Ohio Stations Add Utah Scientific Master Control Branding Systems


SALT LAKE CITY: Utah Scientific announced that Ohio’s Hometown Stations, WLIO/WOHL-TV, have installed four GS-4000 master control branding systems to speed workflow and to post graphics more easily for each of its four uniquely branded stations.

WLIO/WOHL serves about 750,000 households in Ohio and Indiana, and broadcasts programming from four of the major U.S. networks--ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox. This means WLIO/WOHL often must display the same information with four different branded looks. The GS-4000 units make it possible to integrate graphics such as side panels, time and temperature inserts, lottery numbers, and crawls onto the screen in a way that's branded for each network, and more quickly and easily than ever before.

The GS-4000 units operate through the stations’ existing Utah Scientific master control switchers, so the master control operators can call up preconfigured pages from memory at the touch of a button.

“We looked at a lot of systems, but the GS-4000 was a good marriage for us because of the way it interfaced with the rest of our system,” Vobbe said. “The Utah Scientific product specialist, Chris Harmon, came here and installed all four machines--and had them running in 40 minutes. We’ve had other products that have taken days to get them configured and working.”

The GS-4000 is a full-featured graphics system designed to support all of the varied requirements for text and graphics in master control branding applications. The GS-4000 supports static logos imported from standard graphic files, as well as animated logos, which are flipbook animations played back in real time. In addition to supporting unlimited static text elements on a scene, the GS-4000 offers a very powerful set of linking tools for presenting text from external data sources including, but not limited to, time and temperature displays and news tickers.