Page 58 - The Channel Issue 2 2010

58 | ISSUE 2 2010 | THE CHANNEL

THE CHANNEL | INTERVIEW

RN has grown from its origins as a successful inter-national radio distributor – it's a very different company now to what it was 10 years ago.

The World Radio Network is still a very important product and service, part of what we do, and we will continue to use that name as it relates to our twelve language networks around the world. Today we are 100% about broadcast, and we are doing more and more in TV. Whatever it is in the value chain - facilities, enabling, distribution, EPG management, content management, workflow management - WRN Broadcast does it and we wanted our new name to reflect that.

What is the ratio of radio and TV in WRN Broadcast today?

In terms of the business and from a revenue perspective, it is roughly 60/40 in favour of TV. Since we acquired TSI Broadcast about a year ago, more and more of our growth is coming from TV and video, digitisation, managed services, ingest and so on. One has to recognise that over the next two to three years most of the growth will come from managed services for TV.

WRN Broadcast has just closed a major deal with a platform operator in Africa and is delivering Kenya’s first triple-play service. The company's new Media Centre is one of the finest state-of-the-art ingest and playout centres in Europe. Managing Director David Treadway says the big growth currently is coming frommanaged services for television – here he explains the background to the company's new brand identity W

What is the outlook for radio?

We are still committed to radio and innovating. We continue to be a big provider of shortwave services for clients throughout the world. Recently we launched the Radio with Pictures product, which allows satellite and cable radio stations to display visual content on TV screens – such as live graphics, web content or interactive SMS and Twitter feeds. Radio Netherlands Worldwide is using this for its Arabic service to the Middle East and we are currently in discussion with other broad-casters in the UK and elsewhere.

How do you fit into the mix of playout centres that exist in the UK?

The reason why we are winning clients and building our business is that we have got Europe's most up to date enterprise class software and hardware based playout centre with Pharos Mediator 4 and Omneon video servers. The fact that we are winning major playout contracts such as Top Up TV is indicative of the fact that the customer is at the centre of everything we do, and always has been. We offer everything that our competitors can do and more. Our approach is to drill down and find out what the client needs and develop a bespoke solution. That's exactly why we won the business for Top Up TV. We offer an end to end solution which is future

proof to enable customers to scale up or down as their business

requirements change. And we have that balance of the right pricing levels with the right bespoke solution.

In terms of being innovative – are developments customer-led?

Yes, we are client-led. The client is absolutely at the centre of

everything we do and we are led by their needs and requirements. You can either take a product from the shelf and hand it to clients – if our clients want that, we can do this. Or we can offer a totally bespoke solution. The decision for WRN to go into TV playout and satellite provision was initially driven by client demand. Often it is a mixture of both. We have taken a more strategic look at the market place since we decided to grow

aggressively. We are fully HD ready and we look forward to attracting our first 3D client. In fact, we are in discussions with a platform about that at the moment.

Interactivity is important to broadcasters – what's new there?

We offer full VOD and indeed that is a great part of what we do for [the UK’s] Top Up TV. We are agnostic about platforms, so if a client wants us to deliver to mobile we do that, if they want to go to the web, we deliver to the web. In the

Radio with Pictures allows satellite and cable radio stations to display visual content on TV screens

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