Television Channel Russia Today

Russia Today is the first 24 by 7 satellite channel in English which is produced in Russia. It is broadcasted throughout North America, Europe, Asia and former USSR countries.
This project was a big challenge for Okno-TV Company, because one of the key requirements was to build up quick, efficient and modern facility, based on tapeless technology and provide high level of reliability and redundancy. Other important constrains were project schedule and requirement to provide trainings for about 400 journalists and production crew. Channel was created without any legacy, most of the Russia Today team is young and very motivated, but had no experience in TV.
In tight cooperation with Russia Today technical department Okno-TV proposed an end-to-end News production solution, based on Dalet Plus Enterprise platform. At this stage it was not so obvious and safe decision, but after many discussions and tests project team selected Dalet as major production tool for Russia Today. Other components and technological systems were planned to be part of the common workflow. There are Omneon Spectrum video servers, HP server platform, Cisco as provider of the active network equipment, Exanet as central high performance production storage. All these systems are working together and are demonstrating advantages of the integrated and efficient IT-based television production process. There are more then 200 journalists are working simultaneously 24 by 7 and making news stories from Russia for worldwide broadcasting.
Once Russia Today decided to work without tapes, new ENG technologies were also introduced and at the moment there are two formats for gathering news outside – SONY XDCAM and Ikegami EditCam. Both formats provide file-base transfer of the materials from recording media to central production storage.  It allows access to the ENG captured materials from any of 200 workstations in seconds after material came.
Special attention was drawn to the security and safety of the system. Okno-TV built redundant network with security layers and logging. Technical department at Russia Today able to do continues monitoring of the network and network connected systems. In the same time all critical technological points were also made redundant. All this were done as compact and space-efficient production facility, occupying about 2000 square meters. This facility includes two studios, two Newsrooms, editing suites, two production Galleries, server room and broadcasting room.
This project has many technical decisions, which were firstly adopted in News production in Russia. It became ideological base for many other Okno-TV projects.