A leading financial institution has made major savings on external broadcast production companies by operating in-house facilities using Ross Video systems.
An essentially all-Ross ecosystem is at the heart of an auditorium and a separate studio operated by the in-house team. This is led by a manager with a background in live sport and entertainment broadcasting.
Speaking during a press tour last week, the manager said: “When I took over we were hiring an external production company for every single event, whether it was in the auditorium or somewhere else. We were spending hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of pounds a year, on production costs.”
To make the savings, the manager first had to win the trust of colleagues responsible for events and convince them an in-house team could meet the same standards as external production companies. He then went on to persuade them to experiment with more advanced broadcast presentation techniques than before.
To meet their expectations, he chose to have two facilities at the finance house equipped with the Ross Video systems he was familiar with in traditional broadcasting. “The kit has paid for itself. It has saved us an absolute fortune,” he said.
The entire broadcast operations of the financial institution is now run by a small core team, with freelancers just brought in for big events. Ross Video systems enable the gallery for the auditorium to be run by a team of two or three, or even just one operator for routine events, rather than the five, six or seven you might see in a traditional broadcast gallery. The studio is operated by two people.
“It’s incredibly efficient,” the manager said.
The company’s main auditorium is a divisible space, with its independent event halves having their own control and media feeds, operated from a single gallery. This space is used for town halls, investor relations meetings, and major corporate announcements, including hybrid events with remote speakers and dual-track sessions. The room is designed to have a high-impact, professional feel, with presenters on stage and their content displayed on a large LED display behind it.
Remote presenters can be brought in via the LED display, and can even look as if they are presenting live from the auditorium with the use of a green screen at their location. They can also hold Q&A sessions and see the questions being asked by the audience.
Upstairs from the auditorium is the dedicated broadcast studio, primarily used for pre-recorded content, such as CEO messages and training videos and for smaller live events. This studio has technology that mirrors the functionality of the main gallery but with a slightly smaller control surface. This studio has a big LED display against one wall but also has LED lighting strips for interesting set design effects. The studio operates independently from the auditorium but the two spaces can work together, for example when the studio is used for a breakout session from a bigger event downstairs.
Among the key Ross Video systems in use in both facilities are the Ultrix-FR5 routing system, the flexible and scalable Carbonite production switcher, Xpression Graphics and Tria production video servers. Also crucial to the ability to reduce team size in the gallery is Ross Talk, the language used in sending commands from one part of the Ross ecosystem to another.
Both facilities are based at the finance house’s London office, but the organisation is looking at investing in broadcast facilities in its international offices. This would make further savings in the use of external production companies overseas, and also reduce travel costs for executives flying in to host events from the London broadcast facilities.
Ross Video’s regional sales manager for corporate accounts in EMEA, Bryan Davies, said the finance house’s London facilities were an example of a fully integrated Ross Video ecosystem with components working together seamlessly.
Davies, who worked on the auditorium in a previous role as a solutions architect at Ross, regularly brings prospects to this site to show what the company can do. So powerful is this example that just a few weeks ago one potential customer, which was originally just intending to look at a switcher, asked for a replica of the entire set up.
“They literally walked out, we went to dinner, and they said, ‘We just want what they’ve got’,” Davies said.