BBC Broadcast begins migrating channels to the Broadcast Centre

BBC Broadcast, one of the commercial arms of the BBC, has announced the beginning of the migration of all its channels and interactive streams from Television Centre to the purpose-built Broadcast Centre in the new Media Village, West London, in what is believed to be the largest migration project in broadcast history.
The first channels to be played out of the Broadcast Centre will be BBC Three, BBC Four, CBBC and CBeebies in May. The rest of the channels and interactive streams, including BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Food, BBC Prime and other commercial channels will migrate over the next eleven months.
The channels are currently broadcast from four playout facilities in Television Centre, which have evolved over a number of years. The Broadcast Centre brings them together with a state of the art automation system designed with flexibility as a priority to meet the channel requirements now and in the future. It also offers a cost-effective way to playout channels. Each group of channels will have a dedicated playout suite with a fully resilient architecture. The migration of channels to the Broadcast Centre will be carefully phased with each group of channels undergoing extensive testing and parallel running before being put to air for the first time.
Pam Masters, Managing Director, BBC Broadcast said: “This will be the largest migration project in broadcast history and a very important and exciting time for BBC Broadcast. While Television Centre is steeped in history with the first broadcasts of all the BBC television channels, it could not contain our growing client base and their technical innovations. The Broadcast Centre playout facilities will finally come alive in May with the first transmission of these important digital BBC channels.”
The Broadcast Centre, opened in October 2003 and part of the neutrally branded Media Village in White City, West London, currently houses the channel management and creative teams for international channels, BBC channels and other broadcasters and will soon house the playout teams as well. The Broadcast Centre is at the heart of BBC Broadcast’s vision to lead a major shift in broadcast media management from the traditional tape-based formats to digital media, transforming their capability to playout, present, manage and repurpose rich media content for any platform and any broadcaster.
(GB)