PITTSBURGH—NEP Group has announced that award-winning TFC broadcast orchestration platform, which is used in NEP facilities supporting the biggest productions around the world, is now available as a service to be used in any broadcast facility across the industry.
TFC serves as an all-in-one platform tying together hardware and software from multiple vendors into one interface, simplifying control, automating tasks and standardizing workflows.
“Today, TFC is integrated across our NEP facilities worldwide, including our broadcast compounds and NEP Production Hubs. It’s become a solution our customers trust and depend on to deliver the biggest events to their audiences. We’ve learned so much over the years, and now we’re very excited to take this next step in the technology’s evolution by making TFC available as a scalable service partnership,” said Soames Treffry, President, NEP Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
"TFC can now be used by any broadcaster, rightsholder, league, federation, or sports and entertainment producer,” Treffry added. “The platform is also technology agnostic, giving customers the power of choice when it comes to choosing multiple vendors to support a particular show, and the service is always backed by our 24/7 global engineering support.
The TFC platform was originally built by NEP engineers to solve their own challenges around simplifying IP in a broadcast environment, and over the past few years it has become the company’s trusted IP 2110 management system. The platform’s proven track record includes supporting some of the industry’s biggest events and premier broadcasters including the Super Bowl, the PGA TOUR, The Masters Tournament, 2024’s global sporting event in Paris, Seven Network Australia, the World Cup and many other major productions across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia.
NEP stressed that TFC is an all-in-one platform, offering key functions that solve challenges and create opportunities for engineering and production teams, including: broadcast control, software- defined networking (SDN), real-time monitoring, and unmatched 24/7, 365 global tech support.
As a broadcast control platform, TFC ties together multi-vendor hardware and software, simplifying what is commonly a complex IP 2110 management process requiring deep IP expertise. TFC simplifies this workflow by providing a user-friendly, intuitive touch-screen experience for any operator.
As a purpose-built SDN, TFC is designed exclusively for broadcast environments, with no extra configuration required, and with real-time monitoring and alerts, engineering teams are able to stay ahead of challenges with the platform providing instant alerts and updates on network health, uptime, latency and device status.
More specifically, NEP noted that its TFC platform is for customers experiencing challenges managing IP, those who don’t have in-house network engineering expertise, or customers migrating from traditional baseband environments to using IP, software and cloud production. TFC’s security layer is also a key component and therefore a solution for any highly visible media platform or critical project.
“TFC has completely changed the way engineering and production teams are able to manage many different layers of hardware and software on a major show site or in a production facility,” said Michael Raimondo, vice president of broadcast technology for the PGA TOUR. “The platform takes something very complex in our industry and simplifies it for our operators, allowing our producers and creators to focus on their number one goal of delivering amazing content to our viewers and fans,”
With its scalability, TFC can support any major sporting event, rightsholder, sports league or federation, entertainment production, news facility, national broadcaster or major television producer or streamer, and it is available today as a licensed software solution, NEP reported.
TFC is part of NEP Group’s full range of global media services, which includes industry-leading mobile units, specialty capture solutions, equipment rentals, connectivity, studios and more. Visit nepgroup.com to learn more about NEP’s global production ecosystem.
