Briefs

Look for a lot more high-def on NBC late night next year. Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Saturday Night Live and Last Call with Carson Daly will all make the switch, with Conan stepping up first in April. SNL and Last Call will follow later in the year. NBC says viewers should also look for The Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular and The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade to shine in HD.

News-Press and Gazette Broadcasting Co. have tapped Avid to supply end-to-end digital broadcast products for news departments at three stations: KTVZ Bend, Ore., KVIA El Paso, Texas, and KESQ Palm Desert, Calif.

All three stations are adding Avid Unity LANshare for news, Avid AirSpeed servers for ingest and playout, and NewsCutter XP systems with Avid Mojo for editing. The stations will be able to simultaneously produce segments in English and Spanish.

Time Warner Cable’s NY1 cable news channel has expanded its OmniBus Columbus automation system, making it easier to accommodate locally originated news programming and advertising to and from regional bureaus. Anchors in the Staten Island and New Jersey bureaus help enhance the local feel. Local updates are done every 15 minutes.

A full complement of Thomson Grass Valley gear is in use at ABC News’ studio TV-3, home of World News Tonight and other news programs. The equipment includes a Kalypso Duo Video Production Center, two Apex 512 audio routers, Trinix 512 and 256 video routers and numerous Kameleon and Gecko conversion modules.

ABC News has also purchased the Grass Valley Jupiter router-control system with Encore interface. This is used in conjunction with the Kalypso and Grass Valley Newton control system in order to handle the modular conversion products.

Routing-switcher manufacturer Pesa Switching Systems was bought by QuStream, a private-equity group founded by industry vet (and former Leitch employee) Fred Goddard. Bob McAlpine, Pesa SVP of sales and marketing, will keep his current position and also serve as VP of business development for QuStream.

Pesa operations will remain based in Melville, N.Y., and Steve Miller will join as president and COO.