Speed to Air – Stuff Group Delivers News for Three in New Zealand

Stuff Group had less than three months to build a complete TV newsroom from scratch to deliver the 6pm bulletin for Warner Bros. Discovery NZ. They chose a full Avid newsroom solution, delivered with partner Atomise, enabling fast, reliable production for both broadcast and digital platforms.

Key Points:

• Avid was chosen for its proven reliability, widespread user familiarity, and ability to operate 24/7 without interruption.
• Journalists and digital teams work heavily in MediaCentral | Cloud UX for clipping, editing, and publishing to stuff.co.nz and ThreeNews.
• Reporters can file live feeds or upload footage remotely, which is auto-ingested and instantly accessible to all staff.
• Craft editors in Auckland (and remotely) use Media Composer with full access to shared assets.
• Live studio operations use Avid replay and automation systems integrated with iNEWS.
• Remote work is fully supported, letting journalists edit and collaborate from anywhere in the country.
• Avid’s partner Atomise handled design, installation, and implementation, playing a critical role in meeting the aggressive deadline.
• Despite the tight timeline, the entire system went live on schedule and operates seamlessly.

The Challenge

When Stuff Group won the contract to deliver a 6pm bulletin for Warner Bros. Discovery in New Zealand, they had an aggressively tight timescale to find a new facility, install a newsroom from the ground up, recruit onscreen talent, and produce high-quality news stories for broadcast television.

Stuff already produces one of the country’s largest news websites, stuff.co.nz, and with a team of journalists around the country, expanding their news ecosystem to fit a 6pm television bulletin required fast, innovative thinking.

Head of Operations and Technology for Stuff, Steve Gore-Smith, said, “We had just under three months from finding the facility to being on air, and it was a hard deadline. So, in three months we had to do a complete revamp of the facility. Now this was, from our point of view, completely from scratch. But we achieved it, and it was seamless.”

How did they achieve it? They chose an Avid end-to-end newsroom solution from ingest to storage to web and craft editing to the newsroom computer system (NRCS) to studio playout and online distribution, delivered by Avid and our New Zealand partner, Atomise.

The Solution

“There are obviously a lot of other solutions on the market, but we know from our experience that the Avid solution works and just does what it says on the tin,” says Steve. The known reliability of the Avid news solution was key to their decision.

“Whether it's Media Composer or whether it's MediaCentral | Cloud UX, there are a lot of people who know and rely on it on a daily basis. But the other thing was that we know it works. We know that it will just sit there and do what it needs to do seven days a week, 365 days a year, and we will get programs out.”

The Stuff newsroom produces the daily 6pm one-hour news program for Three, one of New Zealand’s leading stations, plus half-hour bulletins on weekends, along with delivering the country’s largest New Zealand news website, stuff.co.nz.

“We have a separate team who generally do most of the website work, and they tend to work solely in MediaCentral | Cloud UX because most of what they do is just fairly simple clipping, which it is actually absolutely perfect for,” says Steve. “So, what they can do is they can view and clip content from there and then export it to the formats they need for the digital platforms.”

The system is in constant use. Steve described the workload: “On a day-to-day basis, the system is used by the journalists all day. We're using the MediaCentral | Acquire app within MediaCentral | Cloud UX for all our linear recordings.”

“So, we've obviously got a lot of content coming in live and file-based. We've got a lot of workflows set up to auto-ingest a lot of content. It means the journalists in the field can either file back real-time feeds, or they can feed files which are auto-ingested into the system. The journalists obviously can all simultaneously access that content to view and edit […] to create what they need, and we use iNEWS as our rundown tool. So, they're working both in iNEWS and in MediaCentral | Cloud UX to create the content.”

Steve says craft editors, who are based in Auckland but also have remote access, can work from home or from other offices with remote access into Media Composer where edits are finished and sent to playback.

“We're using Avid for our studio for our actual live productions. We use studio replay servers which are controlled through the iNEWS interface with our automation system talking through iNEWS.”

News, of course, does not happen in the newsroom—it happens in the field. The ability for staff to work remotely is also key to the success of ThreeNews.

“With the Avid system, we've got a lot of flexibility for people to work from where they need to work. They don't have to be in the headquarters all the time. So, all of the journalists, whether they are working from an office elsewhere in the country or from home or out in the field, all have access into Media Central | Cloud UX so they can view all the content as it comes in and they can edit in the field as if they were in base.”

The role of Avid’s partner in New Zealand, Atomise, was instrumental in helping them meet their tight deadlines. Steve said, “They were absolutely crucial in working with Avid in designing the system and getting it delivered to New Zealand, which is no mean feat in itself, and getting it installed, commissioned, and on air in time.”

“This was everything from the Avid NEXIS storage to all the servers, the Media Composers, and the journalist workstations running MediaCentral | Cloud UX and iNEWS. So yeah, it was a big project, and we worked very closely, obviously, with Avid and Atomise to get this done. Atomise were absolutely crucial to us in that process. They are people that we'd worked with in the past and had a lot of trust in.”

Richard Kelly from Atomise said, “The project with Steve and his team was a great example of high-quality teamwork from everyone involved. It was a tight timescale, but everyone pulled together to deliver the project and ensure the show went live on time.”