This new broadcast facility was a project begun by the Medcom Group over two years ago. The group planned to consolidate, upgrade and expand their media holding in the Dominican Republic, and this facility serves as their flagship operation, helping to meet Medcom's long-term broadcast needs.
To assist them in achieving their business and broadcasting goals, the Medcom Group selected AZCAR as their engineering system consultants, designers and integrators.
With its completion, the new facility helped make Medcom a player in the broadcast industry of the Dominican Republic.
The group's primary goals were to consolidate and expand their television broadcast interests in a common facility and management infrastructure; integrate state-of-the-art digital technology with SDI/AES signal distribution and server-based media storage facilities; provide a 24-hour news channel similar to CNN in content and presentation, which would enable them to expand their audience base in the Dominican Republic; and produce Spanish-language programming for satellite distribution to expatriate communities in North America.
The new plant incorporates a common master control center for the five independent television channels; Channel 27 (news); Channel 13; Channel 7; Channel 31 and Channel 57.
There is a common central equipment room incorporating the 256×256 central SDI/AES digital router, intercom, news and commercial servers, microwave and satellite equipment for transmission and reception, digital pulse, reference and master clock systems, and standards conversion equipment.
The central operations room contains digital and analog VTRs for playout and record operations and serves as an ingest area for the commercial and news server systems. A camera control center within the operations room provides camera operations for all RNN production studios.
The facility has four production studios. The largest studio serves the commercial production needs of Channel 13. A combination studio/newsroom has been incorporated specifically for production of news Channel 27. The newsroom contains a large Leitch server-based system consisting of 30 browse stations and nine nonlinear edit stations for ingesting and editing. The two remaining studios are primarily used for special additional news productions.
Also included in the design is a large common post-production and graphics center with a dedicated VTR ingest pool that serves the production requirements for the five program channels.
Design Team
Telecentro/RNN:
Jose Miguel Baez, president
Christophe Saladin, vice president, special projects
Luis Guaba, technical director
AZCAR USA:
John Warner, project manager
Joe Langel, project lead engineer
John Chyulia, project lead engineer
Doug Waldron, installation supervisor
Equipment List
Philips/Thompson 256×256 SDI/AES/RS-422 central routing system
Leitch Velocity post-production and NLE system
Miranda Kaleido virtual monitor wall
Ross Synergy production switchers
Studer audio consoles
Leitch Opus master control switcher
Pinnacle Thunder server for stills and clip store
Ikegami studio cameras
Leitch NewsFlash news system with nine VR 465 NLEs and browse cutter
