McGraw-Hill Stations to Standardize on P2 for News

Panasonic announced this week that news operations at all four McGraw-Hill-owned TV stations are adopting its DVCPRO P2 solid-state memory recording system for their news operations. The stations slated to upgrade to P2 include WRTV in Indianapolis, KGTV in San Diego, KERO in Bakersfield, Calif., and KMGH in Denver.

WRTV and KGTV have already made initial purchases of AJ-SPX800 shoulder-mount camcorders, AG-HVX200 HD handheld camcorders, AJ-HPM100 mobile recorders, AJ-PS060G Stores, internal/external P2 drives and P2 memory cards and accessories.

WRTV in Indianapolis plans to use the P2 gear for production and promotion, in addition to news. In addition, McGraw-Hill, in its affiliation with Azteca America Network, will equip KXSD, the Azteca station in San Diego with AG-HVX200 camcorders.

Tim Boling, director of engineering for the McGraw-Hill Group says flexibility and workflow were the main reasons behind the station group's adoption of P2.

"We really like the P2 workflow, which allows us to plug a P2 card right into the laptop," Boling said. In addition, Boling said "the P2 format is versatile, giving us plenty of options in terms of form factors and scalability, including shooting in 16:9 and upconverting for high-definition news."