Sky News Arabia’s 24/7 TV station will bring news in Arabic to the Middle East, including ‘non-broadcast’ content such as Skype, YouTube and other user-generated content, as it appears online. Designed and built by TSL, the fully file-based TV station is comprised of a production facility housed in a studio on the twofour54 campus, with a separate building for the newsroom, graphics and editing, machine rooms and operations centre. The solution contains a bespoke universal bookings system, which removes the need to manually co-ordinate the booking of each element separately by automating the scheduling and QC of all input/output circuit bookings across Sky News Arabia’s control room. “The way the scheduling system has been fully integrated across the whole solution, is a good example of why we are way ahead of anyone else,” said Bevan Gibson (pictured left), launch technical director for Sky News Arabia. “The skills and experience of TSL’s engineers not only enabled them to come up with this cutting edge integration, but they could also push the vendors beyond their normal comfort zone to make it all happen. As all of the station’s content transfers over IP, TSL had to design a very solid IP infrastructure, while achieving broadcast standards of reliability, and allowing priorities to be set for traffic close to airtime. “We have invested significantly in our skills and staff recently to develop a very high level of expertise In the IP space – which Sky News Arabia really appreciated”, said David Phillips (pictured right), managing director of TSL. “Furthermore, we’ve delivered a system which is not only functional but easy to support over the lifecycle of its capital investment.” www.tsl.co.uk
