Studer's Vista 5 Wins Leading Role At BFM TV

Studer’s versatile compact digital audio mixing console, the Vista 5, is making inroads into the broadcast production market, and has won a leading role at BFM TV, France’s television news channel.
Headquartered in Paris, BFM TV reaches some 10 million viewers a week with its hard news programming, available on French digital terrestrial television and broadcast free 24 hours a day by satellite, by DSL, by mobile television, by cable providers, and live on the channel's website.
Four of Studer’s OnAir 2000 broadcast mixers have been in use for the last seven years at its sister companies RMC Radio and BFM Radio, so BFM TV was already familiar with Studer engineering, and the quality of the brand’s local support through French distributor Audiopole. Now it has become the first customer in the French TV sector to deploy the Vista 5, replacing a relatively new digital console from another manufacturer that had demonstrated reliability problems.
Studer’s Vista 5 comes in a fixed format; BFM TV engineers have already allocated the 40 analog inputs and outputs, and 32 AES inputs and outputs, of their 32-fader desk. BFM TV’s operation involves a number of external input sources – from broadcast cars and internet correspondents to phone-ins – which have to be edited and compiled in a very short time. At its busiest, there can be five guests in the studio and another eight correspondents on the line, so it is important to have everything on the faders so it can be accessed speedily.
Audiopole’s Jean Philippe Blanchard points out that, in the few months since putting the Vista 5 into service, BFM TV’s viewing figures have been climbing steadily, and now match those of i-Tele (the news channel of Canal Plus).
(DS)