BBC Worldwide is to use Globecast to handle and manage playout for up to 30 of its international channels globally. The agreement covers disaster recovery and redundancy for playout.

The “long-term partnership” agreement sees Globecast being the primary technical partner for these services, handling channels that were previously supported by multiple service providers across multiple regions. “Moving the whole operation to a single service provider means a more cost-effective, flexible and efficient playout and distribution workflow than would have been possible with the current multitude of separate providers,” says Globecast.

BBC Worldwide will use Globecast’s ‘Media Factory’, which is described as “a unified, converged workflow to prepare and playout content. It provides a dedicated web portal enabling more efficient and secure orchestration of content preparation by the broadcaster, Globecast and selected partners.

The web portal will allow BBC-WW to track the progress of content through the workflow, providing a live service health dashboard for playout and global channel distribution.”

Commenting on the agreement, Andy Steele, Head of Operations, Global Markets, BBC Worldwide said, “BBC Worldwide are very much looking forward to expanding our partnership with Globecast, who have played a vital role in supporting our playout and distribution requirements for our Global Markets’ channels. Globecast’s ability to propose solutions with build-in flexibility, whilst adapting to our strategy and business plans was a key factor in to our decision to expand our relationship with them.”

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