Technicolor Launches New Era in ITV’s Broadcasting Operations

New state-of-the art centre provides “digital broadcast engine room” for the UK’s leading commercial broadcaster


Paris (France) . –Thomson (Euronext Paris: 18453; NYSE: TMS), today announced that Technicolor has completed the transfer of all of the playout and delivery services for ITV, the UK’s leading commercial broadcaster. The transition to Technicolor’s transmission centre in Chiswick Park, London was completed at the beginning of March 2009, after two years of planning and development.

People, knowledge and technology were brought together by Technicolor to create a new and innovative, technologically advanced facility that supports not only multiple linear television channels (because of its sub-regions, ITV 1 alone is equivalent to 23 individual channels) but also broadband, mobile and catch-up television services – a total of more than 50 consumer services and rising.
The dedicated centre at Chiswick Park in West London was purpose-built by Technicolor to meet the evolving needs of multi-platform content distribution.

“We are proud to be ITV’s trusted partner,” commented Frederic Rose, Chairman and CEO of Thomson. “What we provide to ITV is a digital broadcast engine room. We handle the mechanics of preparing content ready for broadcast, and the technicalities of playout and distribution, allowing ITV to concentrate on providing the content their viewers appreciate. Flexibility and speed to market is absolutely paramount in today’s entertainment marketplace. It was an immense challenge to migrate, innovate and re-engineer the services while maintaining 100% business continuity. We are delighted to have achieved the migration and are looking forward to supporting ITV’s innovative plans for the challenges ahead.”

”As the UK’s leading commercial broadcaster, we have a very special relationship with our audience which we have to retain and build, online as well as through linear television,” said Max Graesser, Director of Operations for ITV. “We chose to work with Technicolor because of its core competency in broadcast playout, but they helped us maintain the all-important conversation with our audience by adding and developing channels quickly and easily without being limited by the underlying technology. The migration was a complex logistical exercise involving people, processes and technology, while maintaining our outputs uninterrupted. Now that we have completed the transfer, the centre lies at the heart of ITV’s broadcast operation. We see it as a foundation for innovation, freeing us to seize new opportunities in the media world as they arise.”

During the transition, ITV staff were transferred to Technicolor, and the joint team worked closely together to develop new operational workflows and paradigms for multi-platform delivery. This included a completely fresh approach to playout, with all of the linear channels and some online and on-demand outputs executed from a single management suite. This gives ITV a very tight integration between its multiple channels and additional online services such as catch-up TV.

To achieve total flexibility for ITV, the Technicolor centre is based around its in-house business process management system, overseeing a completely new and highly advanced transmission and delivery operation. All types of content are processed in preparation for broadcast including tape, digital files, off-air and live feeds - all from multiple sources. Each day in transmitting ITV’s channels, Technicolor handles over 24,000 scheduled events and around 150 items are quality controlled and handled in the entirely file-based environment.