GRASS VALLEY FOCUSING ON HD NEWS IN 2008

By most counts, fewer than 10 percent of the 780 or so local TV newsrooms in the United States have made the switch to HD. And of those that have, only a small percentage are fully HD, offering true HD from the field as well as from the studio.

For Grass Valley, those facts mean opportunity. It believes it has the products and technology to take newscasts from SD to HD (and simultaneously from a video-based to a file-based workflow) in a cost-effective way.

And, needless to say, it believes it can do the job better than any of its competitors.

As senior vice president, broadcast and professional solutions, Jeff Rosica oversees all the Grass Valley’s video business, including the 40 percent that comes from U.S. TV stations.

In this interview with TVNEWSDAY, Rosica says gearing up for HD news from shoot to production to air is not so hard. It’s as simple as Infinity to Aurora to Ignite.

This is the second in the series of Q&As with key TV station vendors that TVNEWSDAY is planning in the months leading up to the NAB convention. The first was with Avid’s Graham Sharp.

An edited transcript follows:

Grass Valley has a broad line of products that would work inside the TV station. Can you talk about your overall marketing strategy for bringing these products to the stations? What are you trying to do? What’s the message?

We’re helping TV stations to achieve two things. No. 1, we’re helping them to migrate their infrastructure, whether it’s plant infrastructure or production capability, from SD to HD.

I keep seeing articles about how many HDTVs are going to be sold this Christmas season. I didn’t realize how hot they were. I mean it’s unbelievable. In fact, I am going to buy a second HDTV for our master bedroom, but when I called the cable company to order an HD box, I was told I can’t get one till February. They’re all sold out.

One of the things we’re going to find heading into 2008 is that the demand for HD content from stations is just going to be huge

Three or four dozen stations made the switch to HD this year. Do you see the pace of that accelerating in the next couple of years?

I think demand from the local market is going to go up considerably.

When the stations head into 2008 and see the sheer volume of viewers that have HDTV sets and are demanding HDTV content, the pressure is just going to grow for local HD content, not just the network stuff, but locally produced content and obviously news is the most important part of that.

The pioneers and the market leaders have gone to HD, especially in some of these major markets, but in some cases they’ve not gone out the full way. They’ve done their control room in HD, but they still haven’t done their field acquisition.

When I talked to the tech guys at the groups they don’t seem all that eager. They seem more inclined to upgrade for local HD during the normal course of the equipment replacement cycle. I don’t see a lot of interest in getting out ahead of that.

I think the tipping point is here. I think it’s real. Almost all of my friends now have HD sets and when I talk to them we all do the exact same thing. We go to the HD channels first. Then, if there’s nothing to watch, we’ll go to an SD. That’s true even in news. I don’t watch SD news programs anymore. I live in Los Angeles and I switched my news affiliation from one channel to another only because of the HD.

So as a vendor, how do you plan to capitalize on the coming demand?

We want to help people migrate to HD and to do so in a way that is affordable, that is efficient and that will actually produce a good return on investment for them

There are three areas that we’re focused on. Obviously, the move to HD production, that’s clear—all the way from the field to control room environments. It’s important and to do that with cost-effective solutions, and to do it in an efficient way.

Second, we want to help create an efficient and effective workflow in a file-based infrastructure. That’s crucial. Going away from a video-based infrastructure and going to a file-based infrastructure is just one very important way that people create much more efficient workflows. That’s a big benefit for stations.

And then finally, production or control room automation. That’s an area that is also about workflow and efficiency. It’s also about migrating HD in a very cost effective way.

So what products are you offering to achieve those three goals?

HD news production news production starts with Infinity. Our target was to really bring a high-performance HD camcorder to market that was at a much better price point. History shows clearly that we did that with the launch of Infinity. That brings the file-based workflow right from the field to the station.

When you get back to the station, we have Aurora. It’s a suite of products from news editing, to browse, to ingest, to playout. It’s a complete file-based solution for SD, HD or a combination. It allows a station to completely convert its newsroom to a file-based HD environment in a very cost effective manner.

And then for control room automation we have Ignite. It delivers a significant, real return on investment that helps stations fund the cost of converting the control room to HD.

So the Grass Valley answer is, Infinity in the field, Aurora in the station and Ignite in the control room.

Absolutely. We also have the Edius. It’s more of a craft editor, but it’s also a very powerful editor in the laptop environment for when people need to take a lot editing power into the field.

Infinity has been late to market and it seems like the major TV groups are already aligning with Sony or with Panasonic. Isn’t it too late to crack the U.S. station market?

Absolutely not. Even though some people have gone with our competitors’ products in the past year, the market is still in its infancy. It’s a very, very small percentage of stations that have either committed to or taken delivery of an HD file-based camcorder solution. So even though we would have liked obviously to have been in the market last year, the transition has just begun.

So I can expect you guys to do a deal with one of the big station groups in 2008?

Yes. I think you’ll see station groups, I think you’ll see stations, I think you’ll see production, I think you’ll see all of the above.

You talked about the price point advantage of Infinity. What did you mean by that?

When we launched Infinity, we launched into a market where our competitors were selling their HD camcorder at $45,000 and up. When we launched at $20,000, we basically more than halved the price point of a camcorder. None of the competitors had hit that price point. They did hit it, but only after we had launched a product.

Yes, I would have liked to have been in the marketplace earlier to benefit from that, but we are the company that reset the benchmarks for price and functionality.

I’ve heard reports that a couple stations have had some trouble with Ignite. Can you address that?

First of all, you have to remember that it’s not just a product. It’s about a whole change in workflow, a whole change in production process, and it takes a significant amount of training to achieve that.

We’ve learned two things. The first is that training is absolutely required and the level of the training and the quality of the training and the dedication to training by both parties is very important because you are evolving a workflow, you are evolving a production process. When there’s any shortcut in training, that can cause issues.

We’ve also learned some lessons on system configurations. We have found that there are a lot of installations where the recommended practice for how you configure a network and the IT policies had some detrimental effects. They’ve been easily fixed by changing the network topography or, more importantly, the IT policies on how you manage the network.

I guess automation doesn’t necessarily mean simple.

Automation is simple from a user perspective once you integrate. When you move from a control room with as many as 12 people to one with as few as one or two you have simplified things because you’ve automated a lot of the manual processes.

There have been stations where we’ve had one control room that has made the switch to Ignite and another that hasn’t. You stand there and you can watch the different newscasts at different hours and you can actually see the difference. It’s breathtaking just how clean and simple and calm a newscast is that’s done on an Ignite system.

So Ignite is simpler for the user, but it is a very technically advanced solution and so it obviously has to be configured right and users have to be trained properly.

Avid decided not to exhibit at the NAB Show next year, saying that it can get more bang for its marketing buck through smaller events and one-on-one meetings. Do you see yourself going that way? Do you ever think about not going to NAB?

We fully support the fact that one-on-ones with customers, road shows and other ways of getting closer and more intimate with our customers are of great value. So, I don’t to take away from that part of the strategy,

But I’m not sure that pulling completely out of NAB is the best idea. I think NAB is a very important show. I think NAB is an environment where all of our customers can come together in one location. It’s a very good show in which we can see tens of thousands of our customers in one location. That said, we’ll always have a balanced approach between the major trade shows and the more intimate settings that are also very important.

I think you’ve hit the highlights here of what you’re pitching to broadcasters. Is there anything else you want to talk about?

Only that I think it’s going to be a pretty exciting parade for broadcasters. I really believe that 2008 and beyond will be a great opportunity for broadcasters to establish a pretty strong business in HD. I don’t think HD is an issue or a challenge for broadcasters. It’s a great opportunity.