Fisher Communications speeds up local news delivery with expanded Bitcentral partnership

Jun 30 2009

KBAK and KBCI of Fisher Communications join rapidly expanding network of Precis customers; KATU orders key upgrade to existing Precis installation

Irvine, CA – APRIL, 2009– Bitcentral, Inc., a leading provider of news production, management and distribution solutions to the broadcast industry, today announced that Fisher Communications, Inc., headquartered in Seattle Washington, has invested in significant technology improvements for three of its local broadcast properties with the purchase of Precis 4.0 news production and management systems.

Precis is a non-proprietary, fully turnkey digital news management and play to air system; Bitcentral’s newly released 4.0 units have been installed at Fisher stations KBAK (Bakersfield, CA) and KBCI (Boise, ID). KATU (Portland, OR) has ordered an upgrade to Precis Version 4.0 for their existing Precis installation. The new software release allows the three Fisher stations to embrace a streamlined, field-centric workflow, and allows the stations to minimize rendering when ingesting file-based acquisition formats such as Panasonic’s P2 MXF.

The stations will use Precis to manage the tapeless HD/SD news production workflow from acquisition to air, which includes media management, editing and archiving.

Bitcentral President & CEO Fred Fourcher commented: “Fisher Communications’ investment in improving their news workflow is a strategic way of ensuring KBAK, KBCI and KATU deliver compelling local content to their viewers as fast as possible. These stations join over 100 stations across the United States in adopting a non-proprietary, open system to speed the delivery of content from acquisition to air.” Fourcher continued, “Fisher has a legacy of serving the community and setting the standard for innovation and journalistic excellence. Bitcentral is proud to continue to be their partner in this pursuit.”