Avid Everywhere Helps WPXI Pittsburgh Succeed in the Nation’s Most Competitive Media Market

Avid® (Nasdaq: AVID) today announced that WPXI, an NBC-affiliated television station located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, recently embraced Avid Everywhere™ to improve the visual impact of its broadcasts and stand out in the most competitive media market in the United States. By implementing cutting-edge Avid graphics workflows from the Avid Studio Suite, the WPXI news production team is able to produce hours of high-quality visual content with greater speed and efficiency, and attract the widest possible audience.

In October 2015, WPXI debuted a new set with state-of-the-art video arrays, including five 55” monitors and an immense video wall made up of 18 monitors. To streamline control of the new monitors, WPXI integrated a unique mix of Avid and third-party solutions, including an Avid TD Control video wall control system, Avid iNEWS® newsroom management, Grass Valley Ignite automation, ChyronHego graphics creation, and Avid AirSpeed® video servers. WPXI was the first station in the country to successfully integrate these systems.

“In the Pittsburgh media market, we’re in a dogfight every day of the week and we need to capitalize on every extra edge we can get,” said Brian Krills, director of News Technology at WPXI. “TD Control gives us the ability to work very efficiently, create content that makes a big impact, and adds another layer of visual excellence to our programming.”

The installation took place immediately before November sweeps, so it was critical to implement the system in an extremely short timeframe. To meet this deadline, Avid invested several weeks to help oversee and manage the implementation. Leveraging their expertise, efficiency and dedication, a unified workflow was created to bridge the gap between the Avid and third-party solutions.

“There aren’t enough superlatives to describe how dedicated, effective, and driven the installation team was to make this solution work,” said Krills. “The extraordinary level of customer service provided us with an overwhelmingly positive experience and enabled us to have our system fully operational in time for November sweeps.”

Production teams can create content for the various video arrays and customize visuals for individual shows with greater speed and efficiency. TD Control also helps WPXI produce visually dynamic on-set commercials for advertising clients and quickly customize the visuals to meet their needs. This offers WPXI a great advantage over other stations in their market.

“Television stations across the globe are facing an unprecedented level of competition, so it’s important to produce engaging visual content that attracts the widest possible audience,” said Jeff Rosica, senior vice president of Worldwide Field Operations at Avid. “By leveraging the power of industry-leading Avid Everywhere graphics workflows, WPXI is able to deliver exciting visual content, and work with greater speed and efficiency.”

About WPXI

WPXI-TV is a Cox Media Group Television Station.  Cox Media Group is an integrated broadcasting, publishing, direct marketing and digital media company that includes the national advertising rep firms of CoxReps.  Additionally, CMG owns Cox Target Media, which operates Valpak, one of North America’s leading direct marketing companies, and Savings.com, a leading online source for savings. The company’s operations currently include 14 broadcast television stations and one local cable channel, 60 radio stations, six daily newspapers and more than a dozen non-daily publications, and more than 100 digital services.  CMG currently operates in more than 20 media markets and reaches approximately 52 million Americans weekly, including more than 31 million TV viewers, more than 3.5 million newspaper readers, and more than 14 million radio listeners.  For more information about Cox Media Group, please check us out online at www.coxmediagroup.com.