Second Screen Becomes First ScreenSystem architect and general contractor Qvest Media realised the technical planning and integration of the digital news channel Blick TV within an ambitious time schedule. Thereby, the Swiss media company Ringier’s daily newspaper BLICK fully enters the digital broadcasting sector and significantly expands its target groups with their news service. In order to satisfy today‘s media consumption, Blick TV counts on digital and online channels for its program distribution.
The two new Blick TV studios are connected to a streaming platform for fast, lean, and automated production processes. In this kind of production environment, two people can go live with breaking news within lead times of a maximum of three minutes.
An essential requirement and centrepiece for this efficient workflow is the cutting-edge production system. The fully integrated solution combines newsroom, MAM, studio automation, as well as playout in just one software application and enables the aggregation, curation, and editing of video content from Ringiers several media departments, the connected digital archive, and other news agencies‘ media. Moreover, recordings of live shows are added to the automated processes of the automation and playout server. This creates a fluent and flexible program flow of live news, readymade clips and reruns of live shows that is plannable within short time periods.
“When it came to choosing the news production system, we once again left the well-trodden paths,“ says Konstantin Tschernow, Branch Manager at Qvest Media Switzerland. “Finding a software that masters nearly all stages of production at a balanced cost-benefit ratio, can be used intuitively and is on top of digital workflows at the same time was a real challenge. We were eventually able to find it in the Swedish startup nxtedition with a perfect match for our project requirements with their software solution and flexibility,“ Tschernow continues.
Another special feature is offered by the integration of live subtitling that can be deployed beyond just the standard lines of TV. With the subtitling system provided by Qvest Media’s subsidiary HMS media solutions and the tight integration with the OTT platform, subtitles can be set to both the TV service, as well as for other publishing media and fields of application. For Blick TV, this opens future possibilities such as the distribution of live content in the range of out-of-home media with the according subtitling at train stations, airports or public transportation, for example.
Beat Vontobel, Technical Manager at Blick TV said, “With the digital media infrastructure provided by Qvest Media, we skip linear television and straightforwardly rely on state-of-the-art streaming technology that perfectly matches our DNA at BLICK: Always up-to-date. Always close. An example: Interview partners can join the live show directly from a live feed on their smartphone. The huge advantage is that we are able to report from almost anywhere in the world in a quick and easy way.”
Blick TV launched its program on February 17, 2020. Since then, the channel has been streaming a diverse program of live reports, breaking news, current social topics and live shows on a daily basis between 6am and 11pm The video stream can be accessed from mobile devices via the BLICK App, on social networks and online on Blick.ch.