Amsterdam, The Netherlands (IBC — Stand 1.D11), September 08, 2011 — The Young Broadcasting station group has upgraded the news departments of eight of its stations to a fully networked, file-based, high-definition (HD) news production and distribution system from Grass Valley™.

The newly purchased equipment, which is now being installed, will be on-air by the end of the year in most markets and follows a successful implementation of Grass Valley HD digital news production technology at Young's KWCQ, in Davenport, Iowa. That system has been on the air since October of 2010 and, according to station personnel there, has exceeded their expectations for performance and streamlining the station's news production workflow.

At each station, the comprehensive system includes 25 seats of Grass Valley EDIUS® 6 multiformat editing workstations, two K2 Summit™ production clients, as well as Aurora™ Playout software modules and client computers for automated playout.

The eight new Young stations standardizing on Grass Valley technology include: WKRN, in Nashville, Tenn.; WATE, in Knoxville, Tenn.; WRIC, in Richmond, Va.; WLNS, in Lansing, Mich.; WTEN, in Albany, N.Y.; KELO, in Sioux Falls, S.D.; WBAY, in Green Bay, WI.; and KLFY, in Lafayette, La.

"We've had a great experience with Grass Valley technology in our news department at KWCQ, and the staff there has really become much more productive in preparing its daily newscasts," said Craig Porter, Director of Operations for Young Broadcasting. "By standardizing on Grass Valley, we were able to enjoy significant cost and implementation time savings. There are not too many companies that can handle such a large multi-station implementation, but Grass Valley has helped get us up to speed very quickly and we feel confident we now have a cost-effective news production platform we can grow with into the future."

The Young stations involved will use the EDIUS editors to cut daily news packages while the Aurora Playout software, in tandem with the K2 Summit servers, will enable the stations' staff to automatically schedule their newscast rundowns while still retaining the ability to insert breaking news segments, or go live from the scene, at the last minute.

"With constant economic pressures, station groups are seeing the real cost benefit of upgrading their news production departments and we're seeing renewed interest in our EDIUS and Aurora product lines," said Jeff Rosica, Executive Vice President of Grass Valley. "This new implementation across the majority of Young's station's reflects the company's desire to remain competitive in all of the markets it serves and reflects a clear understanding on its part of the types of tools its needs to support its multiple delivery platforms."

Grass Valley's EDIUS 6 nonlinear editing software provides real-time SD and HD editing performance for quick turnaround news production. Whether working with video filters, keyframed 3D DVEs, transitions, or titles, EDIUS delivers full resolution, at full frame rate quality. EDIUS can also be used to perform on-the-fly conversion of frame rates, aspect ratios, and resolutions of any clip placed on the timeline that differs from the current project's setting, and can seamlessly edit clips of different formats without transcoding them. There are also real-time 2D and 3D GPU effects – meaning no waiting for effects to be rendered.

The Grass Valley Aurora Playout system offers highly coordinated news playback from the K2 Summit. Designed for workflow efficiency and flexibility, it can automatically create and adjust playlists from a MOS-compatible newsroom computer system. It also features an intuitive playback user interface and GPI inputs and outputs for remote control of playback.

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About Grass Valley – the Premier Video Technology Solutions Company

With a rich history serving the broadcast and professional video industries, the Grass Valley name is synonymous with innovation, leadership, and performance. With a full range of products and services supporting many of the world's most high-profile television events, Grass Valley offers the most comprehensive portfolio of flexible and cost-effective digital technologies and systems available. Customers deploying Grass Valley solutions include most of the world's leading broadcast and teleproduction facilities, independent video professionals, as well as emerging content creators and distributors providing broadband, telecommunications, and transmission services. When you're watching news, sports, or entertainment programming, whether on a TV, the Web, or a mobile phone, you're watching Grass Valley at work.

For information about Grass Valley products, please visit: www.grassvalley.com