SRG SSR chooses third generation news production platform from Sony

SRG currently broadcasts and produces programmes for the whole of Switzerland, last year broadcasting more than 12,000 hours of sports coverage alone on television, radio and via online media outlets. The deployment of Media Backbone Hive across SRG’s estate over the next three years will streamline such operations to all users, allowing harmonious remote working teams. With the ability to quickly ingest, share, edit and publish any content to any platform Hive is the perfect platform to deploy an ‘always on’ journalism model, where there is appetite for 24/7 news across multiple platforms and formats.

“Hive will enable us to be much more agile; the advantage of a web based production tool allowing us to share materials between different regional SRG entities immediately whilst only ingesting content once.” Comments Andreas Lattmann, CTO of tpc Switzerland ag, the technical service provider for SRG.

The decision from the broadcaster comes to future proof their operations, as they evolve to pioneer a digital multimedia house that keeps apace with the demands from new audiences.

Having already deployed Sony Sonaps across their news operations for many years, making the transition to Media Backbone Hive was a seamless one, also minimising training costs as many SRG users are already familiar with the workflows and operational models that Hive maintains.

Drawing on two decades of Sony innovation in news production, Media Backbone Hive was launched in 2016 as an evolution of its popular Sonaps solution, providing end-to-end, camera-to-archive content production and workflow management. The omni-media network production system has been designed to use the latest IT infrastructure to re-invent news production, supporting the fast, efficient flexible creation of content for multiple platforms including Internet, mobile, social media and broadcast applications alike. Developed to easily integrate with market-leading newsroom computer systems and graphics platforms, journalists and operators can keep working with their existing tools with minimal disruption.  

By using an agile cloud-based datacentre model, and open source technologies, Media Backbone Hive offers complete scalability. Broadcasters can add or remove resources while the system is live by taking advantage of Sony’s ‘on demand’ investment model. They can be confident the platform will work for their business both today and tomorrow, and no investment is wasted.

“We’re delighted SRG have selected Media Backbone Hive and know it will be a real gamechanger for their operations both today and in the years to come. With SRG opting to invest in the third generation news production system from Sony, having previously used Newsbase, and Sonaps, the confidence SRG sees in us continuing to offer solutions that work for today’s leading media companies is a real win” Stuart Almond, Head of Marketing, Media Solutions, Sony Professional Solutions Europe.

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