Newport Television transitions local newscasts at 14 stations to HD
Apr 1, 2010 10:11 AM
WKRC, the Newport Television station in Cincinnati, OH, experienced improved SD image quality produced by the JVC GY-HD250 cameras for four months before it transitioned to HD with the cameras, says Dione Rigsby, VP and director of engineering for the group.
Newport Television has begun an HD upgrade of local broadcast news operations at its 14 stations producing news with the addition of JVC ProHD cameras for use as ENG and studio cameras.
The Kansas City, MO-based station group has standardized on the GY-HM700 camcorders for use in the field and GY-HD250 cameras configured for studio use. Newport began acquiring the cameras in late 2008 and already has fully equipped four stations with them. Four other Newport stations are nearing completion of their transition to HD local news production, said Dione Rigsby, VP and director of engineering for the group. The conversion to JVC cameras throughout the group will be finished by 2011, Rigsby said.
WAWS in Jacksonville, FL; WKRC in Cincinnati, OH; WOAI in San Antonio, TX; and KTVX in Salt Lake City have a full complement of GY-HD250 cameras for studio production and GY-HM700 camcorders for ENG use. Each station has at least four GY-HD250s and 13 GY-HM700s. Stations currently upgrading to JVC include WHAM in Rochester, NY; KOKI in Tulsa, OK; KLRT in Little Rock-Pine Bluff, AK; and KGET in Bakersfield, CA.
For ENG acquisition, the GY-HM700 camcorders are meeting Rigsby’s economic requirements and satisfying shooters who appreciate the ergonomics of the cameras, he said. The cameras also are supporting the station group’s transition from tape to solid-state media.
According to Rigsby, the use of non-proprietary SDHC cards as a recording medium means the cameras don’t require as much maintenance as traditional ENG cameras because there are no tape heads or moving parts in the recording process. The combination of lower operating and maintenance costs will lower the group’s overall cost of ownership of the cameras, he added.
Reliance on the SDHC cards also is helping Newport to migrate its stations’ newsrooms to a tapeless workflow, said Rigsby. Newport is working with Bitcentral to create a file-based workflow, complete with nonlinear editing suites equipped with SDHC card readers that can instantly access the MP4 files recorded by the GY-HM700s without the need to transcode or ingest files.
See JVC at NAB Show Booth C4314.
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