ABC Australia: Better communications for Quality Programming

Australian broadcast network ABC has installed the Riedel Artist Trunk Navigator system to support a VoIP-based communications network connecting producers, journalists, and presenters working at ABC bureaus across Australia. The system facilitates simpler, more efficient, and more reliable communications between sites during production and broadcast.

For example, operators can now make direct calls from an executive producer’s panel in Perth to an executive producer’s panel in Melbourne. Presenters on the studio floor are equipped with a Riedel Artist RCP-1112 control panel that enables them to create their own IFB submixes and make direct calls to production staff at busy times. Autocue operators are now able to create their own presenter mixes. Edit suite operators have the audio output of their editing stations interfaced into the Riedel Artist system, so they can listen back to the assets they are editing and be on communications during a news broadcast. ABC also uses local panel GPIs to interface camera tallies out in the field.

In Canberra, ABC has linked its Parliament House and Northbourne site with a 15-kilometer redundant fiber link that allows technical staff to administer the entire system from either site.

“By extending and improving communications across its bureaus, ABC has equipped its staff to collaborate more closely and effectively in delivering quality programming,” said Cameron O’Neill, director, Asia Pacific, at Riedel Communications.