BeckTV, a premier systems integrator for the broadcast media industry, has completed technical design, facility planning, and integration for the PBS News Hour studios and production facility at WETA, the flagship public media station in the nation's capital. The goal of the project was to create a modern, flexible, and scalable production facility that could support the needs of PBS News Hour, Washington Week with The Atlantic, and other shows. The new control rooms and studio launched on June 10.
PBS News Hour, public television's marquee news program, is a national nightly news show that has been broadcasting for nearly 50 years. The show moved from its old studios in an aging production building to a newly expanded part of the WETA headquarters and technical facilities a few blocks away.
WETA started working with BeckTV six years ago to build a budget plan and a high-level review of technology options, said Vince Forcier, Senior Director of Engineering at WETA. Their proposal stood out because, in every element of their response, we could tell they were listening and understood what we were trying to achieve. They continued to work with us through the design and construction process, ensuring that the facility met our technical and operational needs. From equipment evaluation and selection to facility design and final launch, working with BeckTV has been a great experience. This is our first full facility refresh in 17 years, and BeckTV was instrumental in making it such a success.
WETA hired BeckTV to build two control rooms, two audio control rooms, a comms position, a transmission room, a shading and robo room, four tape playback rooms, and 15 edit rooms, among other spaces all on a SMPTE ST 2110 backbone to enable IP networking. BeckTV planned for all technical aspects of the space, including technical furniture, power, cooling, circuitry, cabling, wiring and RF for all the studio sets, and more.
The two control rooms are identically loaded with redundant resources for resiliency. WETA operations typically uses one control room to run the weekly show out of Studio A, the main studio for PBS News Hour. The second control room is typically used to produce another nationally televised show, Washington Week, as well as the weekend PBS News Hour and other miscellaneous productions. BeckTV designed the control rooms to be redundant and interchangeable for any production at any moment. In the event of equipment failure, all or parts of the operations can move to the other room immediately and leverage its resources to continue seamlessly, even in the middle of a live show. BeckTV also made sure that the fiber infrastructure was designed for a redundant SMPTE ST 2022-7 blue/red network switch if WETA decides to implement it.
At the core of the facility is Grass Valley's GV Orbit orchestration system. Grass Valley also provided multiple cameras, two production switchers, multiviewers, gateways, and an audio router. Other major components include Lawo audio mixers, RTS intercoms, G&D KVM systems, EVS tape playback systems, Jetwave Wireless RF distribution equipment, Cisco network switches for management and Nexus 9504 media fabric, Vinten robotic camera shading, and Providius network monitoring.
Because everything is network-connected and interoperable, all audio, video, and metadata are available on the network switches, ready to be sent to tens of thousands of multicast addresses in an endless combination of video workflows. Working with such a robust system requires a good strategy so that things don't become disorganized and overwhelming, especially for broadcast engineers who aren't familiar with SMPTE ST 2110 networks. BeckTV planned every flow before it got to the configuration stage and then trained the WETA production staff so they could support the system after BeckTV s involvement ended.
An ST 2110 system is scalable in ways that an SDI system would not be. As the productions change and grow, WETA technicians have the flexibility to take audio and video from any source and send it anywhere very easily. This beautiful and robust technical facility will serve the popular PBS News Hour' show well for many years to come, said Brendan Cline, Managing Partner and Vice President of Engineering at BeckTV. Special credit goes to BeckTV VP and senior engineer Paul Kast, who was the on-site project engineer throughout the whole build.
North America Stories
24/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
24/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
24/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
24/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
24/12/2025
Scripps Research study links sleep variability with sleep apnea and hypertension How consumers' digital activity trackers could enable personalized health s...
23/12/2025
How guilas Cibae as Dominican Winter League Games Are Locally Produced for Glob...
23/12/2025
BitFire's Jim Akimchuk on Supplying Scalability and Customization in the Clo...
23/12/2025
CAMB.AI Enables European Athletics to Offer Multi-Language SupportPlan is to eventually offer translation into all languages spoken in EuropeBy Ken Kerschbaumer...
