conversion is great, and the fact that it can be on-prem or in the cloud means that we now have the same product, with the same usability in hardware and in software with the surrounding platform. As the orchestration between the two environments improves, the solution becomes more and more powerful. 

What’s Next
As a managed media network provider, our operation is multi-site from a physical on-prem perspective and multi-region from a cloud perspective, so the crucial next step will be to combine them in the orchestration layer so we can send signals back and forth from on-prem into the cloud using a mixture of compressed and uncompressed formats.

What we like about the public cloud environment is that we now have the flexibility to do what we want. We can have what we had on-prem in the cloud, and it’s now an OpEx model rather than a straight CapEx model. This allows us to choose how we distribute the workloads and manage costs. 

We can also have the workload where we need it, which means we can use it on-prem when it makes sense and use it in the cloud when it makes sense. Managing where we can run that workload is significant and helps us manage the cost of producing the event. l 

For more information visit www.grassvalley.com.

MELBOURNE, Australia—Telstra Broadcast Services (TBS) has announced a successful trial of its 5G Standalone Network Slicing technology with leading Australian broadcaster Network Ten.

The test was designed to see how this technology could support Network Ten's live coverage of the Flemington Spring Racing carnival. Telstra’s 5G Network Slicing technology provides a video, audio and data connection that combines the low cost and availability of Telstra’s broad mobile network with the high-quality transport required to deliver live television, the companies said. 

“Telstra’s Standalone Network Slicing trial at the iconic Spring Racing Carnival has again showcased our leadership in 5G, in a real-world setting, for the delivery of live television,” said head of APAC, Telstra Broadcast Services, Karen Clark. “So far, we have operated the trial successfully for Derby Day and The Melbourne Cup, clearly demonstrating the effectiveness of 5G Network Slicing for uplink of live, premium video feeds. We’re excited that this trial has been able to offer our media and broadcast customers the opportunity to produce high bandwidth, low latency television from a congested venue, without the need for traditional wired infrastructure.” 

The Spring Racing Carnival, held in Melbourne, is the premier racing event in Australia, the companies explained. It covers four days of racing including Victoria Derby Day, Melbourne Cup, followed by Oaks Day and culminating in Champion Stakes Day and provides a great opportunity to explore the challenges and benefits for mobile media contribution. The large venue requires wireless cameras combined with the challenge of transmitting video signals of a fast-moving sport. Crowds of up to 5,000 create congestion on the network and the high-pressure environment of live television demands rugged and reliable technology. 

Telstra’s trial setup was located within the Outside Broadcast precinct at Flemington Racecourse. It used a 5G modem and external antenna connected to a local mobile network cell powered by Ericsson that supports 5G Standalone (SA) with network slicing and radio resource partition. 

Vice president of technology, Paramount Australia and New Zealand, Dean Wadsworth, explained that: “We are delighted to partner with Telstra on this project as it gives us further insight into the potential for 5G network slicing for live production. The success of the trial we conducted at the Spring Racing Carnival demonstrates that coverage of live events can be enriched with reliable links from roving crews, which can be more cost effective. We look forward to exploring this technology with Telstra in future.”  

Following the successful conclusion of this technical trial, Telstra said it will look at opportunities to extend the service to other customers, venues, and media contribution use-cases around the world.  

SYDNEY—Telstra and media asset management specialists Silver Trak Digital have launched their new 5G Cinema Direct content delivery service that uses 5G to deliver content to  cinemas, content distributors and movie studios.

“Cinema Direct enables content distributors to send and cinemas to receive digital content over Telstra’s 4G and 5G networks via Silver Trak’s media asset management system,” explained Silver Trak Digital COO Christian Christiansen. “We install and maintain all the required technology at no cost to the distributors or cinemas and then content can be ordered and delivered via the Silver Trak Digital online portal. This is an incredibly effective cost-efficient solution that is live and working now in cinemas across Australia.”

Cinema Direct requires no cabling, can be quickly installed and is backed by Telstra’s entire network infrastructure and support teams, the companies said. 

Cinema Direct operates over 5G for most metropolitan cinemas and 4G in rural areas. 

“Cinema Direct has been developed as install and maintenance free for all users, particularly cinemas and content distributors,” Christiansen said. “Not only that, over time the Cinema Direct ecosystem will develop such that it will create and enable additional revenue streams for cinemas through the availability of rich media services. This means live sporting events, concerts and other exclusive content can be delivered at super high quality to any venue connected to Cinema Direct live in real-time, at any time, with the simple click of a button.”

The “live” content capabilities of Cinema Direct will also allow audiences to view a whole new range of content on the big screen – content they would previously never have had access to, particularly in a cinema, the companies added. 

