The BBC World Service has selected teleprompting technology and systems from Autoscript to support the new BBC Persian TV channel. The free-to-air channel will launch around the turn of the year with a production facility modeled on the one built for BBC Arabic, which went on the air in March and also features Autoscript prompting systems.
Four 17in on-air monitors have been supplemented with Autoscript’s Windows-based WinPlus prompting applications, which works with all TrueType and Adobe fonts and with any language or character sets (including Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, Hindi and Farsi). For BBC Persian, it links directly into the AP ENPS text newsroom computer system and an IBIS play-out automation platform.
Autoscript is providing additional operational support, including a Farsi prompting specialist; an Autoscript RAT (receive and transmit) wireless scroll; and a wireless foot pedal for controlling scripts.
The studio and playout facility at the new broadcasting house also features Omneon Spectrum servers for ingest and playout and a DaletPlus News Suite media asset management system. The media produced will feed the TV channel and also be repurposed for output on the Web and for radio broadcasts.
The new BBC Persian TV service will initially broadcast eight hours daily — from 1700 to 0100 Iranian time (1330 to 2130 GMT) — and complements the BBC's existing Farsi radio and online output.
For more information, visit http://www.autoscript.tv/.