23/12/2025
Analysis: As sports media values trend negative, scarcity and quality are king By Callum McCarthy, Editor-at-Large
Monday, December 22, 2025 - 14:08
Print ...
23/12/2025
ESPN, Disney, and NBA Return to the Animated Altcast Fray With Second Edition of...
23/12/2025
End the Year on a High Note and Donate to the Sports Broadcasting Fund Today! By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Tuesday, December 23, 2025 - 12:25 pm
...
23/12/2025
A Zeus motor is hot fire tested at L3Harris' Camden, Arkansas, solid rocket ...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Lightware will exhibit several major product innovations at ISE 2026, including the new USB-C BOOSTER-V1, Google Meet. integration for various Taurus UCX models...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Taking the Stage at Carnegie Hall-On a Global Scale Boston Conservatory Orchestra students reflect on their epic concert marking the 80th session of the UN Gene...
23/12/2025
Experience the power of WO Automation for Radio's newest service, the System Effectiveness Review. Designed to help you achieve more, a System Effectiveness...
23/12/2025
Back to All News
How Steamy Can It Get? Single's Inferno' Season 5 Pre...
23/12/2025
Back to All News
33 Million Global Viewers on Netflix Watched Jake Paul vs. Ant...
23/12/2025
New technique lights up where drugs go in the body, cell by cell Scripps Research scientists developed a technique that maps drug binding in individual cells th...
22/12/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Presidio's Neerav Shah on the Role of Its Captiva...
22/12/2025
Hitting the bullseye: Sky Sports readies itself for the biggest PDC World Darts ...
22/12/2025
Unique skillset: Bringing new directors to the world of darts at The Worlds with...
22/12/2025
Gravity Media prepares for a flight of fancy with the PDC World Darts Championsh...
22/12/2025
One hundred and eighty: Gravity Media on hitting the production bullseye at the ...
22/12/2025
The Famous Group's Jon Slusser on Fascinating Fans Through Immersive Content...
22/12/2025
ESPN's Meg Aronowitz on Continuing High-Quality Broadcasts of Collegiate Spo...
22/12/2025
ESPN Takes Data-Driven Storytelling to New Heights with MNF Playbook with Next ...
22/12/2025
Paramount Scores Largest Share Increase Among Distributors as Paramount and CBS...
22/12/2025
New multi-year deal integrates Roku's data to fuel Nielsen's measurement suite
Roku gains access to Nielsen's streaming ratings, showing The Roku C...
22/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
22/12/2025
Berklee Wrapped 2025: Our Top News and Stories A look back at a year highlighted by faculty milestones, major film and television projects, Bob Dylan's ho...
22/12/2025
The works of Plato state that when humans have an experience, some level of change occurs in their brain, which is powered by memory - specifically long-term me...
22/12/2025
Workflows allow you to create a sequence of planned events which may be added to your template(s) or inserted directly into your sequential or background playli...
22/12/2025
Back to All News
Global Anime Hits and New Releases Take Center Stage at Jump Festa 2026
Entertainment
22 December 2025
GlobalJapan
Link copied to clipboar...
21/12/2025
Back to All News
Legoshi and Haru's Story Reaches Its Finale: BEASTARS Fin...
20/12/2025
Atomos announced the immediate availability of a new firmware update for its Ninja TX GO and Ninja TX monitor-recorders, unlocking ProRes RAW recording from the...
20/12/2025
CJP Broadcast has completed the digitisation of the European Gymnastics tape archive, converting 328 tapes containing more than forty years of recorded material...
20/12/2025
Bitmovin, the leading provider of video streaming solutions, today announced the launch of the Stream Lab MCP Server, to give AI agents and large language model...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
BeckTV, a premier systems integrator for the broadcast media industry, has completed technical design, facility planning, and integration for the PBS News Hour studios and production facility at WETA, the flagship public media station in the nation's capital. The goal of the project was to create a modern, flexible, and scalable production facility that could support the needs of PBS News Hour, Washington Week with The Atlantic, and other shows. The new control rooms and studio launched on June 10.