NEW YORK—Telstra Broadcast Services (TBS) will be showing its new Media Production Platform at the 2022 NAB Show between April 23 and 27 in Booth # W10509 in Las Vegas. 

The cloud-based production and playout service brings all the functionality and quality of traditional on-premise broadcast workflows into a fully virtual environment, giving users complete remote control and management through any web browser and the public internet.

“Remote production in the cloud has evolved from being simply a test case into a viable, efficient broadcast reality,” said Mark Strachan at Telstra Broadcast Services. “This platform was designed with the user’s individual needs in mind, based on complete scalability and the ability to spin up or spin down applications on-demand and only pay for the services used, even in traditionally costly and complex live production environments.”

The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform supports live production, playout automation, asset management, signal processing and master switching, and allows technical teams to select – and pay – for these capabilities on an as-needed basis according to an event’s budget, resources, and production requirements, the company said. 

By avoiding the expense and labor-intensive, hardware-based logistics of on-site operations, the platform is an attractive option for cost-effectively delivering a diverse mix of events – from the most widely watched, global sporting events to emerging entertainment areas like esports – to the broadest audiences possible. 

This flexibility presents additional potential revenue streams for advertisers and rights-holders by creating new customer experiences that previously would have been financially impossible, the company reported. 

The Telstra solution is powered by Grass Valley’s Agile Media Processing Platform (AMPP) and the combination of both technologies was recently chosen to enable cloud-based production and playout capability for an Australian streaming service’s premium, live and on-demand add-on sports package. The streaming service can now deliver UHD coverage of premium live sports to their subscribers.

The Media Production Platform services are supported by the operational and broadcast expertise of the Telstra Broadcast Services team, including a global network of master control rooms and 24/7 monitoring of services to meet any customer’s broadcast and media operational expectations. The combination of Telstra’s rapid deployment resources with a consumption-based approach delivers a flexible and economic model backed by premium-level broadcast managed services, the company said. 

Additional key features include: 

• Scalable to as many instances as required without requiring upfront build-out
• Located on any combination of public and private cloud services
• Cloud-hosted replay with no compromises in responsiveness and accuracy
• User’s operational experience remains the same regardless of distance from the processing
• Frame-accurate for live production with low-latency cloud streaming and monitoring

For more information visit www.telstra.com. 

NEW YORK—Telstra Broadcast Services (TBS) has named Emory Strilkauskas head of business development for the Americas. In the new role he will be responsible for expanding the company’s professional broadcast and media portfolio across the United States, Canada and Latin America.

“We are excited to have Emory join us, with his extensive experience in delivering major events to audiences all over the world during his career with ESPN and Brklyn-Media,” said Telstra Broadcast Services vice president of international, Anna Lockwood. “We look forward to continuing to deliver value for our customers and partners, and to accelerating our growth plans for the Americas region under Emory’s leadership.”   

In this new role, Strilkauskas will draw on his diverse background covering broadcast, telecommunications and all aspects of live sports production. His 30-year career includes a Technical Emmy win and a successful track record of executing engineering integration strategies, developing solutions-driven technical workflows and managing complex system deployments.

Previously, he was managing partner of network operations for Brklyn-Media, a virtualized media company he co-founded to focus on camera-to-consumer cloud workflows and software applications. 

Before that, the majority of Strilkauskas’ career was spent with ESPN/Disney, holding a range of positions covering product management, programming, engineering, operations, transmission, contribution, affiliate distribution and direct-to-consumer offerings. He also served in the United States Navy as an Intelligence Cryptologic Technologist.

NEW YORK—Telstra and the National Hockey League (NHL) have signed a five-year agreement for Telstra to distribute up to 1,400 games per year to rights holders around the world using Telstra’s Global Media Network (GMN).  

Initially Telstra will deliver NHL games to rights-holders in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, with plans to expand to other markets worldwide.  

Telstra’s GMN is a purpose-built video contribution and distribution network supporting permanent and occasional use services for point-to-point and point-to-multipoint on a consumptive-based business model across traditional broadcast, IP video standards and cloud connectivity, the companies said. 

“With their Global Media Network, Telstra offers a level of flexibility, creativity and commitment that allow us to provide tailored, custom delivery solutions on a market-by-market basis, said Dan Kim, NHL senior vice president, media and international distribution and strategy. We will continue to share the excitement of live hockey with avid fans around the world and look forward to building audiences in new markets this season and beyond.” 

In addition, Telstra will support the delivery of the NHL content through its Broadcast Operations Centers in Pittsburgh, Sydney and London. These centers provide 24/7 monitoring of Telstra’s Global Media Network, ensuring continuous stable and reliable connectivity to provide fans with the highest-quality viewing experience, the companies said. 

