Transforming Newsrooms: Sky News Arabia
“We call it the virtual newsroom. It doesn’t matter where you are.”
Suresh Nair, Director of Technology at Sky News Arabia, reflects on the remarkable transformation in newsroom collaboration following their recent relocation to the new International Media Investments (IMI) state-of-the-art headquarters in Abu Dhabi, powered by Avid’s end-to-end news solution driven by MediaCentral. Sky News Arabia’s move from their previous facility to their new home on Yas Island, Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, provided the opportunity to reassess and transform their workflows and production processes to meet audience demand across platforms.
“The way we were working before and how we are working and producing now is completely different,” Nair adds. “It's a streamlined process in which there is more productivity available, more efficiency, and a lot of digital outputs.”
Senior multimedia journalist at Sky News Arabia, Claudine Chedid highlights the power of integration.
“An integrated solution from Avid streamlines the time and steps required to switch between writing and editing,” Chedid says. “Another key benefit is that MediaCentral further enhances collaboration by allowing team members to work on the same projects simultaneously from different locations, crucial in today’s fast-paced newsroom environment.”
Sky News Arabia has been on-air since 2012, set up as a joint venture between Sky UK and IMI.
An Arabic-language channel, it started by focusing on breaking news coverage, a legacy it continues today, now complemented by a variety of high-quality documentaries, as well as political and non-political programs.
Sky News Arabia is available throughout the world on satellite and online. All stories across their various platforms are created using Avid tools.
“The biggest challenge is balancing speed with accuracy, especially when breaking news hits,” Chedid says. “The need for real-time updates requires smooth coordination across various teams, and there’s often a lot of pressure to meet tight deadlines. Filtering out misinformation while maintaining our credibility is always a top priority.”
Since the launch, Sky News Arabia has used Avid’s leading Newsroom Computer System (NRCS) MediaCentral | Newsroom Management—formerly known as iNEWS—for script writing and story production. With the move to the new location, they retained this and moved their video production system to Avid’s MediaCentral | Production Management. This is part of Avid’s overall news solution which includes file-based ingest, Avid video servers for feed-based ingest and playout, shared storage with Avid NEXIS, craft editing with Media Composer, and archive integration.
The solution includes the web-based MediaCentral | Cloud UX, which brings many functions together into a single application, such as viewing, logging, editing and story script writing. Journalists use it, along with the iNEWS client, to do their work, often to meet extremely tight deadlines.
Claudine has held a variety of roles at the channel, working closely with the Avid team involved in the project and is focused currently on their 360-degree content strategy and managing its execution. She explains the challenges of a high-pressure news environment.
“Breaking news days are a whole different level of intensity,” Chedid explains. “During those times, being able to access video content quickly is essential. The entire process —from ingesting footage to editing—becomes a race against the clock to ensure we deliver accurate coverage in real time.”
“The Avid solution has helped reduce the time it takes to prepare and delivery content,” Chedid says. “The ‘one-user, one password’ concept has simplified access and made things more secure. Additionally, the search and filtering features have made our workflow more efficient, allowing us to focus on the editorial side of things while minimizing time spent looking for assets.”
Nair agrees, adding that enabling team collaboration and driving efficiency was a key part of their transformation.
“Our new workflows are much more streamlined,” Nair remarks. “The Avid team understood our workflows, how we do certain things, and how to incorporate that into the Avid world, but at the same time making sure this is the best workflow to manage that kind of output.”
The changeover from one system to another was not without its challenges, which the teams worked together to resolve.
“Avid has a lot of powerful features that give us the flexibility to tell better stories and collaborate more efficiently,” Chedid says. “However, the transition from our previous system to Avid has come with some growing pains. Some team members needed additional training, which took time and effort.”
The Avid team worked with Sky News Arabia to devise a detailed training and implementation plan, something which is critical and challenging in an “always on” news environment.
“It’s important to do “as live” rehearsals, especially for a breaking news channel like ours,” Nair says. “So that’s what is really challenging, but we managed that very well and in a very smooth transition.”
A key element of the move to their new facility was the transition from an SDI to an IP-based infrastructure. This enables Sky News Arabia to be much more flexible in how they use their studio environment today and in the future.
“We took it as an opportunity to access better technologies especially the move from baseband SDI to full IP with SMPTE 2110,” Nair says. “So that was a key decision that this is the right opportunity for us to find the right technologies to move forward.”
“We have a core facility that can easily expand,” Nair says. “One of the core aspects obviously is having different IP streams for video and audio, where we used to have one single SDI interface for both audio and video. This gives us a lot of flexibility in terms of operations.”
Looking to the future, Nair is also excited about what the addition of Wolftech News will mean for the capabilities of Avid’s solution.
“I've been following Wolftech for some time,” Nair comments. “I was really fascinated by how they have been doing that planning aspect of the whole newsroom. So, it's a good addition.”
Sky News Arabia plans to continue refining use of its Avid systems to unlock its full potential.
“As we gain more experience and the system becomes fully integrated into our workflow, we anticipate further improvements in efficiency, particularly in the areas of ingest, editing and playout,” Chedid says.
Dive deeper into Sky News Arabia's transformation.
In this exclusive video, Avid's Craig Wilson speaks with Suresh Nair.
Watch to hear the full story.
The end-to-end Avid Solution at Sky News Arabia includes:
- MediaCentral | Cloud UX
- Media Composer
- MediaCentral | Production Management
- MediaCentral | Newsroom Management
- MediaCentral | Asset Management
- MediaCentral | Capture
- Fastserve Video Servers
- MediaCentral | Ingest
- MediaCentral | Command
- Avid NEXIS Online and Nearline Storage
- MediaCentral 3rd Party Panel for Creative Tools
- Pro Tools
For more information about Avid’s news solution visit www.avid.com/news