RTBF Builds Production and Broadcast Workflow Around NETIA Radio-Assist Software Suite
CLARET, France - May 21, 2007 - NETIA today announced that Radio Télévision Belge de la Communauté Française (RTBF), the public broadcaster serving the French-speaking area of southern Belgium, has built its radio production and broadcast operations around the Radio-AssistTM suite of digital audio software products. With NETIA's Radio-AssistTM, RTBF has thoroughly redefined its production workflow, implementing highly efficient news production and channel playout operations that allow staff to focus more time and energy on the quality and creativity of broadcast content.
"Production processes within national broadcast organizations seldom change over time, so the transition from analog to digital represented a significant shift for us," said Laurent Flemal, technical director at RTBF. "We found, however, that the advent of digital tools did not bring as much of a revolution to our business as did the introduction of NETIA production tools. Our current workflow evolved around the use of Radio-Assist, which has become the backbone of radio production at RTBF."
NETIA's Radio-AssistTM range of digital audio software programs covers the entire operation of a radio broadcaster, allowing production staff to record, edit, or prepare playlists while working within a single application. The software was first installed at RTBF in 1999 and since has grown into a sophisticated and highly automated production and playout system incorporating nearly the full range of Radio-AssistTM modules. RTBF relies on these solutions at all levels of radio production at all of its sites, including facilities in Brussels, Liège, Mons, Charleroi, and Namur.
Radio-AssistTM terminals are available in every recording studio, in newsrooms, and on presenters' desks, and each system is equipped with tools specific to the user's requirements. The file servers supporting RTBF production are located in Brussels and Mons, mirrored using DB-Share on a fiber network. Extremely remote, localized production sites use an autonomous system to dial in to the central server to collect elements as needed.
In live on-air production studios, RTBF personnel generate broadcast feeds using Air-DDO. QuickPlayer is used as a backup system and as a complement for complex broadcasts requiring quick access to many jingles. NETIA's Air-Playlist is used for nighttime programming and for most of RTBF's classical music programming. The broadcaster also uses Na-Arch to archive content on a central near-online data server and Dispatcher to feed a podcasting system. Air-List is installed on all workstations to gather metadata used for DAB, RDS, and Web applications.
"RTBF's implementation of Radio-Assist coincided with the company's transition to digital and, in fact, provided a client-server configuration that enabled a controlled evolution of RTBF operations, with a variety of possibilities still open in the future," said Xavier De Vynck, NETIA vice president of business development. "We're very pleased to have worked with RTBF over the past eight years and look forward to continued partnership in leveraging digital workflows to the benefit of the broadcaster and its listeners."
Information about NETIA and its products is available at www.netia.com.
About RTBF:
Radio Télévision Belge de la Communauté Française (RTBF) is the national broadcasting organization serving French-speaking Belgium. The broadcaster operates three television channels - La Une, La Deux, and RTBF Sat - and radio channels including La Première, RTBF International, VivaCité, Musiq3, Classic21, and PureFM. The RTBF headquarters are located in Brussels on the Boulevard A. Reyers. The company is online at www.rtbf.be.