Aleph Media partners with RT Software for multi-format 24-hour news channel

When Romania’s Aleph Media decided to launch a new 24-hour cable news channel, called Aleph News, in late 2020, it chose RT Software to provide solutions for multi-format newsroom-style graphics.

Aleph Media sees online channels as a key part of its future plans. As a result, it wants to be able to provide its viewers with seamless access to content from mobile or web platforms in the same quality that is offered through its traditional broadcast delivery methods. Solutions from RT Software allow Aleph Media to address the challenges of providing graphics sized to fit the multiple different ratios of TV screens, mobile phones and tablets, and in different output formats.

Two studio galleries that are in constant use for chat shows and regular news programmes are each equipped with multiple Swift CG broadcast graphics systems to provide a combination of lower thirds, over the shoulder and full screen graphics. RT Software’s Media Watcher handles automated data input, while Swift News enables journalists to populate graphic templates and add them to the rundown directly from their Nunzio NRCS Client supplied by Etere.

The question of how to control multiple graphics simultaneously is solved by Swift Control, RT Software’s web-based control solution. Using Swift Control, an operator sends just one command to take a graphic formatted for 16×9 and output on SDI, while simultaneously another channel takes a 9×16 version of the same graphic to an NDI output. Both graphics are populated with the same automated data-driven content.

The system was installed with the collaboration of RT Software’s partner Audio Video Pro – one of the biggest broadcast technology providers in Romania. Even though the installation took place during times of periodical lockdowns and travel restrictions, access to RT Software’s remote support and implementation facilities ensured that everything went smoothly.

Florin Urlateanu, senior graphics consultant at Audio Video Pro, said: “What was impressive about working with RT Software was how much they listened to the customer’s needs and the flexibility within their products to be tailored to the customer’s exact requirements. What’s more, their willingness to engage during the process, from design, through training and implementation all the way to deployment, made a challenging task painless.”

Mihai Burceag, CTO of Aleph Media, said: “We have been using RT Software solutions since last year, and after six months on air we are impressed with their ease of use, from design, to journalists and to on-air playout.”

As the channel was launched from scratch, all the journalists were new to Aleph News and most were used to using other NRCS systems. As such, it was important to Burceag that their learning curve was as short as possible on the new system. He added: “RTSW has a beautiful NRCS MOS implementation. Once the design is finished, the graphic content is entered by the journalists exclusively from within NRCS in exactly the way they are used to. Playout-wise, everything the journalists create is instantly available in Swift Control, ready to be aired.”

Aleph News has been on air from its Bucharest base since 1 September 2020 and is available in Romania on cable and mobile apps, as well online. Aleph Media is on schedule to launch two more channels by this summer.