Snell and Quantel – two widely known brands that have been represented at IBC for decades – have been rebranded as SAM, an acronym for Snell Advanced Media. Such a move was widely expected, following the joining of these two companies roughly 18 months ago.
“We are going to be an aggressive, forward-thinking player in the marketplace,” said Tim Thorsteinson, who came on board as CEO of the combined companies last March. “There’s a lot of great things about both businesses; the technology is strong and they have a great reputation for customer support… But we lost touch with the market, and we weren’t moving quickly enough.
We hadn’t delivered on our product roadmap to the degree we should have.”
He said of the naming decision: “Snell has a strong brand worldwide; Quantel also did, but was more localised in post production and broadcast editing… It didn’t make sense to move away [from the brands] entirely, and we wanted to get away from ‘broadcast’ [thus ‘Advanced Media’].”
All products remain in place, and to keep the legacy brand name Quantel, the Pablo Rio post production system will now be known as the Quantel Rio.
The CEO also revealed that last spring the company’s investor, Lloyds Development Capital, infused $22m into the business, tied to a three-year growth plan.
Meanwhile, he increased the company’s investment in R&D by roughly 15%, in areas including automated playout, asset management, IP infrastructure and media biometrics. Asserted Thorsteinson: “By IBC next year you’ll see an entirely new product line.”
Citing a brand reputation for high prices and being a bit closed, he added, “our goal is to be more open, for instance in storage, and be more approachable from a price standpoint – more competitive.” SAM’s IBC lineup addresses areas including IP, 4K, HDR and assurance monitoring.
Snell Quantel 7.G20
