Blackbird And TownNews Expand To 75 U.S. Stations

Blackbird plc, the developer and seller of the cloud native video editing platform, Blackbird, said today that Blackbird is now being used by 75 U.S. TV stations for digital news production following TownNews’ latest deployment. This is the sixth expansion of Blackbird by TownNews since the partnership began in 2018.

Production teams at the 75 stations use Blackbird remotely to rapidly access, edit and publish news content to social and web platforms. When paired with TownNews’ Field59 VMS, the latest news stories can be delivered to viewers using Blackbird’s browser-based, easy-to-use and carbon efficient cloud native video editing platform. U.S. stations using Blackbird span 35 states.

More than 350 TV stations in the U.S. produce approximately six hours of news content per day with the industry generating nearly $31 billion in revenues annually. With an estimated 43% of US adults sourcing their news from websites and social media, millions of viewers in the US now consume content through the Blackbird and TownNews’ Field59 VMS platform, Blackbird says.

Derek Gebler, vice president of broadcast and video for TownNews, added: “The team at Blackbird has been a tremendous partner with us in providing the digital video workflow tools we know our broadcast television customers value and expect. I look forward to our continued collaboration.”

Blackbird CEO, Ian McDonough, said: “Blackbird and TownNews have really built an incredible partnership which continues to expand at pace. We started in 2018 with two stations and now have 75. It’s an excellent combined solution and demonstrates perfectly how two companies can work together for the customer’s benefit.”