Canada’s Global News Chooses Avid Graphics and Virtual Reality Solutions to Enrich its Storytelling

BURLINGTON, MA, 2017/06/23

One of Canada’s largest private broadcasters relies on Avid to enhance viewers’ experiences with stunning graphics and virtual reality using a more agile, cost-effective and virtualized production workflow

Avid® (Nasdaq: AVID), a leading global media technology provider for the creation, distribution and monetization of media assets for global media organizations, enterprise users and individual creative professionals, today announced that Global News, the award-winning news and current affairs division of Global Television Network, has selected Avid graphics solutions to transform the look and feel of news delivered across its platforms. One of Canada’s largest private broadcasters, Global Television Network is owned by Canada’s largest media content company, Corus Entertainment. The system enables the news leader to captivate viewers with more dynamic and immersive coverage through state-of-the-art graphics and virtual reality (VR) while benefitting from more distributed cost-effective and agile production.

To maintain its reputation for high-quality coverage and cutting-edge production, Global News wanted to make its storytelling more visual and compelling. With 15 TV stations throughout Canada across multiple time zones, it needed simple-to-use solutions that could also function in a virtualized environment with hardware centralized in one city, and presenters in another.

Global News selected Avid’s comprehensive tools and workflow solutions for graphics creation for its four main production centers, as well as nine other remote broadcast locations. Powered by the MediaCentral® Platform, the industry’s most open, tightly integrated and efficient platform designed for media, the new workflow includes Avid’s Maestro™ graphics suite, 4Designer 2D/3D authoring software and ProSet™ virtual studio. As well as delivering a fast-turnaround workflow, the system functions as a large distributed model and virtualizes nearly all of the news produced by Global News.

“VR has allowed us to go places we couldn’t go, such as outer space, or to locations we couldn’t get to immediately – like an earthquake in India,” said Gerry Belec, Director, Operations and Technology, Global News, Corus Entertainment Inc. “It also means that we can tell these stories in ways that are highly visual, which is critical for good television but wasn’t a reality previously—the tools just weren’t available. Our new Avid system gives us incredible freedom, creativity and the ability to connect with audiences like never before.” The new workflow also brings speed and agility to Global News’ production centers. Set elements can be constructed in a day or even a few hours, allowing crews to create a high volume of news stories with vibrant, realistic graphics under very tight timeframes.

“Today’s news media organizations need powerful creative tools to create high-quality, engaging and immersive content,” said Jeff Rosica, president, Avid. “With Avid’s comprehensive graphics solutions, Global News can create stunning content across geographically dispersed production centers to immerse and enlighten audiences with powerful visual storytelling.”