Bitcentral Expands to Latin America

Bitcentral Expands to Latin America

Rick Young promoted to VP/GM Sales & Business Development for North America and Latin America; Jeff Fenley joins to spearhead Latin America business development

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., Jan. 22, 2015 – Bitcentral, a leading provider of tools for media content creation, management, and distribution, announced that it is expanding its product reach into the Latin American market, including Mexico, Central and South America.

To oversee both North American and Latin American sales efforts, Rick Young assumes the role of Vice President and General Manager of Sales and Business Development. Young joined Bitcentral in 2010 as Vice President of Sales and Product Strategy.

Jeff Fenley joins Bitcentral as Director of Business Development for Latin America, spearheading sales and marketing efforts for the entire product portfolio including the flagship CORE:news production platform. Based in Argentina and fluent in English, Spanish and Portuguese, Fenley will represent the news technology leader at major Latin American broadcast trade shows.

“This is an extremely exciting time to expand our operation into the Latin American market, which has seen rapid economic growth in recent years,” said Bitcentral CEO Fred Fourcher, “and it’s a tremendous opportunity for Bitcentral as the region’s many broadcasters are poised to adopt new solutions to streamline their newsroom workflows and manage rapidly growing operational demands.”

“We owe our success in the North American broadcast news market to uniquely focused and proven offers such as our CORE:news platform. Now, Bitcentral is in a strong position to deliver a highly efficient and enabling news platform that can advance and transform Latin American news operations,” Fourcher said.

An open-standard and software-based solution, CORE:news is a secure, unified, and very easy to use production and content management environment designed to boost collaboration, sharing, and productivity. From a single user interface, CORE:news integrates all the tools broadcast journalists need to ingest and manage a wide array of incoming video sources, create rundowns, search and manage digital assets and deliver compelling, media-rich news stories.

“We have a very compelling story to tell in Latin America,” said Young. “Our technology is proven to streamline the competitive and time-challenged newsroom workflow process, extend the newsroom completely into the field, and promote creative collaboration and sharing among journalists preparing news assets, rundowns and newscasts.”

“Latin American broadcasters want the very same capabilities we’ve provided to our many major U.S.-based news organization customers,” Young added. Bitcentral’s newsroom solutions are in use at CNN, CBC/Radio-Canada, NBC Universal / Telemundo, Fox, Gannett, Hearst Television, Nexstar Broadcasting, Raycom Media, Meredith and Media General, among other major networks and station groups.

As Bitcentral’s new Director of Business Development in Latin America, Jeff Fenley brings extensive technology sales experience and a background in news content creation. Prior to joining Bitcentral, Fenley served as Managing Director for Footstats Latin America from 2012 to 2014, where he managed the Brazilian sports stats provider’s expansion into Mexico, the U.S. Hispanic market, and many South American countries.

Fenley also served as Manager of Business Development/Latin America and the Caribbean from 2008 to 2012 for STATS LLC – a joint venture then owned by Associated Press and News Corp – that provides sports scores, information and statistics to broadcast, digital and other clients. From 2003-2008, Fenley served as Regional Television Executive/News and Sports for Associated Press (AP Television News), responsible for developing business development in Mexico, Central and South America for AP Television News and Sports News Television.

Fenley, who reports directly to Rick Young, officially joined Bitcentral in June 2014, and has been establishing the new Argentina office while meeting with television networks, groups and stations throughout the region. Fenley said, “As Bitcentral embarks on its Latin American expansion, I’m looking forward to helping the company build a strong, successful presence in this vibrant, rapidly growing market.”