Tampa, FL-based Bay News 9's new 23,000sq-ft St. Petersburg facility has earned top “station automation” honors of the 2006 Broadcast Engineering Excellence Awards.
The new broadcast operations for Bay News 9, Bay News 9 Travel Weather Now, Tampa Bay on Demand, and Bay News 9 En Español were designed, integrated and installed by Ascent Media. The facility went live June 27, 2005, without interruption to on-air programming.
The 24-hour news channel is using a single OmniBus Columbus automation system to enable shared access to media in standardized formats for streamlined production and playout of the network’s programming, as well as its weather, on-demand and Spanish-language channels.
The OmniBus system serves as the facility's central interface for controlling devices, getting feedback and relaying playout messages, and OmniBus Desktop Control (ODC) allows Bay News 9 staff to search and browse archived material, create graphics, put production elements for studio events into the script and control a variety of other functions. The ODC user interface is installed at all edit stations in the newsroom, at all workstations within the facility and at each of the network's remote bureaus.
For more information, visit www.omnibus.tv.
