ARD-aktuell Chooses Mosart for Germany’s Flagship TV News

Thursday, 15 September 2011 17:22

ARD-aktuell, the common newscentre operation of Germany’s national public television network and the world’s largest public broadcaster, has chosen Mosart Medialab’s newscast automation system for news programming, including the flagship Tagesschau.

ARD-aktuell’s Mosart^® installation at its Hamburg studios will include two entire systems, for main and backup galleries, with roll-out during 2012.

Regional broadcaster Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) will build the new studios for ARD-aktuell in conjunction with Hamburg-based integrators Studio Hamburg Media Consult International (MCI). With the accelerating pace of Mosart^® installations in Europe, MCI has begun a program of Mosart^® training for its own personnel to support its integration projects.

ARD broadcasts directly to viewers throughout Germany over its own digital terrestrial broadcast network, over satellite and cable, and via a digital package of four free-to-air channels (Das Erste, EinsFestival, EinsPlus and EinsExtra). The broadcaster also contributes to the production of cable/satellite channels Phoenix (events, news, and documentaries), KI.KA (children's programmes), 3sat (cultural/traditional programming), and ARTE (Franco-German cultural programming).

“Mosart^® is seen as the premier newscast automation system by Europe’s top broadcasters, and it’s particularly pleasing that ARD-aktuell recognized that Mosart^®’s unmatched automation capabilities, combined with the ability to react instantly, made it a system they could trust for production on Tagesschau,” said John Kjellevold, managing director, Mosart Medialab.

Mosart^® version 3.0 includes a range of new features and functions that add to the capabilities of the most versatile and powerful system on the market, including a completely redesigned, fully configurable graphical user interface (GUI) with the capability to store settings. Story elements such as cameras, clips, and graphics, as well as a range of interface overviews, can easily be assigned to buttons for easy and quick access, making the GUI a shot box for touch screens and adaptable for a variety of TV production. Story scripts from the newsroom computer system are shown directly in the Mosart^® GUI, and Mosart^® operators can store clips and graphical elements in a pool that’s ready for execution on request.

Mosart^® version 3.0 also features enhanced handling of macros, sequences, loops, and continue points. Mosart^®'s sequences tool enables separate parallel rundowns that can be executed on a studio back wall. Macros and continue points simplify automation setup, allowing the director to program once, but then proceed through multiple events or effects. Looping can now be applied to rundowns, segments, sequences, and clips.