Avid Scores Contracts with ITV and Reuters

Multimedia news agency Reuters and U.K.-based media company ITV recently purchased Avid systems for their news production workflows. Reuters bought and installed Avid newsrooms systems for its Washington, D.C., New York and London bureaus, replacing the existing tape-based systems.

Avid NewsCutter, Avid AirSpace will be installed as part of the Reuters production environment, adding Xdeck ingest/playout servers and Avid Countdown for playout automation.

The five-year contract indicates that Avid will supply ITV stations in England and Wales with Avid systems. The first deal--worth $1.8 million--is for Meridian, a regional station in southern England.

Avid will supply the regional news centers with either Avid Unity for News or Avid Unity LANshare for storage. For ingest and playout, each franchise will be outfitted with AirSpeed, Avid NewsCutter Adrenaline systems. Reporters will use Avid NewsCutter XP on desktops or laptops for field editing.