Griffin Communications Builds New Broadcast Facility

The Grass Valley multiformat production equipment will help News On 6 streamline its production operations by enabling the file-based recording of incoming feeds, clip management, and playout of a variety of network-supplied and locally produced programming.

The new broadcast facility, which was built from the ground up beginning in October  2011, is set to be fully operational in January, 2013; originating News On 6 and Tulsa CW, plus two digital subchannels (“News on 6 Now”, and “ThisTV”). Master Control and the new Grass Valley servers will begin operations in the new building December 2012.

“News On 6 will now have much more space for its staff and equipment and will be able to do so much more with the Grass Valley technologies being installed,” said Gerald Weaver, News On 6 Chief Engineer. “Grass Valley has always offered a dependable product that we have come to rely on and we use it to its fullest extent. The Kayenne switcher in particular, in our opinion, is the finest on the market today and is clearly the best product for our purposes, which is to produce a wide variety of program types, including the 39.5 hours of local news we produce each week.”

News On 6 has used Grass Valley production switchers for many years—starting with a Grass Valley 300 and most recently moving on to a Kalypso®  switcher—due to the technology’s reliability and cost-effective performance. For the new facility, the station has added a new Grass Valley Kayenne® Video Production Center switcher. The switcher will handle the signals from four Grass Valley LDK 4000 Elite HD cameras, currently in use in the station’s existing news studio.

News On 6 has also added two next-generation K2 Summit® 3G server frames and several terabytes of storage capacity to its existing complement of Grass Valley K2 Summit servers that they have been using for several years. The new K2 Summit 3G servers will be used in tandem with a Harris automation system to handle incoming and outgoing programming and news feeds as digital files.

“The best thing I can say about Grass Valley’s servers is that we never have to think about them, that’s how reliable they are,” added Weaver. “We set them up and they work exactly as planned.”

About Griffin Communications
Griffin Communications, L.L.C. is an Oklahoma-owned multimedia company, providing news and information content to Oklahomans across the state. Holdings include KWTV/News 9 in Oklahoma City and KOTV/News On 6 and KQCW/The Tulsa CW in Tulsa. Griffin’s holdings also include News9.com, NewsOn6.com, MoneySavingQueen.com and Radio Oklahoma Network, representing 40+ affiliates across Oklahoma. Griffin Communications also has developed several partnerships and strategic alliances throughout Oklahoma, including Oklahoma Community Television/Griffin Tower Company, Sooner Sports Properties and News 9 Now/News On 6 Now (Cox Communications). Griffin Communications, L.L.C. is among a few privately held media companies in the country, owned by David and Kirsten Griffin of Oklahoma City, and John Griffin of Muskogee. Griffin Communications, L.L.C. solely focuses its resources in the state of Oklahoma—Oklahoma businesses owned and operated by Oklahomans.

About Grass Valley
For more than 50 years, the Grass Valley name has been synonymous with innovation, leadership, and performance. Our full range of solutions and services is unmatched in the industry, leveraging the economies of scale of the IT industry with our proprietary core knowledge of media processing and storage. Grass Valley customers include most of the world's leading broadcasters, teleproduction facilities, and service providers, as well as independent video professionals who rely on our products to cover the world's most high-profile live events, as well as to benefit from efficiencies in day-to-day operations. When you’re watching news, sports, or entertainment programming—whether on a TV, the web, or a mobile device—you’re watching Grass Valley at work in today's connected world.