Sky News Arabia will launch on May 6, 2012. The news was announced by Nart Bouran, director of News at Sky News Arabia (SNA) at a press conference in Abu Dhabi today. The channel will be available on Transponder 14 on Arabsat Badr 4, Transponder 15 on Nilesat 201, as well as on du IPTV […]
Sky News Arabia will launch on May 6, 2012. The news was announced by Nart Bouran, director of News at Sky News Arabia (SNA) at a press conference in Abu Dhabi today. The channel will be available on Transponder 14 on Arabsat Badr 4, Transponder 15 on Nilesat 201, as well as on du IPTV and e-Life platforms. In addition, Sky News Arabia will be available in HD on OSN. Systems integrator TSL also confirmed that it had completed its integration work at Sky News Arabia’s facility in twofour54.
BroadcastPro Middle East was the first magazine – both locally and internationally – to secure an exclusive interview with the SNA team regarding its broadcast installation. The story was carried in the CABSAT (March) issue of the magazine.
Sky News Arabia promises to bring high-quality 24/7 news in Arabic to the Middle East, including ‘non-broadcast’ content such as Skype, YouTube and other user-generated content, as it appears online.
Commenting on the launch of the channel, Bouran said: Our aim has been to create an impartial and independent breaking news channel for the Arab world across multiple platforms. It has been a huge collaborative team effort resulting in the most technically advanced news operation in the region. We have nearly 400 of the best journalists, reporters, presenters, producers and broadcast technicians working together to create an unparalleled news channel.
Sky News Arabia will offer the MENA region a fresh approach to television news with an independent editorial mandate at the heart of everything we do.
Designed and built by TSL, the fully file-based TV station comprises a state-of-the-art production facility housed in a studio on the twofour54 campus, with a separate building for the newsroom, graphics and editing, machine rooms and operations centre.
Amongst many other cutting edge elements, the solution contains a bespoke universal bookings system which removes the need to manually co-ordinate the booking of each element separately by automating the scheduling and QC of all input/output circuit bookings across Sky News Arabia’s control room.
“The way the scheduling system has been fully integrated across the whole solution, is a good example of why we are way ahead of anyone else,” said Bevan Gibson, launch technical director of Sky News Arabia.
“The skills and experience of TSL’s engineers not only enabled them to come up with this cutting edge integration, but they could also push the vendors beyond their normal comfort zone to make it all happen.”
As all of the station’s content transfers over IP, TSL had to design a very solid IP infrastructure, while achieving broadcast standards of reliability, and allowing priorities to be set for traffic close to air time.
“We have invested significantly in our skills and staff recently to develop a very high level of expertise In the IP space – which Sky News Arabia really appreciated”, said David Phillips, managing director of TSL.
“Furthermore, we’ve delivered a system which is not only functional but easy to support over the lifecycle of its capital investment.”
Stay tuned for more information.
