Al Mada TV airs in Iraq

Unfazed by political turmoil, Iraq’s burgeoning broadcast industry boasts more than 80 private channels, with more on the way. BroadcastPro ME takes an exclusive look at one of the recent channel launches in the country

Baghdad-based Al Mada Foundation for Culture and Arts recently unveiled an Arabic-language high-definition (HD) entertainment TV channel with special focus on news. Although Al Mada Group is an established name in print and radio, the group made its first foray into television with the launch of Al Mada TV. The group’s footprint is especially strong in Baghdad and Kurdistan.

The channel went live in Q4 2013 – less than a year since work began on integrating the systems and kitting out two studios.

The channel’s programming is in line with the group’s core philosophy that centres around art and culture. While it offers a host of entertainment programmes, political news and analysis are its main focus at present, according to Bayan Salaheddine Jalal, General Manager of Al Mada TV.

“Our main focus is news; we wanted HD quality videos to be delivered to our viewers in the best and quickest way possible. To us, the speed of data transmission was the main criterion and, of course, it had to be in high quality. Based on these, we started looking for suitable broadcast solutions,” says Jalal.

As of now, the channel broadcasts only recorded programmes but it will also broadcast live shows in the near future.

News-focused programming

Al Mada wanted a solution that catered to the news-based programming of the channel.

As a result, the end user chose Avid as the mainstay of the news system and built the multi-million dollar TV channel’s workflow around Avid’s solutions.

“At the heart of the system is a complete Avid workflow. Avid was selected because it was able to deliver a system that caters to our operational needs. It also offers excellent support with a local team in Dubai, which helped us with the design, delivery and training,” says Jalal.

Since the channel had to be built from scratch, the team at Al Mada started with a complete workflow for new automation on a medium scale, considering the system will allow for future expansion and scalability.

The project was carried out in phases with the first phase being the installation of an Avid news system.

The second phase involved the deployment of an Avid MAM solution and remote news editing. The project began with the installation of the Avid news workflow last year and the entire project was completed by the end of the year.

The solutions were integrated in-house by the Al Mada team with help from Avid’s distributor in Baghdad and systems integrator AV Solutions.

For security reasons, the channel was assembled in Sulaymania in the north of Iraq, which is a relatively safer area. It was later transported to Al Mada TV’s site in Abu Nuaass Street in Baghdad.

Commenting on the execution of the project in a politically volatile territory, Ammar Fawzy, Territory Account

Manager of Avid Middle East says: “In a region like Iraq, being aligned with the right local partner, is key. Our partnership with AV solutions has been a great alliance and we are looking forward to our expansion in the region.”

Security in Baghdad poses a major challenge for Al Mada because of which some of the producers cannot live in Baghdad. As a result, the entire news operation is carried out remotely.

Al Mada has a newsroom in Baghdad but the producers work in Erbil, meaning they are not physically connected to the channel’s headquarters. Their only access to the Al Mada newsroom is through the internet. Avid Interplay Central plays a key role here as a tool that gives remote access to journalists and producers to send media to the central location.

Key kit

The central apparatus room (CAR) of the TV station features Evertz servers, Avid AirSpeed 5000, ISIS 5000 and Cisco Ethernet switches, Lookup server and Media indexer, while the newsroom features Avid solutions such as NewsCutter, iNews, and Interplay Assist and Interplay Access. The iNews Command works from the studio control rooms and Access is located in the ingest room. The final picture is produced through For-A vision mixer using news graphics.

“When we started operations, we installed Avid’s news system, and had other systems for graphics and programme transmission. At present, we are expanding our workflow to include Avid MAM, which will help us automate and restore material from both news and transmission,” explains Jalal.

Avid Interplay Central will be integrated eventually to allow remote journalists to have access to the central system in Baghdad.

The three AirSpeeds – one with four channels for ingest and two AirSpeeds for playout are managed by two iNews command PCs, which, in turn, are connected to the command automation server. Command workstations are located in different MCRs. In addition, there are devices like the Lookup Server and Media Indexer, which support the content to be integrated.

Two news servers are connected to eight iNews client PCs and three NewsCutter PCs. There are two iNews servers that are redundant for complete safety on air. In addition, there are four Assist PCs and two Access PCs connected to the Avid Interplay engine.

The workflow

The media from Al Mada’s news gathering team or agencies is ingested into Avid AirSpeed 5000 in XDCAM50 format from where it goes to a central storage in the ISIS 5000.

At the same time, journalists compile their stories on Avid iNews and use tools to access the video on the central storage. The news directors then compile the news stories and videos using iNews command in one rundown.

There are two types of ingested media – text and videos. The videos are ingested into AirSpeed while the text is entered through iNews. The videos go directly to ISIS 5000 through AirSpeed.

ISIS 5000 gives the editors immediate access to the material so they can start working on it with NewsCutter or Media Composer depending on the content. The NewsCutter handles the news while Media Composer has been deployed for documentaries, and other programmes. The sequence is then sent to play back on AirSpeed.

Evertz Mediator manages the content traffic at a component level throughout its lifecycle. Mediator tracks the video, audio and graphics and enables scheduling of content.

Avid Interplay is the Production Asset Management (PAM) system that tracks all the media assets on central storage.

As soon as the content is ingested, it can be accessed on NewsCutter or Media Composer for editing and finishing. The editors cut the content with help from Assist or Access.

iNews makes it ready for newscast. The data is archived to tape on Avid Interplay MAM.

With two parallel workflows, one on transmission and another one for news, Al Mada looked at several MAM solutions before choosing Avid.

“The Al Mada installation is Avid’s first MAM in Iraq”, claims Fawzy.

“The MAM system was required to handle both transmission and Avid news. The solution that they finally adopted is a unified MAM in Avid Interplay MAM that handles archiving across the whole chain,” explains Fawzy.

The MAM takes care of both Avid and Evertz workflows – archives and restores from both and allows them to share media. The data can easily be restored to transmission or news.

The editors can then edit the ingested material and schedule it simultaneously. The on-air graphics are handled by Vizrt software and so are the CGs and tickers.

The studios

The TV channel has two studios, which were built to cater to the various programming needs of the channel. While one studio is dedicated to news and political programmes, the second one is used for sports and art and cultural programmes. Both the studios are kitted out with three Sony HD cameras and each one boasts a Chroma screen.

The training

As part of the complete Avid workflow delivery, Avid offered Al Mada a comprehensive training plan to cover

all its operational needs.