aQ Broadcast Limited, which designs, develops and manufactures an integrated range of newsroom, scripting, automation and media management software alongside video server and production hardware has announced that “Latest TV” in Brighton and Hove, England, went live on 28 August with aQ’s “QNews”, a robust and reliable platform that offers full-scale NRCS functionality.
Latest TV was one of the first of 25 cities in the UK to be awarded a 12-year local TV licence, and with QNews now broadcasts a range of local programs, including news and sport, seven days a week from studios just yards away from the Palace Pier in Brighton.
After a lengthy evaluation and selection process, Latest chose QNews to provide the planning, preparation and production tools for all of their studio shows, particularly their daily news output.
Journalists can use the system locally from the studio, remotely from the head office via their wide-area network, or from anywhere – on any device – via the QNews web gateway. The web access is particularly important, since many of the Latest team are based away from the studio and need to prepare shows before arriving for recording.
aQ Broadcast CEO Neil Hutchins said, “We provided our QSeries software, the hardware for the database server to run on, plus four days’ on-site work for installation, configuration and training. Importantly, we also installed our Tricaster interface, allowing clips and captions to be selected and entered within QNews, and then prepared and loaded onto the Tricaster in a single operation. This ensures that the turnover time between programs using the gallery and studio is kept to an absolute minimum.”
Latest TV Channel Director David Cuff adds, “We spent a long time evaluating potential candidates for our scripting system, but chose QNews because it offered the best value for money and greatest flexibility. aQ has designed a user-friendly NRCS that has significantly helped us to launch a 24-hour station, and their local support has been timely and helpful.”
Latest TV is aQ’s second customer in the UK Local TV sector. Hutchins said, “Local TV initiatives are a key area of expertise for us. In this case, as with Mustard TV earlier this year, it was clear that integration with Tricaster would be particularly important for the gallery operation. The fact that our software communicates directly with the NewTek SDK, rather than via a third-party component, meant that it was straightforward to extend our functionality to match Latest TV’s precise requirements.”
Broadcasting on Freeview Channel 8 and Virgin 159, as well as on demand online, Latest TV is accessible to 400,000 people across the Greater Brighton area and online via any device to everyone in the UK through TV Everywhere.
aQ Broadcast will be at IBC 2014 on stand 9.B14ci.
