VOA Selects Broadcast Pix Slate 2100 Switcher

Voice of America will spread the nation’s words in live production with help from a new Broadcast Pix Slate 2100 switcher at its Washington, D.C., facility. A second Slate 2100 is already in place at VOA’s London facility.

VOA broadcasts more than 1,500 hours of news, information, educational, and cultural programming every week to an estimated worldwide audience of more than 115 million.

The Slate 2100 switcher is being used to produce newsbreaks and remote inserts to enrich news in VOA’s recently expanded Persian TV broadcasts.

“The ability to broadcast a newscast complete with clips and have the same unit drive an audio board, clip store, and lower thirds, while being controlled by a single operator, was a very important operational benefit,” said VOA Senior Broadcast Engineer Steve Hocker.

The Broadcast Pix Slate 2100 system integrates a production switcher, production control panel, Inscriber CG, clipstore, and multiview monitoring, among other functions, in a single workstation-based system. The multifunction system and single operator design of the Slate 2100 simplifies engineering and allows ease of installation and operation.

VOA also plans to expand production of daily news inserts for Spanish language broadcasts to Latin America.