CEO of Bitcentral, Inc. to Address Challenges of HD Newsgathering at SMPTE Conference

Oct 27 2009

Fred Fourcher to discuss strategies for making a successful transition to HD-based field acquisition methods

IRVINE, Calif. – Oct 27, 2009 – Fred Fourcher, CEO of Bitcentral, Inc., will be part of a panel of broadcast technology thought-leaders addressing the complexities of High-Definition (HD) news production at the 2009 Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) Annual Tech Conference & Expoon Wednesday, October 28.

As a leader in news production, archiving and distribution solutions to television stations, Bitcentral offers a variety of newsroom technologies capable of meeting or exceeding today’s HD broadcast environment. With more than 20 years of industry experience, Fourcher will bring his company’s “News production with no barriers” ideology to those registered for the HD News and Newsgathering session at SMPTE 2009, providing examples from Bitcentral’s field centric file-based HD workflow.

TV stations face many obstacles in producing an all-HD newscast, Fourcher commented, “The most efficient and cost-effective way of newsgathering is to submit rough-edited stories directly from the field. Attempting to overcome the challenges of bandwidth, compression, and formats can make this task somewhat of a complex issue for a station new to HD techniques. I’d like to help station managers and engineers make sense of these perceived barriers so that they can be empowered to optimize these processes and take advantage of field contribution.”

Fourcher has more than two decades of industry-specific expertise that has helped Bitcentral become a trusted broadcast technology resource among news producers such as CNN, CBS, NBC, Raycom Media, and more. Most recently, Bitcentral developed and launched the Oasis Media Marketplace, a unique news sharing and revenue generation product that earned the company with an NAB Pick Hit Award this year.

“Getting HD content from the field to air is a challenge, but the process can have a happy ending,” Fourcher said. “Bitcentral continues to transform news organizations in the US and abroad, and we hope to introduce our solutions to even more broadcasters at this year’s SMPTE sessions as file-based HD content becomes the newsgathering standard,” he added.

The 2009 SMPTE Annual Tech Conference & Expo will take place from Tuesday, October 27 through Thursday, October 29 at the Hollywood Renaissance Hotel in Hollywood, Calif. Mr. Fourcher will join several other panelists during the HD News and Newsgathering technical session from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, October 28. To register for the event, please visit www.smpte2009.org.