West Goes Live With OverDrive

Tuesday, July 21st, 2015 [Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, UK] – Dutch regional broadcaster West offers 24 hour TV and radio content to around 1.5 Million people living in the province around The Hague, to the west of the Netherlands. With 80 employees, the broadcaster prides itself on delivering fast-moving content to the local communities it serves.

Wiljan Pongers, Head of Technology and IT at West, joined the station one year ago and immediately felt there was a need for more live content:

“West had historically created live magazine-style news, sports and traffic content but had gradually moved to edited shows because of the cost-efficiencies offered. However, we have a strong community focus and we want to be close to our viewers. To me, that means getting on air fast with video content and being able to update viewers over the course of a day. That means live”.

As a regional broadcaster, West is always trying to make its budgets go further. “Flexibility is a big issue for us here”, says Pongers. “We use the same studio for news, sports and traffic content and the biggest challenge for us has been simplifying workflows and keeping an eye on cost but still keeping the flexibility we need. Technology, especially automation, has helped us enormously”. Having previously worked at RTV NH and AT5 in the Netherlands, Pongers was already familiar with the Ross Video range of products and instinctively knew that automated production control would be the answer for West:

“When revamping our content I felt that we needed a greater number of live bulletins during the day, but live is generally more expensive and that’s an issue for a regional channel like West. However, OverDrive – Ross Video’s APC (automated production control) platform – completely removes that traditional trade-off. OverDrive allows us to simplify workflows and automate them, giving us highly consistent, repeatable and cost-effective results. It’s quite impressive to think that we could run a live news show with one single person in the gallery and one person in front of the camera if we really needed to”.

When choosing OverDrive and the XPression graphics suite from Ross, Wiljan Pongers turned to local integration experts Sealander. “I’ve worked with Sealander on a number of occasions over the years and I know Tony Wood and the team there very well – they’re extremely safe hands and have helped us through every stage of the evaluation and integration process. Ross Video has also provided valuable support to West with training and I’ve yet again been impressed with the customer-centric approach shown by Ross”.

The OverDrive solution from Ross has traditionally been partnered with Ross production switchers but a new version launched in 2014 opened the platform up to multiple switcher brands. Interesting to note, then, that West ultimately purchased a Carbonite switcher from Ross. “Carbonite is the world’s most popular midsize production switcher”, comments Ivo Guilini, Ross Director of Sales for Northern Europe. “I think it’s telling that West looked at switchers to work with OverDrive and, after much research, chose Carbonite”.

West is now producing two live scheduled news bulletins per day with live updates over the course of the day as required. “I’m really pleased”, notes Wiljan Pongers. “We are finally able to run live shows every day but in a highly controllable and structured manner. OverDrive has again shown itself to be a powerful and adaptable tool that is incredibly easy to work with”.

What’s next for West? Pongers is exploring how social media content might be integrated into West’s news programs and is particularly excited by virtual studio applications. “We already work with the XPression graphics suite from Ross and I’m interested in how we might augment our physical set with virtual elements and combine this with robotic cameras to provide even more dynamic and creative content. Ross Video is really becoming a total solutions provider and that opens up exciting creative possibilities for broadcasters everywhere”.

About Ross Video
Passionate about live production, Ross Video designs, manufactures and delivers dependable technology and services that power exceptional live video productions seen by billions of viewers around the world every day. Ross Video’s goal is to make it easy for customers to create compelling news, weather and sports broadcasts, engaging material for sports stadium screens, legislative assemblies, entertainment shows and rock concerts, and inspiring content for houses of worship.

Relentlessly innovating, Ross Video delivers the world’s widest range of products and services for augmented reality and virtual sets, mobile live-event solutions, real-time motion graphics, robotic camera systems, social-media management, production switchers, routers, infrastructure products, video servers, newsroom systems, terminal equipment and more.

Ross products and services are designed to offer the best system integration and unmatched customer choice by both working together seamlessly and integrating tightly with third-party solutions.

Ross Video has offices around the world, and provides outstanding, free-for-life telephone support staffed by technical experts 24 hours a day, 365 days a year—even for products bought on eBay. Ross employees are authorized to rent helicopters when necessary.

Ross Video: The Production Technology Experts.

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