Bitcentral Scores a Trifecta

Bitcentral, the Irvine, Calif., maker of news networking platforms, said it recently did three installs that went live the same day.

The company makes the Precis newsroom platform, which was installed in stations in Fresno, Calif.; Omaha, Neb.; and Bozeman, Mont. last month. Bitcentral said training, installation and “conversion of the broadcast stations from tape to complete digital workflows,” was achieved in three weeks time. All of the stations went over to the Precis systems Dec. 14.

KSEE, the NBC affiliate in Freson owned by Granite Broadcasting; KMTV, the CBS affiliate in Omaha owned by Journal Broadcasting Group; and KMTV, the NBC affiliate in Bozeman, owned by Bluestone Television—all wanted to get the systems installed in between November sweeps and the holidays. Bitcentral said Precis installs normally take four to six weeks.

Dave Bukowski, senior broadcast engineer at KSEE called the installation “Y2K-like,” but that the whole transition went out without a hitch.

Bitcentral describes the Precis digital news production systems as “a non-proprietary, fully turnkey play-to-air digital news management system.” It’s SD and HD compatible and integrates with other news systems such as iNews and ENPS and editing software packages including Canopus Edius, Sony Vegas and Adobe Premier Pro.