Media General plans to transition six stations to the Panasonic DVCPRO P2 tapeless format by 2006.
The six new stations are WIAT, Birmingham, Ala.; WRBL, Columbus, Ga.; WJTV, Jackson, Miss.; WJHL, Johnson, Tenn.; WBTW, Florence/Myrtle Beach, S.C., and WMBB in Panama City, Fla. The stations will be among 10 other Media General stations that have adopted P2 since 2004.
"Simply put, the performance of the P2 product has significantly exceeded our expectations," said Ardell Hill, senior vice president, broadcast operations for Richmond, Va.-based Media General, an independent communications company with 26 network affiliated stations. "The image quality is remarkable. Every day, crews in the field are discovering new ways to do their jobs based on the feature set of the P2 camcorders."
Hill said each of the stations produces 20-plus hours of news programming weekly, and that all of the group stations have moved to an NLE environment on Thomson Grass Valley Vibrint Newsedit NLE systems. Media General plans to incorporate the new AJ-PCS060 portable P2 drive into its newsgathering facilities this month.