“This exciting new partnership coincides perfectly with Telstra’s ongoing commitment to invest in its networks and offer new, innovative content delivery and distribution solutions to customers around the world,” said Adam Day, Telstra Americas vice president of enterprise, technology and broadcast sales. “We look forward to helping the NHL expand its reach and showcase the spirit and excitement of the game to more sports fans globally.” 

MELBOURNE, Australia—The global media services provider, Telstra Broadcast Services (TBS), has announced that it has joined the SRT Alliance, a collaborative group that is working to achieve lower latency internet video transport. 

The SRT Alliance, founded by Haivision in April 2017, works to overcome the challenges of low-latency live streaming by supporting the collaborative development of SRT (Secure Reliable Transport), the fastest growing open source streaming project, the Alliance said. 

SRT is a free open source video transport protocol and technology stack originally developed and pioneered by Haivision, which enables the delivery of high-quality and secure, low-latency video across the public internet. The group has over 500 members. 

The announcement follows TBS’s recent acquisition of MediaCloud in June 2021 and expansion into global broadcast capabilities and operations. Through that deal, TBS took control of a suite of significant software-defined and cloud-based capabilities, including the Internet Delivery Network. Being involved in the SRT Alliance complements TBS’ continuing expansion into cloud-based services; and enables TBS to provide much greater flexibility to broadcasters, the company said. 

In announcing its membership, the head of Telstra Broadcast Services, Andreas Eriksson said “our collaboration with the SRT Alliance and Haivision supports us in delivering the right solutions for broadcasters through driving new technologies, like the open-source video transport protocol. This tackles some of [the] main issues our broadcast clients face when it comes to high-performance, low-latency, streaming in a secure and unfailing way across the public internet”. 

The Telstra Internet Delivery Network (IDN) platform is dedicated to the real-time delivery of high-quality media content and live broadcast streams to any registered endpoint, across contended networks such as the public internet. 

Telstra also noted that a range of new protocols is now supported by the IDN, including SRT, Rist, Zixi, TS, HLS, RTMP, DASH, SDI, UHD SDI, NDI and Mediaconnect, among others. Alongside this extensive range of protocols, the IDN will also support hitless protection 2022-7 for merging two feeds to make the switching hitless and automatic for the receiver, protecting feeds from failure for the end customer, the company said. 

Peter Maag, CMO and executive vice president of strategic partnerships at Haivision, said: “With the SRT Alliance, TBS is joining an industry movement to improve the way the world streams video. We’re pleased to see the SRT protocol being actively implemented by some of the world’s biggest broadcast and enterprise streaming workflows; as its adoption and industry-wide recognition continues to grow, becoming the de facto standard for low latency internet streaming”. 

SYDNEY, Australia—Gravity Media has inked a deal with Telstra Broadcast Services to acquire Telstra’s DSNG (Digital Satellite) fleet, its Globecam miniature camera business and associated Radio Frequency Links.

Gravity Media currently operates in Australia from Sydney and Melbourne, providing Outside Broadcast trucks, studios, production & content related services and post-production facilities, the company explained. This acquisition will complement its existing Outside Broadcast fleet in Australia as well as its UK-based specialty cameras division. The acquired DSNG fleet is the largest in Australasia with 10 satellite uplink vehicles and three satellite flyaway uplinks..

The Globecam specialty cameras unit is well known for debuting exciting new devices such as NetCam on all four Grand Slams in 2018 and Live JockeyCam around Australia in 2019.

In 2021, Globecam returned to providing Onboard Live Camera solutions for Supercars Australia, in concert with Gravity Media. Clients for the two units include all the biggest broadcast networks and organizations in the world. 

“Enhancing Gravity Media’s broadcast services with the DSNG and Globecam businesses and teams from Telstra Broadcast Services is a logical extension of our highly regarded outside broadcast, production, studio and hire operations in Australia, Europe, the USA and around the world,” explained John Newton, founder and CEO of Gravity Media. “Gravity Media and Telstra Broadcast Services often work side by side, so the synergies are well and truly there from the past, present and in the future.

“With the recent acquisitions of Input Media and Chief Entertainment, Gravity Media continues to grow its suite of premium broadcast offerings and looks forward to integrating the DSNG and Globecam teams into its business in Australia and globally, to the ultimate and ongoing benefit of our clients,” he added. 

Andreas Eriksson, the head of Telstra Broadcast Services, noted that they will continue to work with “Gravity Media in the future, including for Occasional Use projects live via satellite. This will include ongoing, daily liaison between the DSNG fleet and Telstra Broadcast Services’ Broadcast Operations Centre as well as our bookings team. Together we will ensure seamless ongoing supply to our valued, multi-year, contracted DSNG clients.”

