at SKY Italy. 14 November
SKY ITALIA is today using a complex and ultra modern production system devoted to all their Sports channels that is the result of the efforts of over 35 people. The outputs are integrated contents productions and the story of the system itself dates back from end of 1999 and supports the newsroom and several other types of new media productions. Behind lies SKY Sport 24 and the big editor Sport Time and editorial offices which are in charge of all sports contents for SKY Italy satellite pay tv channels.
Riccardo Botta, Head Of sport Production and Operations at SKY says: “The system addresses really different needs and feeds several channels, Sport 1, SKY Sport 2, SKY Sport 3, SKY Sport Extra, SKY Super Calcio and 14 SKY Calcio, soccer devoted channels; plus one All News HD 24/7
channel, SKY Tg24, and involves LIVE production for 18 hours per day creating over 100 brand new stories per day.”
Today this production platform, besides mentioned Pay tv channels, serves several other new media like interactive television, a web site, tablets, smartphones and social networks contents.
Riccardo Botta says: “All sports news aired by SKY Sport 24 and TG24 are also derived from this system in the form of half-processed stories and also web channel SKY.it gets contents from here. Besides Sport Time produces some 8,000 hours of live programming per year and 1,300 hours of original programming including dedicated magazines just like “I signori del calcio” which includes a lot of post production, external interviews, all edited in house. Furthermore sometimes other programs are retouched; for instance a Wrestling show which needs cleaning from American adverts and Italian comment dubbing only and is received during the night and is to be aired the following day. This is to exemplify the idea that several are the production complexities the system is to meet on a daily basis.”
The very latest version of the system, on air from last July, is based on an Avid Interplay MAM and its origin dates back from previous Telepiù channels and is derived from an initial highlights creation system, evolved in 2003 with the birth of SKY Italia and thanks to Avid platforms chosen by Sport Time editorial structure which started creating two sports bulletins per day.
From the stand alone original concept based on 2 non linear editing suites the system evolved in a integrated mode launching a media browse SD, centralized in 2005 with 12 editing suites and introducing some new features like sports ingest in 2006 and centralized media management, considered essential due to the huge increase of digital assets.
Then SKY moved from Cologno Monzese to present headquarter and production centre in Milan Santa Giulia and contemporarily SKY Sport 24 was launched with all-news sports productions aired 24Hrs.
The volume of digital contents had changed, the tapeless system was improved
and 2010 saw also the implementation of a file delivery acceleration system for long distance TCP UDP links.
The last step in this development is dared 27th July 2012 since the final deadline was London Olympics which saw the new HD production system on air for 20 HD channels. This last step is particularly important since it was developed in just 10 months and involved all SKY departments strict cooperation. The plant today counts on some 80 servers and some other 65 technical workstations to support Avid Media Composer and News Cutter for and incredible -and never attempted before- team work.
We'll be back very soon with an in deep more technical description and benefits of the system.
