Gener 2, one of the largest construction and civil engineering companies in Albania, has selected a broad set of Avid solutions to launch its first TV channel, A2 TV, in partnership with CNN. The channel will be an exclusive CNN affiliate headquartered from a major production hub in Tirana.
A2 TV’s 24-hour news service will cover Albania and reach millions more outside the country. The new channel needed a reliable end-to-end solution to support around-the-clock news coverage and provide journalists and users with the most advanced broadcast news workflow. Powered by MediaCentral®, the Avid workflow will bring state-of-the-art news production to A2 TV, which is expected to begin broadcasting later this year. The solution was installed by broadcast technology specialist and Avid partner, Teratek.
“Given CNN’s international standards and reputation, and Gener 2’s position in the Albanian market, it’s extremely important that A2 TV features the very best technology,” said Andri Kasneci, CEO of A2. “With our new channel, we are looking to set new milestones in the Albanian media, and Avid’s solutions are essential to achieving this.”
A broad range of Avid news solutions is outfitting the new facility. MediaCentral | Newsroom Management will serve as the dynamic nerve center of A2 TV’s advanced story creation, management, and distribution, and MediaCentral | Production Management will accelerate the entire production workflow, empowering collaboration to get projects done faster. The integration of Avid NEXIS® shared storage is critical to meet the demands of 24/7 rolling news with true storage virtualization, scalability and power. With Avid Media Composer®, A2 editors will have the industry-choice video editing software to elevate their storytelling.
A2’s full suite of Maestro graphics solutions will give 2D and 3D graphics capabilities and includes Maestro™ | News universal controller for video and graphics, Maestro | TX for channel branding graphics and playout, and Maestro | PowerWall for innovative display control from a touchscreen interface. AirSpeed® will be seamlessly coupled with A2 TV’s Maestro solutions for versatile media ingest and playout.
“This is an exciting opportunity to help design a system from the ground up and see some of Avid’s newest innovations at work,” said Tom Cordiner, SVP, global sales at Avid. “We’re confident that A2 will realize its ambitions and we’re eager to see the results.”
From Restoring To Hopefully Preserving Multi-Camera Categories At The Emmys
When Gary Baum, ASC won his fourth career Emmy Award earlier this month, it was especially gratifying in that the honor came in a category--Outstanding Cinematography for a Multi-Camera Half-Hour Series--that had been restored thanks in part to a grass-roots initiative among cinematographers to drum up entries. Last year the category fell by the wayside when not enough multi-camera entries materialized.
In his acceptance speech, Baum appealed to the Television Academy to keep multi-camera categories alive. He later noted to SHOOT that editors also got their multi-camera recognition back in the Emmy competition this year. Baum hopes that after resurrecting multi-camera categories in 2024, such recognition will be preserved for 2025 and beyond.
A major factor in the decline of multi-camera submissions in 2023 was the move of certain children’s and family programming from the primetime Emmy competition to the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ (NATAS) Emmy ceremony. For DPs this meant that multi-camera programs last year were reduced to vying for just one primetime nomination slot in the more general Outstanding Cinematography for a Series (Half-Hour) category. It turned out that this single slot was filled in ‘23 by a Baum-lensed episode of How I Met Your Father (Hulu).
Fast forward to this year’s competition and Baum won for another installment of How I Met Your Father--”Okay Fine, It’s A Hurricane,” which turned out to be the series finale. Two of Baum’s Emmy wins over the years have been for How I Met Your Father, and there’s a certain symmetry to them. His initial win for How I Met Your Father was for the pilot in 2022. So he won Emmys for the very first and last... Read More