Bitcentral Expands Into Canada With CBC Deal

Bitcentral, a provider of news management, production and distribution systems, has closed its first deal outside the U.S. Under terms of the agreement, CBC, Canada’s national public broadcaster, will install Bitcentral’s Oasis content archiving and management system.

CBC is the largest news broadcaster in Canada and manages a daily stream of news programming in English and French to stations from St. John’s in the east to Vancouver in the west. The Oasis solution will be integrated into Newstream, the system the broadcaster uses to push content out to its affiliates. Today, daily offerings are selected centrally and affiliates can vet that handful of story choices, which are then delivered via a satellite feed from Toronto.

With the installation of Oasis, approximately 14 affiliates and bureaus will be able to search all daily and archived content from the CBC via the Internet, utilizing a browser-based interface to access the centralized server in Toronto. This will greatly increase the quantity and quality of content available to journalists as they prepare their daily newscasts, while eliminating costly satellite delivery charges. Because Oasis is built as a non-proprietary archiving solution, CBC affiliates will be able to take advantage of a broader array of video content without investing in any new, vendor-specific hardware.

“Digital file-based IP delivery represents the most cost-effective way for our affiliates to access breaking news as well as archived material,” said John Bainbridge, director of news production, CBC News. “With Bitcentral, we can offer nearly instantaneous access to a world of content from our hub in Toronto to our most remote partners.”

Oasis attaches metadata, which stays with the assets throughout the archiving process, easing the retrieval of video by any authorized user. Because the solution is open, affiliates can select off-the-shelf storage servers with capacity to meet local needs for downloaded content.

Station groups across the U.S., including Gannett Broadcasting and Journal Broadcast Group, have adopted Bitcentral technology, including Oasis and Precis, the company’s non-proprietary workflow solution. Used in tandem, these products provide unparalleled opportunities for sharing video assets among stations and within newsrooms.