ats Solent On-air with QNews

aQ Broadcast Limited has announced that Thats Solent went live on 26 November with aQ Broadcasts QNews newsroom system.

Thats Solent is the new local TV channel for the south coast, based in studios at Highbury College, Portsmouth, and provides coverage for Southampton, the Isle of Wight and Portsmouth. It is the first station to launch as part of the Thats TV Network- the UKs largest Local TV licence operator, which was awarded exclusive licenses by Ofcom to broadcast in The Solent, Oxford, Basingstoke, Reading, Surrey and Salisbury, comprising one of the most demographically desirable broadcast regions in the UK. 95 percent of programming for Thats Solent is produced locally around the Solent region.

The Thats Solent news team, led by News Editor Charlotte Briere-Edney, produces more than three hours of live regional news each evening, but rehearsals prior to launch proved frustrating without a dynamic, automated newsroom system.

Less than a week before the launch date, Thats Solent contacted aQ to enquire about a prompting system also part of aQs product offering. Less than 48 hours later, aQ had installed QNews, providing newsroom functionality with integrated prompting and a dynamic connection to the stations automation system. The news team was immediately able to collaborate on the same running order; program timing information was quickly and accurately available; text updates appeared instantly on the prompter; scripts and rundowns could be easily printed; plus video clips could be selected for playback from the automation system and graphics entered as part of the script production process.

The QNews multi-column script layout can be set to follow the prompt position as the presenter reads from it, which enabled the Thats Solent technical director to see the script and the corresponding directors instructions in real-time during a live show. The customisable screen and print layouts enabled the news editor to define a screen appearance that was exactly suited to the preferred workflow.

Neil Hutchins, aQ Broadcast managing director, said, It was exciting to be involved with the launch of Thats Solent and provide a system that made the production process much easier for the news team.

QNews has been used at hundreds of sites around the world. Because we have always taken customer input very seriously, the QNews software can be configured in any number of ways to precisely suit individual requirements. The fact that we were able to have the Thats Solents team up and running within 48 hours of the initial enquiry demonstrates the flexibility of our NRCS solution and our commitment to the Local TV sector in the UK.

Thats Solent is due to be followed soon by Thats Oxford, scheduled for launch in January 2015.

Further information can be found at: www.aq-broadcast.com

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