Harris Broadcast Becomes Imagine Communications and GatesAir

(18/03/2014) Harris Broadcast, a portfolio company of The Gores Group and a market share leader of media software, networking and over-the-air solutions serving the global media and entertainment markets, today unveiled Imagine Communications and GatesAir at its inaugural MediaDay held at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Under the new corporate structure, the Harris Broadcast portfolio of radio and TV broadcast transmission products are now part of GatesAir, and the rest of the company's product line-up are part of Imagine Communications. The split is effective immediately, and the companies will have separate booths at the upcoming NAB 2014 tradeshow.

Although the announcement marks the end of the Harris name of the broadcast industry after more than half a century, it also marks the re-entrance of the Gates name. Founded in 1922, Gates Radio was acquired by Harris Corporation in 1957, and became the Harris transmission division. With the use of the Gates name for its new company, the Harris Broadcast transmission business has come full-circle. The grandson of Gates Radio founder Parker Gates was on hand at the event and said the family was pleased by the news.

Imagine Communications will be headquartered in Dallas, with Centers of Excellence in Denver, Toronto, Los Angeles, Tel Aviv and Beijing. The company's five decades of media software and networking innovation has secured more than 3,000 customers spanning 185 countries, with more than 3 million products deployed that support over half of the world's video channels, along with a rich portfolio of patents.

GatesAir will be headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, with its state-of-art manufacturing, supply chain and fulfillment center in Quincy, Illinois. GatesAir has been pioneering over-the-air TV and radio transmission innovation for nearly 100 years.

With vibrant new identities and focus, Imagine Communications and GatesAir are well-positioned to serve our industry and customers, said Charlie Vogt, CEO of Imagine Communications and GatesAir. Our vision, product direction and strategy further align Imagine Communications and GatesAir with today's transformational trends, the networks of the future and our customers and partners. We have created two laser-focused companies that are innovating across different ends of the technology spectrum. Imagine Communications will lead the media and entertainment markets to a future defined by IP, software, the cloud, and TV Everywhere, with an architecture vision for delivering and monetizing multiscreen content. Likewise, GatesAir will continue to lead the next-generation TV and Radio over-the-air market, with a focus on providing wireless innovations that reduce power consumption and carbon footprint, while leveraging the growth in digital radio and TV transmission across the globe.

Imagine Communications

Traditional industry models are changing rapidly due to multiple factors including the increasing availability of broadband, multiple new devices, and nontraditional media content, as well as an Internet model that is substantially changing viewing habits. This creates new opportunities for media companies to expand their customer reach and leverage their content and branding beyond traditional distribution methods. These changes are also impacting advertising and monetization models, forcing media companies across the globe to simplify and accelerate their next generation workflows and virtualize their resources across geographies and markets.

Our industry is moving rapidly to a place where media companies no longer want to deploy and manage proprietary technology, said Mr. Vogt. They have been burdened over the years by costly, legacy infrastructure that limits their expansion options and flexibility to transition to new models. Our customers, channels and business partners around the world are enthusiastically embracing our new paradigm of service-oriented, software-based architectures that utilize commercial off-the-shelf technology and the virtualization of network functions.

copyrighted by liveProduction.tv Consistent with this vision, a new media platform is being introduced. Imagine Communications MediaCentral is the industry's first integrated, end-to-end ad sales, traffic, scheduling, automation and playout platform that virtualizes key capabilities in the cloud, which were previously provided only in distinct, separate, and often premises-based platforms, said Steve Reynolds, Chief Technology Officer at Imagine Communications. A reflection of our company's unique ability to combine the best capabilities of our end-to-end portfolio, it creates an underlying architecture of modular, IP-based services that can fully support the integration of media and playout functions, such as live log integration, simplifying operations and providing advanced service velocity for operators.

Imagine Communications is also introducing Software Defined Workflows (SDW), a capability enabled by the Company's MultiService SDN architecture. Media companies currently operate in a hybrid environment of both baseband and IP workflows. SDW dramatically improves the way video is managed through broadcast facilities by allowing the entire workflow to be software defined, bringing all media into the IP layer and separating the media content components from control. Additionally, significant investments in TV Everywhere will leverage Imagine Communications MediaCentral and Multiservice SDN frameworks, further reducing the infrastructure required to allow for the multiple formats of the evolving multiscreen world from the largest Ultra High Definition screens down to the smallest screens of smart phones and wearable devices. By optimizing the highest quality video stream for delivery over the variety of bandwidth users consume, Imagine Communications'

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