Harris Broadcast Division displayed the first fruits of its acquisition of traffic and sales vendor Encoda Systems at the annual International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam this weekend.
Harris acquired the company last November for approximately $350 million and has spent the past 10 months integrating the two company's traffic, asset management and billing systems. The new system, known as the H-Class Media Business Systems (MBS) includes the Content Delivery Platform, designed to serve as a base on which the company's sales, traffic, and asset management applications can reside. Applications include an ingest program, content management and library tools, search engine features and security features. Jeremy Wensinger, president of Harris Broadcast's communications divisio said the H-Class Content Delivery Platform "is committed to enabling business agility for enhanced productivity in the rapidly changing media landscape, while simultaneously lowering total cost of ownership and creating new revenue opportunities for our customers." Harris also announced that Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) has signed on for the platform. DR is consolidating its country-wide operations just south of Copenhagen in a $575 million move. Harris, Mediagenix, Dalet and Omneon will together provide a fully automated, software-controlled production system which is linked to a redundant server and play-out system. DR Project Manager Bo Stubbergaard Hansen said “it is absolutely vital that we have the ability to migrate our existing media asset management system and other databases, as well as take advantage of the automation and playout benefits.” Construction is expected to be completed by the end of next year.
