IBC: Young Upgrades With Grass Valley

Complete Coverage: IBC2011
The Young Broadcasting station group is upgrading the news departments of eight of its stations to a fully networked, file-based, high-definition news production and distribution system from Grass Valley.

Young first implemented the Grass Valley HD digital news production technology at Young's KWCQ, in Davenport, Iowa, taking that system on air in October of 2010 and the station group is now installing the equipment in eight other stations, which are expected to go live with the upgrades by year's end.

At each station, the system includes 25 seats of Grass Valley EDIUS 6 multiformat editing workstations, two K2 Summit production clients, as well as Aurora Playout software modules and client computers for automated playout.

The eight new Young stations standardizing on Grass Valley technology include: WKRN, in Nashville, Tenn.; WATE, in Knoxville, Tenn.; WRIC, in Richmond, Va.; WLNS, in Lansing, Mich.; WTEN, in Albany, N.Y.; KELO, in Sioux Falls, S.D.; WBAY, in Green Bay, Wis.; and KLFY, in Lafayette, La.

"We've had a great experience with Grass Valley technology in our news department at KWCQ, and the staff there has really become much more productive in preparing its daily newscasts," said Craig Porter, director of operations for Young Broadcasting, in a statement. "By standardizing on Grass Valley, we were able to enjoy significant cost and implementation time savings. There are not too many companies that can handle such a large multi-station implementation, but Grass Valley has helped get us up to speed very quickly and we feel confident we now have a cost-effective news production platform we can grow with into the future."

Also at IBC, Grass Valley announced a number of other customer deals.

In the U.S., these included news that Chicago-based BTN purchased the company's 300th K2 Dyno Replay System and the announcement that Denver, Colorado-based Mobile Television Group has launched its newest rig has a full complement of live production equipment from Grass Valley.

Grass Valley announced its largest live HD production systems purchase to date in Europe with the news that Belgian-based international outside broadcast services provider Alfacam has ordered a Grass Valley solution that will enable it to capture live sporting events in HD resolutions and instantly play them out at variable speeds for analysis.

Also in Europe, the Swedish national public broadcaster, Sveriges Television AB (SVT) has embarked on a comprehensive multi-million dollar project to create a file-based, high-definition production and distribution infrastructure. As part of that project, SVT will deploy a remotely controlled HD production environment using Grass Valley live production technologies.

In the Netherlands, outside broadcast service provider Viditech has become the first customer to acquire the new Grass Valley Trinix Multiviewer, which will be installed in a new truck set to go operational in September.

German rental house Bert Blümer announced that it had added four additional Grass Valley LDK 8000 Elite HD wireless camera systems to its inventory, bringing the total number of Grass Valley wireless cameras in its inventory to nine.

In Lithuania, a leading Lithuanian commercial broadcaster LNK has agreed to buy five LDK 3000 high definition cameras as part of an upgrade of its news studio.

In the U.K., SIS LIVE, the largest outside broadcast contractor in the U.K., has placed its first order with Grass Valley; it has purchased five LDK 8300 Super SloMo cameras.

In the Netherlands, DutchView Multicam, has inked a five-year exclusive vendor contract with Grass Valley that includes delivery of Grass Valley cameras, switchers, routers, and servers.

In Switzerland, Grass Valley announced that it had recently won four deals its LDK 3000 high-definition cameras.

In the Czech Republic, Nova TV has acquired Grass Valley's newly launched 3G version of its Concerto Series router.

In Poland, commercial broadcaster TVN has equipped its two outside broadcast units with Grass Valley Kayenne XL production switchers, which will be used with Grass Valley HD cameras and routers in the rig.

In Latin America, TV Globo affiliate Emissoras Pioneiras de Televisão in Brazil, has purchased a significant quantity of HD production equipment and systems to expand its live sports and studio production.

Also in Brazil, the country's second largest network, Rede Record, is using Grass Valley HD technology to cover this year's Pan American games in Guadalajara, Mexico from Oct. 14-30.

Multimedios TV and Milenio TV, the third largest network in Mexico, has upgraded its studio and news production operations with a full complement of multiformat, file-based equipment from Grass Valley. The new systems are being installed at the network's two production and playout facilities in Monterrey and Mexico City.

In Asia, South Korea's newest cable TV provider, jTBC, has purchased a range of high-definition production and master control technologies from Grass Valley for a new file-based production and playout facility in Seoul.

In Australia, Sky Racing, will be installing a new Grass Valley STRATUS Media Workflow Application Framework.