ITV is upgrading its news editing, storage and publishing systems for both ITV regional news and ITV national news, through a new subscription deal with Avid.
The new subscription agreement will see Avid deliver an upgraded newsroom production system to serve ITV News’ entire output across all its locations and services, supporting ITV News broadcast services along with its online service, ITVX.
The project will offer a single consistent interface to key news production roles, and allow teams to freely create, collaborate and exchange planning data, stories, rundowns and content across all ITV regions and ITN, said Avid.
It gives ITV’s editors, producers, journalists, assistants and other workflow contributors continuous access to the latest Avid functionality from wherever they choose to work, added the company.
ITV will benefit from Avid’s full suite of newsroom solutions on a subscription basis. These include Avid NEXIS F-Series storage, MediaCentral | Production Management, MediaCentral | Newsroom Management (iNEWS) and FastServe | I/O to deliver media ingest and playout.
Video editing is available through Avid Media Composer hosted in ITV’s datacentre, allowing newsroom editors to connect and work remotely, said the company.
Offering full functionality via a web interface, the system will also make it easier for production teams to share news content for broadcast. Avid has integrated solutions from its alliance partners Woody and Traco for ingest and graphics too.
ITV News’ director of technology and technical operations Paul Stevenson said: “We’re delighted Avid is delivering a newsroom production system to meet the demands of our news production operation. Common access and free exchange of media across our entire news estate is the key objective of this investment, which represents a major strategic commitment for ITV News. We continue working with Avid to enable key functionalities for our fully integrated workflow across National and Regional ITV News.
“The first stage of this project is complete, with ITV’s National news service now on air with the new system based in Grays Inn Road, London. We look forward to a successful completion of the ambitious next stage – the successful rollout of the new system across all our Nations and Regions across the UK.”
