BeckTV Integrates Broadcast Facility for Alaska’s KTUU

BeckTV, one of the United States’ premier design-build systems integrators, announced that it has completed work on a brand-new multimedia facility for KTUU-TV, a Schurz Communications-owned station in Anchorage, Alaska. BeckTV developed the technical budget for the state-of-the-art facility, provided space planning and technical consulting to local architectural and engineering firms, delivered equipment in a fully commissioned and tested turnkey format, and managed staff training. The resulting facility will allow KTUU to take advantage of the latest technologies and future technical advances.

“BeckTV has provided extensive integration services to several other Schurz stations, so we had a good understanding of the company’s capabilities and its process for managing complex projects,” said Andy MacLeod, president and general manager of KTUU-TV. “BeckTV has been an excellent partner for us, and we had no hesitation in calling on the company to help us realize our dream of a state-of-the-art media center. With BeckTV we’ve been able to bring forward-thinking ‘big facility’ design to what’s traditionally been a smaller market and create a truly sophisticated multimedia facility that will serve Alaskans on television and digital platforms for many years to come.”

The new systems installed by BeckTV for KTUU include a Ross Video OverDrive automated production control system including a CamBot robotic camera system and Vision production switcher, which together enable robotics capability in any of the station’s three studios and on the roof of the building. The facility’s new Grass Valley Stratus news acquisition, editing, and playout system features six edit suites, along with multiple edit desks in the newsroom.

“Thanks to BeckTV, the KTUU News Operations team has been catapulted into the future with state-of-the-art, integrated operating systems, all of which maximize workflow efficiencies,” said Tracy Sabo, KTUU’s news director. “More importantly, KTUU is more strongly poised to serve our loyal viewers and news consumers across the state of Alaska and beyond.”

Grass Valley servers manage automated news ingest and playout, and fully redundant and mirrored Harmonic servers in master control facilitate program and interstitial media playout. A large ChyronHego equipment package supports a variety of graphics applications. KTUU also relies on a multichannel-capable master control and routing system from Utah Scientific, an Avid master control automation system, and Wheatstone audio consoles.

Other key systems at KTUU include EASI satellite dishes and controllers, CompuSat equipment for automated satellite acquisition and recording, a totally integrated tally and GPI system from Image Video, and an Evertz system for monitor multiplexing. In addition to integrating and commissioning these systems, BeckTV also helped KTUU to upgrade and leverage some existing equipment that still met the station’s needs.