India’s News7 Turns to Imagine Communications to Power Broadcast News Operations

Imagine Communications has implemented an end-to-end broadcast news production and playout system for the newly-launched News7 in New Delhi, India. Serving the global Tamil-speaking population, News7 provides 24-hour news coverage in India as well as to audiences in Bangladesh, Canada, Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, South Africa, United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates.

At the heart of the News7 operation are Imagine Communications’ Nexio servers and ADC automated content and distribution solution. The broadcast workflow includes central storage for ingest, asset management and playout on a Nexio Farad high-performance online storage network. Editorial is setup using Velocity editors alongside Apple Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premier Pro suites linked over a SAN network. Imagine Communications’ Platinum routers with integrated multiviewers provide the display capabilities to support the monitoring requirement of the News7 newsroom.  Additionally, with the Nexio IconMaster master control switchers and Selenio modular signal processing solutions, Imagine Communications provides News7 with switching, signal processing and distribution capabilities.

“As a new channel, we needed a comprehensive, technically advanced and proven solution to meet the extensive and pressured demands of a news production environment,”said Venkat Ramani. G., head of technical operations, News7.  “With its world-renowned broadcast solutions and advanced vision, Imagine Communications was able to provide robust newsroom workflow solution to meet our exacting needs.

“Reliable infrastructure that is easy to manage is extremely important given our mission-critical requirement. Additionally, Imagine Communications’ local technical team was available throughout the implementation to help ensure that we met our on-air commitments.”

“We are pleased to have been able to provide News7 with a complete state-of-the-art, end-to-end solution, enabling a fast production turnaround with an integrated workflow from ingest to playout and archive,” said Joe Khodeir, senior vice president, Asia Pacific, Imagine Communications.  “The deployment with News7 is a meaningful milestone in our continued expansion in the Indian and SE Asia markets and emblematic of Imagine Communications’ growing relevancy in this important region.”

News7 went live in late 2014, making it one of the most technically advanced news channels in the region.