In June 2009, when Meredith Corp. management decided to turn over the newscasts of KVVU (FOX5), the local FOX affiliate in Las Vegas, to a Grass Valley™ Ignite™ scalable automated production system, the move was met with a bit of apprehension. At the time, the technology was still fairly unchartered waters for a small station like KVVU and it was clear that to make the transition work, all of the staff would have to be on board. Yet, if they were successful, they'd be able to work smarter and produce their newscasts in a very different and efficient way.

"Two years later, we couldn't be happier with how well the system has performed and how easily our staff took to it and made our newscasts better," said Gary Prager, Production Manager at KVVU. "Because of the Ignite system, we are now able to do more than before we got the system—an additional full hour of news."

With the termination of federal Public Telecommunications Facilities Program (PTFP) grants, many local PBS member stations like WGBH in Boston—whose award-winning programs are widely viewed nationwide and around the world—have had to look carefully at what they spend in order to get the most value. It's a tough challenge because, even with less money, the station must continue to achieve its mission of serving the community with locally focused educational programming.

One of the last PTFP grants made before the program ended was awarded to WGBH to help continue its mission. In early 2011, WGBH decided to migrate its production capabilities to an Ignite™ automated production system from Grass Valley™. The system allows a single operator to take on several roles required during production.

The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) is the world's biggest non-sporting live TV event and a strong household name among hundreds of millions of people in Europe.

The ESC 2011 was produced and broadcast in high-definition 1080i with 5.1 surround sound and two-channel stereo. A key role in the production of the ESC 2011 were four Grass Valley™ LDK 8000 Elite cameras with wireless adapters.

ORF, the national public service broadcaster in Austria and one of the first K2 server users, now has one of the largest K2 server installations in the world with approximately 320 K2 operational playout channels located in its Vienna headquarters and in its ten regional studios.

ORF produces a lot of in-house content, with seven large production studios in Vienna as well as its ten regional broadcast studio facilities. It has been a continuing project to streamline production costs through the use of new technologies, which includes moving as quickly as possible to tapeless production and file-based workflows.