NEW YORK & BURBANK, Calif.—Telstra Broadcast Services (TBS) has notably expanded its presence in the United States with the launch of a new Broadcast Operations Center (BOC) at the PSSI International Teleport in Pittsburgh.  

The new broadcast center is part of an expanded partnership with PSSI Global Services and will allow Telstra Broadcast Services to add a number of U.S.-based managed services, including operations, monitoring, bookings and technical services to its overall Telstra Global Media Network (GMN) offerings. 

It complements Telstra’s existing broadcast operations facilities in London, Hong Kong and Sydney and is part of an ongoing push by Telstra to expand its global presence that included the recent acquisition of MediaCloud. 

“There is immense global demand for North American content, and the new BOC allows Telstra Broadcast Services to offer North American content providers superior technology and access to international audiences in Europe, Asia and Australia,” said Adam Day, head of enterprise, technology and broadcast sales at Telstra.  

The broadcast center supports live and recorded broadcast transmissions of news, sports and entertainment content, as well as digital broadcasting and IP video delivery. It features a 24/7 facility with a master control room (MCR) for monitoring, bookings, trouble-shooting and delivering connections to major broadcast customers and global teleports, the company reported. 

PSSI’s experience in live event management and transmission, and familiarity with the U.S. sports and entertainment market makes PSSI an ideal fit to support Telstra’s delivery of content originating and terminating in North America, the companies said. 

“This initiative represents a significant expansion of the work we’ve been doing together for years,” said Jason Land, vice president, strategic television at PSSI. “Our event-based approach is the foundation for adding another layer of support and reliability to Telstra’s broadcast business, while allowing PSSI to leverage the global GMN network as an ‘in-house’ solution for our customers.” 

LONDON—Telstra Broadcast Services Pty Limited (TBS) has inked a deal to acquire MediaCloud Pty Ltd., a move that will give it a suite of significant software-defined and cloud-based technical capabilities, a team of media cloud delivery experts and a London Master Control Room, that is capable of supporting major events and media companies. 

The MediaCloud acquisition builds on TBS’s recent expansion into new regions, as well as new advancements and partnerships to its Telstra Global Media Network.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

Head of Telstra Broadcast Services Andreas Eriksson said that the addition of the MediaCloud platform will provide broadcasters with incredible flexibility to manage their content offerings through virtual environments.

“The global media industry is expanding to cloud-enabled and software-defined capabilities,” explained Eriksson. “Adding these leading new capabilities alongside TBS’s existing global fibre and satellite networks sets us up to meet the evolving needs of the broadcast market as well as expand our value proposition to our global client base by providing a world-class broadcast operations in London.”

As part of the acquisition, Australian free-to-air TV channel SBS has renewed its playout contract for MediaCloud services for seven years. Under this contract, everything from SBS News to the latest primetime show will be assembled and played out via TBS. 

SAN JOSE, CA.–Ooyala and Telstra have announced that the management of Ooyala has completed a buyout of Ooyala from owner Telstra. Telstra says it will remain a "valued partner and customer" of Ooyala.

Telstra began investing in Ooyala, a Silicon Valley-based provider of OTT, content production, and digital distribution technology in 2012 and then bought the company outright in 2014 in a deal worth approximately $270 million with plans to take the company public. But the deal has gone south since then, with Telstra, Australia’s largest telecommunications company, announcing earlier this year that it had taken more than $500 million in write-downs for its acquisition of Ooyala over the past several years.

“This was a business that Telstra purchased when the market dynamics were very different,” Telstra Chairman Stephen Elop said in February. At the time, the company valued its Ooyala investment at zero and Elop noted that its advertising technology division "has not performed well."

Ooyala’s management team said it will focus on continuing to market its Ooyala Flex Media Platform that provides cross-device playback and monetization, TV-grade live streaming, MAM-based content management, and insights-driven content creation. Customers include Audi, Chelsea FC, Dell, National Rugby League of Australia, PGA, Starhub, Sky Sports, Turner and Telstra.

“The management team is excited to take on this next chapter in Ooyala’s growth,” said Jonathan Huberman, CEO of Ooyala. “We are pleased by the tremendous market reception of our flagship product, Ooyala Flex Media Platform, and how it has enabled our OVP and media logistics customers to drive supply chain efficiencies and revenue growth through automation and AI-driven insights. We will continue to invest in Ooyala Flex Media Platform to increase our market-leading position in video streaming and media logistics. In addition, leveraging our resources and in partnership with private equity investors, we are actively exploring acquisition opportunities to further accelerate Ooyala’s growth.”