iNews, the Madison, Wisconsin-based company – formed in 1998 from the combination of Avid’s AvidNews® and Tektronix’ NewStar news production systems – now becomes part of the Avid Media Solutions division (AMS). The AMS division already serves the broadcasting marketplace, with such products as the NewsCutter® nonlinear editor, AirSPACE™ video server and Avid Unity™ for News media network. iNews will retain its headquarters in Madison.
“Customers have told us they want a single vendor who stands behind their complete broadcast solution,” said David Krall, Avid president and CEO. “By adding iNews into the Avid family of products, we move toward our goal of creating more complete broadcast production solutions for our customers – in this case, the producers of news programming.”
iNews products include the iNews Newsroom Computer System (NRCS) for news journalist story creation and production; Media Browse 2000, which simplifies news production by giving journalists enhanced functionality and features such as the ability to initiate video recording on high- and low-resolution servers, management of feed schedules, and quick creation of video shot lists; Broadcast Control System (BCS), which enables broadcasters to control multiple broadcast devices including video servers; NewStar newsroom production system; and EditStar, the high-resolution non-linear editing system that gives journalists the ability to write and edit a news story simultaneously.
“Over the past year we have delivered Media Browse 2000, and new versions of all of our products,” said Matt Danilowicz, former president and CEO of iNews. “We are now in a position to enhance our connectivity with NewsCutter and Avid Unity for News, while also improving the sales integration and installation process for all of our customers irrespective of their legacy systems.”
The Grass Valley Group will continue to sell both the EditStar and Media Browse products under a worldwide, non-exclusive distribution agreement with Avid. The two companies have also agreed to cooperate to maintain interoperability between the iNews EditStar and Media Browse products and the following Grass Valley Group Profile servers: PDR 200, PDR 400, PVS 1000 and a future version of the Profile XP Media Platform, which will be targeted at production.
