TSL chosen for Meridian upgrade and move

TSL, a leading international broadcast systems integrator and manufacturer, has been selected by ITV for the design and installation of its new production centre in Southampton, including studios, edit suites and a master equipment room.
Meridian is the contractor for the most south-easterly region of the UK ITV network, which is considered one of the most significant franchises. Because of changing technology, workflow and programme requirements, the company has decided to relocate.
As Paul Stevenson, Controller of News Systems and Projects for the ITV News Group, said: "News and regional programming is now the main part of our activity so the existing site in Southampton was no longer suitable. We also needed a technology update and to refresh our working practices."
TSL, with its experience in this field, won this very competitive contract against stiff competition.
As one of the larger ITV broadcast areas, Meridian actually comprises three separate sub-regions, each with its own independent news service. The whole set-up is being restructured to facilitate new and more efficient working practices. Previously, both Southampton and Maidstone operated full studio facilities in their respective geographic regions. Newbury had its news-gathering base in its region and its presentation (i.e. studio) based in Southampton, along with Southampton's service. The Maidstone presentation studios are now closing and moving to new news-gathering facilities for journalists. Its presentation will be co-sited along with Newbury's and Southampton's in the new facility. "Effectively, what we have done is separate news gathering from presentation, with all the presentation now set to take place from Southampton," explained Stevenson.
TSL is responsible for the design and installation of three studios in the new Southampton facility, each of 700 sq ft, with the three able to operate totally independently. The company is also responsible for the five edit suites and master equipment room.
Meridian is deploying a UNITY storage system from Avid with separate LAN shares, essentially smaller UNITYs, at Newbury and Maidstone. While acquisition will occur on tape, the production environment will be 100 per cent non-linear. A desktop editing environment is being created, so a large portion of the content can be produced by reporters at those desktops. Users will have access to full bandwidth media. Ingest will be local rather than central.
Russell Grute, Head of Sales with TSL, said: "This is a very important contract for us. Meridian is a core customer and, beyond the UNITY system, we are responsible for the entire key infrastructure. They are implementing a workflow that a lot of other broadcasters want to reach, with the true unification of their news operations. The level of functionality and programming flexibility that the operation will achieve will be fantastic."
(GB)